Fletcher Bowron Square

Fletcher Bowron Square. . , The First and Finest Hotel in Devils' Town , The city's name was "Los Angeles" when it incorporated in 1850, but it was as "Los Diablos," the town of devils, that it first became a widely known mecca for murderers, gamblers, outlaws and roisterers. , Their headquarters was the city's first and most lavish hotel, the Bella Union, on Main Street. Through the new city's early decades, the Bella Union served as a kind of informal town hall, gossip center and meet ing place for both the law-abiding and the lawless. It was used as the county's first courthouse, although court had to be recessed now and again, when the judge imbibed a little too freely while on the bench, or when the adobe floors grew too muddy in rainy weather. , Its dining room was advertised as "one of the finest in all California." People all over town knew when it was mealtime at the Bella Union because the chef issued a single last from a giant steam whistle that had been installed on the roof to call all the regulars. Among the regulars were the Bella Union's owners, including Dr. Obed Macy, a physician for whom nearby Macy Street is named, and the hospitable Mayor Alpheus P. Hodges, who was generous with the hotel's whiskey. , After the outbreak of the Civil War, the Bella Union became a rendezvous for supporters of the Confederacy, a popular cause in Los Angeles. Union soldiers in training at the Drum Barracks in San Pedro were forbidden to enter the hotel. , By July 1865, weary Angelenos were ready to celebrate the end of the Civil War, a typhoid epidemic and an outbreak of Wild West shootings and lynchings. , Los Angeles' OK Corral , At the end of the war guests gathered at the Bella Union for the festivities celebrating the wedding of Solomon Lazard, of the great banking family. and Caroline Newmark, the daughter of Joseph Newmark, the rabbi who established the Los Angeles Hebrew Benevolent Society and the city's first Jewish cemetery. , It was after the wedding gala that a liquor-fueled argument broke out, and wealthy rancher Robert Carlisle slashed the hand and midriff of Under-Sheriff Andrew King, and threatened to kill all the King brothers. The next day, as King recuperated. his brothers Frank and Sam lay in wait for Carlisle outside the hotel. Someone tipped off Carlisle, who left the bar and confronted the King brothers. Bullets flew. , Several passengers in the stagecoach in front of the hotel were wounded, and a stagecoach horse dropped dead in its tracks. Sam King fell in the dusty street, one lung pierced by a bullet. Frank King, weaving, dodging and shooting, rushed into the bar ready to empty his gun. But Carlisle was already staggering, four bullet holes in his chest and belly. He died shortly thereafter, on the hotel billiard table. , By the late 1870s, the city's appetite for lawlessness was spent. Hell Town died with the coming of the railroad, the so-called "great civilizer," that linked Los Angeles with San Francisco in 1876. Tourists began to stroll where troublemakers once strutted. St. Vibiana's Cathedral anchored the cultural spine of a growing city, and theaters lined horse-trodden Main Street. , From Hotel to City Hub , Across the street from the Bella Union Hotel stood the first Los Angeles Times building. Its presses were powered by river water and printing occasionally stopped when a fish got caught in the water wheel Times' publisher General Harrison Gray Otis' son-in-law, Harry Chandler, was one of those delegated to crawl down the chute to remove the fish. , A block away, at first and Main Streets, children galloped their ponies to the fire station whenever the town's fire alarm - a pistol shot or a bell - was sounded. The dust kicked up by the ponies and the horse-drawn steamer finally disappeared in 1887, when the city paved Main, Spring and Broadway. By 1891, Los Angeles boastfully measured 87 miles of paved streets and 78 miles of paved sidewalks. , Over the next 50 years, downtown became a cultural nucleus for theater and music lovers. The Bella Union had stood for about a century, an eternity in Los Angeles, but it was torn down in 1940 for a parking lot. Four decades later, the site drew a different kind of scorn from that of its wild days; the city paid almost $1 million for the Triforium, a multi-colored lighted musical sculpture that usually stands mute and dark where the old Bella Union jangled and glittered.