TABLE OF CONTENTS :
THE NATURE BOYS OF EDENDALE The Spiritualists, the Colburn Institute, the Landacres, and the Destruction of Urban Forests by Damian Gatto Originally published 24 April 2014 and updated mid-2017 INTRODUCTION In a city that is so built-up and is always trying to reinvent itself, it can be hard to recognize or appreciate the humble origins of many of its neighborhoods. At the turn of the 20th century, Edendale was something of a pastoral scene. As you stand at the northern terminus of Alvarado Street, looking north, you can almost see it. The Pacific Electric Red Car ran roughly where the 2 is. The hills of Silver Lake, Echo Park had only begun to exhibit little wooden bungalows. The Mediterranean landscape was mostly unspoiled by industry or development. The open roads were lined not with graffiti- covered soundwalls, but instead with Cedars and Live Oaks. Above: A panorama taken by me of the Spiritualist Tract in 2009, before the Via Artis Development ravaged the whole hillside meadow. Below: The same vantage in the early 1900s. Notice the trolley tracks laid out. Los Angeles' most prolific period of growth occurred between 1880 to 1930. Neighborhoods like Lincoln Heights and Highland Park, just a few miles from Downtown, became some of the first “suburbs” of Los Angeles. As Los Angeles' population exploded by 10,970% during this five-decade period, there were Angelenos who sought to escape from this modernization and immense growth. While many came to Los Angeles for symptomatic relief from respiratory illness and flee the machine politics and density of the East Coast, others came to reside in the pseudo-agrarian landscape on the outskirts of the City. This article is about the the Nature Boys of Edendale: the Semi-Tropic Spiritualists, the Colburn Institute, and the Landacres......and the destruction of their urban paradise. CLICK "READ MORE" BELOW I. THE SPIRITUALISTS The Semi-Tropic Spiritualist Association settled their Tract sometime before 1905 on the north end of Elysian Park, above Riverside Drive, on a 3-acre parcel that was at the time within unincorporated Los Angeles County, just outside city limits; the area encompassing the Semi-Tropic grounds was annexed on February 27th, 1910. The Semi-Tropic Spiritualist Tract, as it was called, housed the community as well as their meeting grounds, farms, and homes. Many Spiritualists built their own bungalows on the Tract, a few of which survive today. At present (assuming about 175 lots on the tract) about 1/3 of structures were built between the 1900s and 1930s. The Semi-Tropic Spiritualist Association’s Articles of Incorporation clearly state the purpose of the assemblage: "to acquire, operate and maintain permanent camp grounds in the County of Los Angeles." Further, my search through Assessor and building permit archives produced building permits listing the Spiritualists as the owners of their land. Their non-profit license was registered to “542 South Main Street”, a building which no longer stands. Parking lot, yo. I figured, if the Spiritualists were landowners with an incorporated business, there are probably court cases somewhere. How right I was; there are indeed court cases involving the Spiritualists filed in the State depositories. Semi-Tropic Spiritualist Assn. v. Johnson (1912) reveals a conflict among the Spiritualist’s Board of Directors (respondents) and Peter Johnson (appellant) about outstanding funds stemming from the sale of lots by the association to the Mr. Johnson. Johnson alleged wrongdoing on the part of the Spiritualists. The court affirmed its judgement from the precedent case, and ruled in favor of the Spiritualists. The case is to this day cited as precedent in State Courts as to the definitions of “transfer” and “sold”. The Spiritualist’s Contemporaries Upon the hills east of the Silver Lake Reservoir, possibly on what is now Ivan Hill Drive, anarchists Emma Goldman and the Flores-Magon Brothers were layin' low. This, along with other “communal practices” and communist residents, earned the area the moniker "Red Hill". A family friend on Walcott Way told me that a few bungalows on the tract were built by a lesbian couple, though I cannot verify this through my permit research at this time. Silver Lake is already synonymous with LGBT history, but if this claim is true, this would predate the Sunset Junction era by many decades. I shall keep up my search for records of these lover-builders. Attesting to the historic diversity of the area, an array of surnames appear on early building permits. Considering the rising Anglo predominance in Los Angeles at the time, Spanish surnames appear a considerable amount on the titles and building permits for structures on the Semi-Tropic Tract. I have also been looking into the possibility of chain migration of Polish families to the Tract and surrounding area. Polish surnames appear on many of the permits I have turned up, and Oak Glen Place, south of Allessandro Street, was originally called “Sobieski Street” (prior to the 1920s). Another street on the north end of the Tract, Modjeska Street, is Polish in origin. Giving the Tract’s proximity to Glendale Boulevard (Los Angeles' first studio district, its first “Hollywood”), the street could have been named after Polish-American actress Helena Modjeska. II. THE COLBOURN BIOLOGICAL INSTITUTE Photo by : Futterer, 1960. Owner: The Holyland Exhibition (still located at 2213 Lake View Avenue) My awareness of (what I would find out to be) the Coburn Institute began when I found a picture in the Holyland Exhibition of the Tract dating from the construction of the 2 Freeway in the late 50s. The photo depicts a building at the northwestern end of El Moran Street, roughly where the entrance to the Via Artis development is today. A very peculiar building, it stood on tall stilts at all four corners (a throwback to the days when the nearby LA River routinely overflowed) and featured a wraparound porch and hipped roof. It appears to be a vernacular cabin, not conforming to any architectural style. Naturally, this lil’ cabin enticed me. In the comments section on a separate forum, somebody remarked that “there was a cabin on that street [El Moran] that had a koi pond and belonged to some old man” and that “it mysteriously burned down in the late 70s”. Operating on that hunch, I searched every legal address on Allesandro between Oak Glen (at south) and Riverside (at north) from 1905 to present. Eventually, I found permits for a hipped roof cottage and auxiliary structures, with legal addresses of 2055 El Moran Street and 2511-19 Allesandro Street. They were owned and built by a one E.L. Colburn, of the Colburn Biological Institute. Dr. Colburn lived at 1401 Douglas Street when he built his compound. His mansion on Douglass no longer stands, of-fricken-course, having fallen to a stucco box apartment building. Below: Detail of the Futterer photo, showing the Colburn Cottage in 1960--twenty-two years before demolition. Above: the permit for the Colburn Cabin's construction, listing salvaged wood among its building materials. The first two building permits for the Institute's structures indicate “one existing building on the lot” at the time of construction. None other than the Semi-Tropic Spiritualists built this extant building, which was built in 1912. Colburn purchased this lot, with the building upon it, from the Spiritualists. At the time, the Institute’s legal address was “606 Exchange Bldg Downtown”. The permit for the Institute’s first structure, a “5-Room Cottage”, was stamped “3 Oct 1919”, with a permit for a garage being granted 12 days later. The comments section on the cottage permit is SO great: “The Lumber for this Laboratory was from the old Laboratory in Rubio Canyon, North of Alta Dena and is in good shape, most [of the wood] is heavier than required in LA City Limits, on account of heavy winds in Rubio Canyon where it was formerly used.” Colburn actually dismantled a lab in Rubio Canyon (present-day Altadena) and rebuilt it in Echo Park. It shows you which neighborhoods were “hot and happening” at the time! Not to mention, the whole "reusing the lumber" thing—this would NEVER fly nowadays with LADBS! Different times, different times. A permit stamped “3 Aug 1926”, is for a “Medicine Storage Building”. There was quite a little Biological Research Compound going on. Then, during the construction of the 2 Freeway between 1957 and 1959, the buildings were moved from Allesandro, about 100 yards southward up into the hills onto the lot at 2055 El Moran Street. Certificates of Occupancy from 1959 and 1963 still list the Colburn Biological Institute, a legal entity, as owners. The demolition permit from 1982, however, indicates fire damage, an owner by the name of “C. Isaacs”, and only one building on the lot. Something else stands out. Earlier permits say that the lot is located between “cross streets Alessandro and Peru” but the demolition permits says “cross streets Allesandro and dead end”. Probably, the massive amount of grading involved in construction the 2 Freeway caused the adobe and sandstone soil that makes up the Elysian Heights hillsides to loosen, thereby causing adjacent hillsides to slump by about a few meters, slowly rendering El Moran and Walcott Way unnavigable. It is hardly a secret that the intrusion of the 2 Freeway decimated the once-contiguous rolling hills of Echo Park-Edendale-Elysian Heights-Silver Lake area. I cannot find much documentation on the Institute’s activities before 1925. However, what we do know is that Colburn died from a mysterious illness contracted while traveling in China in 1925, while traveling with his confidante, a one “Cecelie Orberdorfer”. Upon return to the U.S., a dispute arose among Colburn-Orberdorfer loyalists and other factions of the Colburn Institute’s Board of Directors. The four resulting court cases, spanning from 1933 to 1938, mostly involved board members and petitioners DeBolt and Schaeffer. The first dispute arose after Dr. Colburn's death concerning the ownership and publishing rights to the late Colburn’s “Wisdom Papers”, described in an entry of the 1929 edition of Catalog of Copyright Entries as a three-part book on “theology, medicology, and astrology”. ......Erm, medicology??? Apparently this was some early 20th century synergetic discourse. Some fad. Another more dramatic dispute arose after the Institute's December 7th, 1931 board meeting, wherein the minute-taker happened to be absent, and some board members of one faction alleged that members of another faction had resigned from the Board. Each of the parties’ arguments was contingent upon the technicality of the minute-taker’s absence. The institute outlived Dr. Colburn by a several decades. The group was apparently immensely dedicated to preserving Dr. Colburn's efforts. As stated, when the 2 Freeway was built (or rather, when the 2 Freeway decimated the neighborhood) they moved the building across the street from its original address at 2518 Allesandro Street to 2055 El Moran Street. Man, Alessandro Street was quite the little conservationist corridor of the day, wasn't it? UPDATE October 20th, 2019: Hello, folks! I found a copy of Dr. Colburn's "Wisdom Papers," absolutely 100% on a whim, in a rare book store in Santa Clarita. There are some very captivating things as soon as you flip open the cover. I love the journeys my research leads me upon! Below: Also tucked in the jacket was something that made my otherwise healthy heart nearly miss a beat--a photo of the hipped roof cottage! And not just that, but the photo depicts the cottage in its original location in the early 1920s, before the 2 Freeway was built. I love the little journeys that my research leads me upon! Below, left to right: A lithograph of Mr. Colburn, which is hand-enlarged and pasted onto the page; the muse to which Dr. Colburn dedicates his writings ; a hand-written serial number, noting a limited run of 50 copies. Note the corporate address: 2511 Allesandro Street. III. MR. LANDACRE's EDENDALE Perhaps the most iconic residents of the Tract in its glory days--before the 2 Freeway ruined it-- are Paul and Margaret Landcare. They lived in a 758 square foot vernacular cottage spanning 2006, 2010, and 2016 El Moran Street. And it was paradise. Landcare did not build the cabin; it was built by a one “Thomas F. Ford” in the early 1920s. Still, Paul and Margaret made the cabin their home, their studio. The two made engravings in the ceilings and walls inspired by the wildlife surrounding them. Margaret went nude sunbathing. Paul welded a mailbox out of copper sheets. This mailbox is still there, facing the Peru Street side of the property, albeit in a state of deterioration. Landacre's woodcuts glorify and immortalize the Tract, the natural resources in particular. The influence of his lifestyle and routines upon his work is evidenced by his having said: “There is much to be done around here […] pruning trees, repairing the roof, feeding wildlife […] It must be conceded that to some of us, this environment is not only valuable, but absolutely necessary…to remind us that we are a part of nature.” I love it. Landacre lived to see the early phases of the Glendale segment of the 2 Freeway in the early 1960s, which decimated wildlife and ruined the seamless fabric of Echo Park and Silver Lake's rolling hills. For those who fled to this area to escape the central city, it was an early sign that urbanization and modernity had spread to their backyards. In April 1963, Landacre’s wife, his muse, died suddenly of cancer, and the next month Landacre filled his cabin with gas from his stove and ended his own life. Poignant, that the nature boy Landacre's death coincided with the early stages of this urban paradise’s demise. EL MORAN STREET. El Moran Street is one of the oldest streets in the area, dating from about the time of the Spiritualists. It would interesting be to trace the origin of this street name. Originally, it was platted as "Elmore Street," but by 1900, it bore it's present name, El Moran Street. Moran is a common Spanish and Irish surname, and a common Israeli given name. “Moran” (“ ܡܪܢ “) is also the Syriac title for “Our Lord”, that is, Jesus Christ. Is it possible that the Spiritualists called this "Moran" person their God? Or may it be that among the earliest settlers of the area, there were Syrian Orthodox Christians? I’ll be searching. A scant section of sidewalk that existed between Peru and El Moran Streets has sunk into the hillside leading to the Tract below. Finally, in the 1990s, the street was deemed a liability by the City and was barricaded from vehicular travel, though pedestrian travel is still permitted. The street is so old that its pavement is marked by a mixture of cobblestone and the old-fashioned concrete with rectangular divisions. According to a GIS file from the Department of Public Works, the street was last paved in 1937. Below: The shape of El Moran Street in 1947, overlaid with the street's unnavigable path at present. IV. AN URBAN ECOSYSTEM... …NEGLECTED…DESTROYED Even after the Colburn Institute, the Landacres, and the Spiritualists, wildlife on the Tract continued to thrive. I remember taking walks around the neighborhood my preschool class at Rose Scharlin Co-operative Nursery School. The trees formed these terrific canopies overhead. Maples, walnuts, sycamores, live oaks, and other florae and faunae formed a flourishing ecosystem. Shoot, there were even owls. OWLS. In the early 70s, the 3-acre Tract was subdivided into 3 lots. In the 80s, it was briefly considered for a 30-lot subdivision. Lordy, that would have been awful. Then, Los Angeles' Small Lot Subdivison Ordinance was passed in 2005, to make use of "underutilized" lots in the city. One could demolish a series of single-family homes, apply for a lot tie, then subdivide the consolidated lot into, say, a further 8 mini-lots with increased occupancy. And then you proceed to have those awful, two-dimensional looking condominiums and McMansions. Which is just what the Semi-Tropic Spiritualist Tract got. In 2007, an Anaheim-based developer applied for a grading permit to raze the portion of the Tract bound by Allesandro, El Moran, and Modjeska Streets, and build by way of the small-lot ordinance. And so they did. The former Semi-Tropic Spiritualist grounds—the self-sustained arboretum, the urban ecosystem, the potential public park--was razed by late 2011. It was such a tremendous loss to generations of a community that so valued this type of environment. The trees endemic to the area form a synergetic relationship with the loose soils of the hillsides. The roots of the riparian trees shoot downward far and wide to get a grip on the hillside and reach whatever water it can. These roots form a sort-of structural rebar, a structural skeleton, ensuring that landslides in this area during the rainy seasons aren't, well, worse! And in fact, seismology records indicate that most of the land above the new Via Artis development as being highly prone to landslide. An important purpose of trees in this area is aeration. Through their stomatas, leaves absorb the smoggy carbon emissions from passing vehicles and other sources. Because carbon monoxide is not utilized for any biological purposes, trees are beneficial in that they act as large filters and carbon reservoirs. Indeed, at the time of the envioronmental review for the Via Artis development, many trees on the Tract fit the criteria to be considered "in substantial decline from a condition of normal health and vigor […] . " The City’s Protected Native Tree Ordinance specifies conditions under which "Laurels, Walnuts, Oaks, Sycamores" etc. shall be removed or retained. A lot of the trees removed, however, did not satisfy a number of Ordinance criteria. They did not "interfere with proposed utility services or roadways”. As protected, endemic, iconic trees, they did not "lack apparent aesthetic value”. As riparian trees, they had long root systems that shoot deep down and wide into the ground, and definitely not "in danger of falling due to an existing and irreversible condition". V. AFTERWORD....and the PRESENT TODAY At present, the Tract is still a beautiful green space, although it is a shell of its former self. Neither the developers nor the City did anything to mitigate the crumbling El Moran Street, or at least reinforce the land surrounding it. Further, the grading for the Via Artis project was immense. This had to have thrown off the natural land contours. It broke El Moran Street into two stubs. The developer did, however, "replace each tree within the property with at least two trees of the protected variety”. The “nature boy” spirit lives on in the area. If you look at a satellite image of Los Angeles, you notice that Echo Park, Silver Lake, and Elysian Heights are some of Los Angeles foremost green patches. People take cutting down trees seriously in these communities. Community efforts prevented the butchering of some dozen pepper trees during sound wall construction along the south side of the 2 Freeway in 2015-16. The community's efforts also prevented the 2 Freeway from being joined with the 101 in the late 1960s-early 1970s. Ever wonder what that seemingly pointless stub near the Glendale Boulevard exit is? That's where the merger would have been. Had the merger continued along this trajectory, it would have taken out the northern portion of Allessandro Street, several other streets, and numerous historic buildings in the process.
12 Comments
Laura
1/12/2020 06:42:16 pm
Thank you so much, I live in one of the original houses built on the tract and i love learning about the area. I've found it hard to find much about it so your writing on it is a treat. :)
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3/19/2020 09:34:36 am
Laura,
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Laura
1/17/2021 02:35:04 pm
Yes, I've found some articles about the semi-tropic spiritualists in newspaper archives as well. I do enjoy digging around. I've heard (maybe from one of your articles) that there's photos of the area at the Holyland exhibition. I've wanted to go check it out for awhile but unfortunately can't now with covid! If you find out anything else about the area I'd love to hear about it, feel free to email me.
Nicholas Doyle
7/15/2020 08:53:59 pm
Your observations are intriguing and delightful-please keep up the fine documentation!
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8/5/2021 08:30:33 pm
Nicholas: Thank you very much for visiting my site. I shall keep my work! I just wrapped up my graduate studies, so you can expect a restart of my posts in the near future!
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nick doyle
5/17/2021 12:41:41 pm
I continue to enjoy reading about your findings -Thank you
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8/5/2021 08:32:13 pm
Nick--I just noticed your second comment as I was typing a response to your first! The list is long for this one--send me an email at
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Nicholas Doyle
10/19/2022 06:02:17 am
Congratulations on your new home-super exciting development!
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1/21/2023 02:37:10 pm
Hello Nicholas, thank you for stopping in again c: 1/21/2023 02:34:42 pm
Hello Jacob! Thank you for reading my site, and for sharing this development with us! Ah, the memories. A true testament to the myriad personalities that have come through these parts throughout history 😂
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