St. James Park

St. James Park. . , A London-like Park Among The Orange Groves , St. James Park, like its neighbor, Chester Place, remains for the most part what it was when it began: a green and restful spot at the heart of what was the city's most prestigious and genteel neighborhood. , A banker named Vincent A. Hoover was farming the land before 1875, cultivating fruits and nuts, barley and vegetables. But in 1875, Hoover subdivided his farmland into large parcels; like so many Angelenos, Hoover realized that real estate and not agriculture would be the great money-maker of the growing city. , Then, in 1885, a German immigrant and amateur horticulturalist named Charles Silent retired from the Arizona Supreme Court and moved to Los Angeles. He bought 20 acres of the farmland, intending to subdivide it and sell it off himself. , Silent carved out a small parcel, and even as Silent was planting his own gardens, he was enlisted by city leaders to landscape the new 550-acre Elysian Park, near where Dodger Stadium stands. He was considered the father of the city's parks commission and he founded a men's singing club that endured as the Ellis-Orpheus Men's Chorus. , In 1886, a Massachusetts lawyer named Charles James Ellis bought 30 acres, and eventually sold off all but a half-acre, where he built a showcase home overlooking the orange groves. , Soon a pair of real estate developers - George W. King and J. Harvey Downey, the nephew of a California governor - bought up more of the lots, including an acre-sized parcel that King donated to the city in 1891 and named St. James Park, after its namesake in London. , From A Failed Hotel, A Successful School , To entice buyers, Ellis built the Marlborough Hotel nearby. But the hotel foundered, and he sold it to a New England schoolmistress named Mary Caswell. In 1889, she opened a fashionable school for 25 girls from “refined” families. The Marlborough School did far better than the hotel. , For a private school that has graduated scores of high-powered, high-intellect women with influence in politics and business, its founder had some unlikely notions. Caswell opposed women's suffrage, and denounced it in the Legislature in 1911. Suffrage, she said, would "rob women of privileges they currently enjoy and impose responsibilities they do not want.” , The Legislature nonetheless voted for women's suffrage, putting California nearly a decade ahead of the federal government in giving women the vote. , The exclusive institution enjoyed a cozy relationship with its wealthy neighbors until 1916, when a burgeoning student body prompted Caswell to move the school to Hancock Park. The hotel-turned-school was later demolished. , Picture Postcards, Then The Wrecking Ball , The arrival of the horse-drawn trolley line in 1891 finally made the area accessible to buyers and gawkers. The palatial homes were featured on boastful picture postcards. , By the turn of the 20th century, St. James Park was a centerpiece of the city's most desirable neighborhood, a vast greensward ornamented with Queen Anne, Gothic Revival and Italianate mansions fronting the park. , The neighborhood was populated by socially prominent citizens whose names filled the city's "Blue Book": Eli P. Clark, who helped to launch the Red Car trolley system; John Braly, who built the city's first skyscraper - a dozen towering stories in 1904; and a baroness, Rosa Von Zimmerman, who found her home too small to hold all of her art treasures, so she built another mansion next door and a bridge to connect the two. , But by the 1920s and '30s, the rich were moving elsewhere , to Hancock Park and to Beverly Hills. St. James Park began to decline. As happened elsewhere, owners couldn't afford the servants to maintain the mansions, and the wartime housing shortage converted many of the homes to boardinghouses. , Although much of St. James Park's original landscaping is gone and most of the mansions ringing the square razed, the park and its small neighborhood were declared a National Historic Landmark in 1991; some of the serenity of the earlier era still lingers among the grand old trees. , Only three homes survived the wrecking ball, including a Classical Revival at 27 St. James Park, built in 1900 by architect John Parkinson.