The German Hospital in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles, Cal.

[Update February 2021:  The hospital has been demolished]

The vacant former hospital on Soto Street near Fourth caught fire - again - the night of October 11th.  The fire crew took just over one hour to contain the outbreak, but it seemed routine because it was the fourth fire in the last two years.

I was alerted by email from my brother informing me that the old Lincoln Hospital was damaged.  It was where my brothers and I were born.

(Courtesy ONSCENE.TV)

Upon hearing about my personal connection to the fire, curiosity prompted photojournalist Gary Leonard to visit in the following days.  Gary sent me a photo of Eileen Marquez, a passerby appropriately wearing a white top emblazoned with the words "Baby Girl."  He humorously suggested that it was a nod to me - one of the many baby girls to have entered the world at Lincoln Hospital.

Eileen had told Gary that she attended Garfield High and was born at County Hospital.  She was delighted to be photographed because her best friend was born at this hospital.

Eileen Marquez
(Photo courtesy of Gary Leonard)

A Promising Future and a Promise Lost

In 1901 the Germans in Los Angeles celebrated the 30th anniversary of the German Empire, just as they had done in the city since 1871.  This particular gathering was dedicated to raising funds to construct a German hospital.  But their pocketbooks may not have been as full as their pride because it took an Irishman to help things along.

A fellow named Max Werner died of appendicitis in 1897 and in his will everything was left to his mother Louise back in Germany.  Terms stipulated upon her death the estate would go to a New York City charity.  Henry Workman Keller, son of pioneer merchant and rancher Mathew Keller, was Werner's executor.  The will was contested, and the New York charity received only a fraction of the estate in 1898.  When Louise died in 1903, the Los Angeles Herald reported that there were funds held in a bank earmarked for the German hospital. 

Community leaders led by physician Joseph Kurtz swiftly set up a corporation called Deutscher Hospital Verein, or German Hospital Association.   A year later, the groundbreaking was held in April, 1904.  The Herald reported a two-story [sic] brick hospital building would extend from 435 to 451 South Soto Street.  German national John Paul Krempel and Walter Erkes, an American, were the architects.  

A cornerstone dedication ceremony was held the following month, and by October the new hospital was open for business to accommodate 24 patients.

German Hospital cornerstone
(Photo courtesy of Gary Leonard)

Shown is the original building.  Building improvements were done in 1922, 1923, 1927, 1964 and 1985.  The 1927 expansion was the largest by adding over 19,000 square feet

Keller, a businessman and property investor, built a handsome two-story brick home in 1907 less than a mile away at Fourth and Boyle Streets.  The showcase house had 18 rooms of which five of them were bathrooms.

Noteworthy Patients

In 1915 Lillie Mulholland, age 47, expired at the hospital.  She was the wife of city engineer William Mulholland.

The Association made a decision to adopt a new name, Lincoln Hospital, in 1918.  

Another patient in 1920 was Emil Harris, the city's first Jewish police chief.  His name is well-associated with the history of the 1871 Chinese Massacre when he was an officer on duty as rioting broke out.  

The hospital architect Paul Krempel continued with an active career in his adopted city.  He resided on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills.  Yet when he suffered a heart attack, he was transported clear across town to be treated at Lincoln Hospital where he expired in September, 1933.

It is unclear to me when the hospital changed from a non-profit to an investor-owned hospital.  The hospital's final years operated as Promise Hospital of East Los Angeles.  Since the closing, a 2017 plan to build a charter elementary school fizzled.

 

Photo courtesy of Gary Leonard

Photo courtesy of Gary Leonard

My brothers, my mother and I pose for Gary

 

 

 

Photo courtesy of Gary Leonard

Photo courtesy of Gary Leonard

Photo courtesy of Gary Leonard

Photo courtesy of Gary Leonard

Photo courtesy of Gary Leonard

Photo by blogger

Photo by blogger

 

 

Photo by Gary Leonard

A view of the former Promise Hospital and its neighbor, Northgate Market.  Photo by blogger

Two fire department officials stopped by on the Sunday morning

The rear of the original hospital building.  Photo courtesy of Gary Leonard

 

 

 

Photo courtesy of Gary Leonard

Los Angeles Herald, October 3, 1904

 

Courtesy of California Digital Newspaper Collection, Center for Bibliographic Studies and Research, UC Riverside, <http://cdnc.ucr.edu> 

Original brick from one of the building additions.  Photo by blogger

 

During the visit to the former hospital grounds, squatters were entering and leaving the building without regard to the fencing and red tagging.  Strewn on the pavement were personal articles belonging to adults and children.

 

Photo by Gary Leonard

 

 

Photo by Gary Leonard

 

Photo by Gary Leonard

Photo by blogger

Photo by blogger

Photo by blogger

Photo by Gary Leonard

Gary Leonard

Downtown's Mateo Street & Keller Street - And Its Malibu and Santa Monica History

Several "Mateo Street" freeway signs can be seen on my daily commute inching westward on the 10 Santa Monica Freeway heading towards downtown Los Angeles.  The street view of Mateo is industrial and not extraordinary.  Not far away is Alameda Street, another industrial thoroughfare usually clogged with small, medium and big rigs. 

"Mateo," and the family name Keller, can be remembered for a father and son, who in their two generations helped to shape Southern California spanning about 1850 to 1958.  They contributed to the history of Santa Monica and Malibu as well.

Mathew Keller

Mateo Street was named for an Irishman Mathew Keller (1811-1881) and his vineyard near this street.  His adopted name "Don Mateo" reflected his naturalized Mexican citizenship and provided him an affable identity in his new city.  Amassing wealth and property, Keller's success was in part due to timing - being an early white settler in the city and finding opportunity as many Californio landholders struggled in the U.S. courts only to have their claims to land titles slip away, or else they no longer were able to afford their land.

L to R:  Mathew Keller, Phineas Banning and John H. Hollister
Image from book La Reina, Los Angeles in Three Centuries, 1931
(Image added Dec. 2018)

Mathew Keller arrived around 1850 and settled near where Union Station is now.  He opened a store at Los Angeles and Commercial Streets.  During his life, he was involved in extensive business affairs.  He invested in banking, oil and real estate.  He held public offices as city councilman and county administrator, and he also served a year as city assessor. 

In his early years living in Los Angeles, he was a member of the Rangers, a volunteer police force needed to keep a check on the volatile lawlessness.

In 1854, Keller registered a cattle brand with the county, indicative that he had a sizeable number of livestock.  Below was his brand:

Registered May 13, 1854.
Branding sample is in the Seaver Center's brand collection
at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County

By the 1860s, Keller he had a vineyard and a wine manufacturing operation near Alameda and Seventh.  He also grew citrus and cotton. 

Keller Street

Today, Keller Street still runs in one of the oldest sections of L.A., although the street is hardly of use to most people.  Keller was one of the promoters of the Aliso Tract (surveyed in 1869), a subdivision that covered an area east of Alameda Street to the Los Angeles River, from First Street up north to along where the Hollywood Freeway runs today.  Keller Street was a part of the Aliso Tract.

Keller Street is accessible from Ramirez Street just beyond the Denny's Restaurant

Originally, Keller Street was the northern most section of the Aliso Tract.  From a historic tract map found at the Seaver Center in the Natural History Museum, one could see that the street was intended to have house lots on both sides of the street.



Today, it is a back street to the City of L.A.'s Piper Tech building

Keller Street's non-scenery

Mathew Keller's business partners and friends included plenty of the names of early L.A., including  Hellman, Childs, Sentous and Banning.  Keller's next door neighbor in the 1850s was William Moore, a city surveyor whose own career in mapping the city lands continued into the 1870s.

Rancho Topanga Malibu

Keller bought Rancho Topanga Malibu Sequit in 1862  from an early French settler named Leon Victor Prudhomme.  Keller established some of his vineyards there.  He claimed the land before the U.S. Land Commission, and he was awarded the land patent in 1872 for about 13,315 acres.

Keller died in 1881, and in his will he left the Malibu ranchland to his youngest son, Henry, who was at the time about 12 years old and an orphan.  When Henry turned 21, Malibu became the largest bulk of his inheritance, but by 1892 he sold it to Frederick and May Rindge.

Less remembered of the settlers of the Malibu coast are its Spanish landholders.  Jose Bartolemeo Tapia was granted Malibu, Topango, Sottome, Simi and Sequit in 1805.  The land passed to his heirs in 1824 that included the son who was mentioned in history books, Tiburcio Tapia (1789-1845).  Tiburcio and Mathew Keller shared similar paths:  Tiburcio was a well-respected merchant in Mexican Los Angeles.  He held public offices, including several terms as alcalde (mayor.)

In 1848 Rancho Topanga Malibu was sold to Maria Merced (Tiburcio's daughter) and her husband, Leon Victor Prudhomme.  The sale price was $400.

Mathew Keller bought the land at a tax sale.  For a long time, members of the Tapia family were still living on the land and sought claims to most of the land, but as stated above, the U.S. Land authorities eventually decided in Keller's favor.

The Career of Henry Workman Keller

Young Henry Keller, having sold off Malibu in 1892, was well-off and by then living in Santa Monica.  He constructed a building at Third and Utah (now Broadway) around 1893.  The Keller Block still stands at its original location at today's Third Street Promenade.  It is a rare example in L.A. County of its type of architecture, "Richardsonian Romanesque Revival."



Keller Block, ca. 1893
Image courtesy of Santa Monica's City Landmark Assessment and Evaluation Report
October 2008

Keller tied the matrimonial knot in 1894, and he had an active career, particularly as a city and regional booster.  He was an early member on the State Fish and Game Commission, befitting as he was an avid hunter and fisherman.  He seemed to have inherited his father's drive and finesse:  his real estate legacy included developing the coast from Carlsbad to Del Mar.

In 1907 he and his family moved to Los Angeles, enabling him to participate in civic affairs.  Serving as a City Park Commissioner, he is credited with facilitating the first zoo and public golf course in Griffith Park in 1915.  He served as director of the Automobile Club of Southern California from 1908 to 1938, including a term as president in 1926-27.  Relatedly, he was appointed chairman of the All-Year Club in 1923 - the organization promoted Southern California tourism. 

One of his pet projects was to establish an international road from Alaska to Argentina, and he managed in bringing some of those roads between Southern California and Mexico.  Henry Workman Keller died in 1958 at the age of 89 in Pasadena.