Retailing in Old LA: Dripping Tar, Imaginary Coins, Whiskey, and Horse Blankets

Stores in 1850s Los Angeles were small, half-lighted from the crookedness of the town's street plan, with a Colt's revolver under the sales counter against the town's terrible violence. When night fell, stores were shuttered against theft and riot with stout panels of cast iron. Shopping in old Los Angeles was not easy, pleasant, or cheap.

Shopping in old Los Angeles was not easy, pleasant, or cheap.

Laura Eversten King, writing in 1900, described the town's shopping district as two or three streets whose business centered in a few tiendas, or stores, decorated with strings of chilis or jerked beef. The one window of each tienda was barred with iron, the tiendero sitting in the doorway to protect his wares, or to watch for customers. Sidewalks were unknown. Pedestrians marched single file in the middle of the street, in winter to enjoy the sunshine, in summer to escape the trickling tears of brea [tar] which, dropping from the roofs, branded their linen or clogged their footsteps.

Tar, mostly from seeps west of the plaza, provided weatherproofing over the clay and reed wattle that made up the roofs of Los Angeles. Only the plaza church and the town jail had the tile roof that would become an icon of Southern California in the 20th century. (Split wood shingles arrived in the 1860s.)

Post-colonial Los Angeles barely reached one story along streets that would remain unpaved for another thirty years. There were, wrote H. D. Barrows, only three or four two-story buildings. The town's flat-roofed, rectangular structures clung to the adobe soil from which they were made. They looked, said one unimpressed observer like so many brick kilns ready for the burning.

The old pueblo was homely almost to ugliness, wrote historian James Guinn. The clay-colored fronts of the houses that marked the lines of the irregular streets were gloomy and uninviting. There was no glass in the windows; no lawns in front; no sidewalks, and no shade trees. There was almost no lighting after dark, except for the few shop owners who hung a lantern by their door until 8:00 p.m., the usual closing time.

Daytime business was necessarily conducted half inside and half outside the doorways of these cramped, dim establishments (that doubled as living quarters for the shop owner or his assistant). Indoor lighting would have been a brace or two of tallow candles or a lamp burning refined turpentine. Window glass was such a novelty that the Morris and Brothers clothing store celebrated the installation of its show window in a lengthy advertisement in the Los Angeles Star in 1857. The extravagant crystal show case included, oddly, a railroad train etched in the glass.

Los Dos Amigos, 1857. Los Dos Amigos was owned by Don Filip (or Philip) Rheim, who hung his housewares at the store's entrance. The flat roof was made partially weatherproof by a coating of hardened tar (that would soften and drip on customers in the heat of summer). Photograph courtesy of the USC Libraries - California Historical Society Collection.

Gollers carriage and blacksmith, 1857. John Gollers shop was on the west side of Los Angeles Street south of Commercial Street, It was somewhat unusual in having a second story. Photograph courtesy of the USC Libraries - California Historical Society Collection.

Hellman & Bro., 1857. The book, stationary, and cigar store (at Temple Avenue and Main Street) was the first commercial venture of brothers Herman and Isaias Hellman. The Hellman brothers were German-born members of the city's small Jewish community in the 1850s. Isaias prospered as a banker and was one of the founders of USC. Photograph courtesy of the Photo Collection - Los Angeles Public Library.

Among the merchants of Los Angeles in the 1850s were names that would shape the city's future: the Hellman brothers, Benjamin Wilson, John Temple, Abel Stearns, Harris Newmark, Francis and Henry Mellus, brothers Juan and Mateo Lanfranco, Orzo. W. Childs, Charles Ducommon, John Downey, and William Workman. With few exceptions, most of these businessmen sold general merchandise. General, in Laura Eversten King's recollection, meant anything from a plow to a box of sardines, or from a needle to an anchor. Some merchants sold sugar and silks, others brogans and barrels of flour.

Charles Ducommon, a watchmaker who had walked to Los Angeles from Arkansas, sold the best goods, although at enormous prices, according to King. Ducommuns first store was, according to memoirist Harris Newmark, about 16 by 30 feet in size, but it contained an astonishing assortment of merchandise, such as hardware, stationery and jewelry.

Wheeler and Johnson, having set up shop in part of the large building on the plaza that had been Abel Stearns' palacio, advised customers that they had for sale:

Groceries, soap, oil, candles, tobacco, cigars, salt, pipes, powder, shot, lead. Provisions, flour, bread, pork, hams, bacon, sugar, coffee. Dry Goods, broadcloths, cassimeres [sic], blankets, alpacas, cambrics, lawns, ginghams, twist, silks, satins, colored velvet, nets, crepe, scarlet bandas, bonnets, lace, collars, needles, pins. Boots, shoes, hats, coats, pants, vests, suits, cravats, gloves, hosiery. Furniture, crockery, glassware, mirrors, lamps, chandeliers, agricultural implements, hardware, tools, cutlery, house-furnishing goods, liquors, wines, cigars, wood and willow ware, brushes, trunks, paints, oils, tin ware and cooking stoves.

To which James Guinn added, When we recall the fact that all of this vast assortment was stored in one room and sold over the same counter we must admire the dexterity of the salesman who could keep bacon and lard from mixing with the silks and satins, or the paints and oils from leaving their impress on the broadcloths and velvets. The sale might also have included a glass of beer or a shot of

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