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A Genealogy of the Naud Junction Neighborhood (Now Under the Terminal Annex and CA Endowment Buildings) INSIDE: LA's Early Immigrant Entrepreneurs ...and Their Erased Enclaves by Damian Gatto Introduction A year and a half ago, I released my genealogy of the La Loma neighborhood of Chavez Ravine. My sample size was the neighborhood’s five remaining streets: Bouett, Brooks, Spruce, Aqua Pura, and Phoenix. My data sources were the United States Censuses from 1900 to 1940, historic building permits, land surveys, home titles, and grant deeds. I went lot-by-lot along the remaining La Loma streets documenting the builders and subsequent occupants of the homes until they were demolished. Media portrayals of Chavez Ravine during the era of its slow demise depicted the community as a ramshackle bunch of shanties and corrugated steel shacks. However, I knew based on my lifelong relationships with some of the uprooted (known as Los Desterados) that this was a vast misrepresentation. Indeed, I found that nearly every building in this five-street remnant of La Loma had a new construction permit attached to it. Another thing that fascinated me about communities like Chavez Ravine, Dogtown, Diamond Street (amongst many others) is how they were all selected to be razed and replaced with public (and sometimes private) improvements. In light of new documentation and testimonials, it is now no secret that these communities were perfectly healthy communities, but they simply had the misfortune of being built upon land that was too valuable for public and private use to be in the hands of working-class folk. The Naud Junction and Macy Street neighborhoods, which now lie, respectively, under the Terminal Annex and Union Station, were two of these such neighborhoods. This article focuses upon the Naud Junction Neighborhood, the Northern 8th Ward. The vast majority of homes were built before 1924 (when dozens were immolated, ostensibly to fend off the plague) or the mid-1930s (when they were eminent domained to build the the USPS Terminal Annex Building. When it comes to development and government improvement projects, it is easy to look to "blighted" areas (i.e. working class neighborhoods) and figure that they have to be improved upon.
Above: The American Foundry. (Source: USC Digital Libraries)
The Naud Junction Neighborhood
From 1889 to 1909, prior to the establishment of the modern City Council representational system consisting of council districts, Los Angeles was divided into nine wards. The northern part of the Eighth Ward, which we will be strolling through today, was also called “Naud Junction” after Frenchman Edouard Naud, who built a warehouse near the modern-day William Mead Homes in 1878.
Naud Junction was marked by a signal tower built at Alameda and Ord streets in 1898. Naud Junction was also the location of the city of Los Angeles' primary boxing pavilion. USC students exchanged jabs there, and it also hosted the likes of Tommy Burns, Marvin Hart, and Abe Attel. The 8th Ward was also the site of the city's first orphanage, Institucion Caratitiva, as well as one of its most prominent infirmaries, the Los Angeles Infirmary. My motivation to do a genealogy of the Eighth Ward neighborhood was similar to Chavez Ravine. For one, I was interested in how the community was constituted demographically. I knew that the community was one of Los Angeles’ earliest melting pots. Persons of Mexican, Indigenous, Chinese, and Italian descent resided here, unable to find housing in other areas of the city due to “deed restrictions” (i.e. racial covenants) and other forms of discrimination. I was also aware of the neighborhoods role as a launching pad for numerous immigrant entrepreneurs, such as Gladding McBean & Co., the Italian-immigrant founded American Foundry, and the German immigrant-founded Kerckhoff Lumber Co. I had also heard of community institutions like the Macy Street School, designed by the famed architect A.C. Martin (of Los Angeles City Hall fame), which lasted all of 15 years before being demolished. A further motivation for performing this and other genealogies was that I wanted to further substantiate how, historically, working class communities in Los Angeles were the go-to communities that were razed in order to construct government buildings and other forms of urban redevelopment. Finally, following the illuminating results of my Chavez Ravine genealogy, I was inspired to document the daily life in the northern Eighth Ward--the community's geography, its goings-on, and its economic activity. I wanted the displaced villagers of Naud Junction to be known to future historians and Angelenos.
CLICK "READ MORE" BELOW for A Genealogy of the Eighth Ward
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