Searching for ABW - Bill H.

Federal Theatre Project dance rehearsal, 1937

We've been on a tour of Los Angeles, following the trail of [The Man I Love]'s grandfather, ABW, who lived in this city from about 1918 until his death in 1946.

[The Man I Love] didn't know his grandfather. His grandparents' marriage had broken up in 1921. All we had to mark the trail were public records like census listings, city directories, and newspaper articles. Luckily, we found one essay that ABW wrote late in life, telling about his career as a newspaperman, printer, and linotype machine operator.

In 1930, at the age of 57, ABW moved into a small bungalow in the Silverlake neighborhood of Los Angeles with a woman named Emma H. and her 23 year old son William.

It's funny how you can get off on some side trails. As we tried to find out what life was like for ABW in Silverlake, we found ourselves following William's story.

Belmont High School, 1927

William was born in 1907. In 1923, he was part of the starting class at the brand new Belmont High School in Los Angeles. Belmont was located a few blocks south of Echo Park Lake. Echo Park was the home of the early silent film industry. Mack Sennett, Tom Mix, and other famous stars and directors worked and lived here. Some of the funniest scenes in silent movies took place on the hilly streets of this neighborhood.

No wonder local kids were into show-biz. In 1924 William became the first Manager of Belmont High School's Stage Crew. A photo of the crew appears in the school yearbook.

He was also Treasurer of the Boys' Glee Club and performed in school productions of plays and operettas.

In the 1930 census, when he was 23 and living with his mother and her new husband ABW, William's occupation was listed as a dancer, in the theatrical industry.

Broadway at Ninth Street, Los Angeles 1929

There were lots of opportunities in show business. Vaudeville was still thriving, and so was the movie industry. The two art forms meshed perfectly. All over America - and especially in Los Angeles - huge and elaborate theatres were being built, so that people could come watch a vaudeville show followed by a movie. Broadway in downtown Los Angeles saw over a dozen movie palaces spring up during the 1920s.

William must have worked on the stage, in touring theatrical productions.

Photo from the New York Public Library of "Band Wagon" dancers, 1931

In 1931 William married 21-year-old Ellen Elizabeth Hegstrom, also a dancer, at the Claridge Hotel in New York City - the Claridge was located in the Theatre District.

"Band Wagon" scene, 1931, NewYork Public Library

One popular attraction on Broadway that year was the hit musical "Girl Crazy," starring a young singer Ginger Rogers. It ran seven months before closing in June. A new musical called "Band Wagon" opened a few days later at the New Amsterdam Theatre, featuring a skinny guy who was a helluva good dancer.

"Band Wagon", 1931

At the end of the '20s, the old Keith-Albee-Orpheum vaudeville company bought into the movie industry, and became the RKO Company. The industry was going through a cataclysmic change. No longer silent, movies included sound - talking, singing and music.

Drawing from their resources in vaudeville and musical theatre, RKO began producing elaborate movie musicals, capitalizing on the new technology and casting stars of Broadway and vaudeville.

In 1933, "Flying Down to Rio" was made, casting the same skinny guy from Broadway's "Band Wagon" dancing with a pretty newcomer, Ginger Rogers. Their onstage chemistry was so successful the studio went on to make more movies with the couple, with scores by composers Jerome Kern and Irving Berlin.

In 1935 they made "Top Hat." With music by Irving Berlin and dance routines by Astaire himself and a brilliant choreographer named Hermes Pan, it is considered the best of the Astaire and Rogers dance movies, and RKO's most profitable film of the decade.


Now back in Los Angeles, William is credited as Dance Director for "Top Hat." I'm not sure exactly what he did, with Astaire and Pan receiving much of the praise for the wonderful dance routines, but he was definitely back in Los Angeles, and working at RKO.

William and Ellen lived right around the corner from his mom and ABW, at 451 N. Occidental Avenue. They had a child, a girl named Loretta. His mom must have been delighted to be so close to her granddaughter.

By the time the movie wrapped, William was working as Ginger Rogers' personal secretary. In her autobiography, Ginger calls him Bill. Ginger Rogers was a young girl, younger than Bill by a few years. She was devoted to her mother, who toured with her. She was a teetotaller, and somewhat of a prude, despite the fact that she had married and quickly divorced at 17 to another vaudeville performer. In Hollywood she married a second time to actor Lew Ayers, but they separated in May 1936 - she couldn't take his partying, late nights and drinking.

Ginger was a devout Christian Scientist, and that may have been something that she and Bill had in common. ABW and his former wife Oro had been Christian Scientists, too, and it's likely that Emma had raised William in the same faith.

Christian Science is often wrongly depicted as forbidding its members from using conventional medicine, resorting to prayer for healing instead. That's not entirely true. That doctrine certainly wasn't followed in July of 1936 when William's family experienced a nasty scare.

A story in the L.A. Times recounts that their daughter Loretta, with a young playmate, ate some poison toadstools that were growing in the yard. Horrified, Ellen rushed the children to the emergency room where their stomachs were pumped and they were given a scolding.

Between 1935 when "Top Hat" was made and the end of 1937, Rogers made seven films for RKO. In March of 1938, she just completed a film called "Vivacious Lady," when the studios rushed her into making some retakes for the earlier "Having Wonderful Time."

She had planned a skiing vacation with her mother in Sun Valley, and was frustrated at the demands on her time.

On Sunday, April 10th, Bill was at a friend's house in Beverly Hills. It was a modest part of town, where even today the homes are small Spanish-style cottages and bungalows. He was suddenly stricken with severe abdominal pain, collapsed and died. He was thirty-one years old.

His funeral took place at Forest Lawn Memorial Park a few days later.

Wee Kirk o' the Heather, Forest Lawn Memorial Park

Why would a young man in his prime die so suddenly? There are three stories in the Los Angeles Times, and some of the details don't quite make sense. On April 11th, it reads:

AIDE OF ACTRESS STRICKEN IN MYSTERY AT HOME OF FRIEND
Complaining of severe pains, William E. H_____, 30 years of age, of 451 N. Occidental Avenue, secretary to [Actress], motion picture actress, collapsed in the home of a friend yesterday and died before medical aid could be obtained. Deputy sheriffs said an autopsy will be performed to determine cause of death. H____, who, with his wife Ellen and 8-year-old daughter were visiting the home of Peter Williams at 8853 Ashcroft Ave in Beverly Hills, previously had eaten in a Wilshire Boulevard [drugstore.]

An article the following day reads:

DEATH OF STAR'S AIDE LAID TO AILMENT
Death of William Edward H_____, 30 year old personal secretary to Ginger Rogers, film actress, last Sunday was attributed to an acute abdominal ailment following an autopsy conducted yesterday. H_____ , who lived at 451 N. Occidental Avenue with his wife Ellen and 8-year-old daughter, was stricken after partaking of luncheon at a public eating place. He collapsed at the home of a friend, Peter Williams, of 8853 Ashcroft Avenue, Beverly Hills. He died at Beverly Hills Emergency Hospital shortly afterward.

The next day, this article appeared:

Christian Science funeral services will be read today at 10:30 at the Wee Kirk o' the Heather, Forest Lawn Memorial Park, for William Edward H____, for the last three years personal secretary for Ginger Rogers, actress.

Ginger Rogers' autobiography mentions Bill only twice. She writes of her frustration during March and April of 1938 at being kept in L.A. for retakes of "Having Wonderful Time," and her distress over muddled vacation plans. "Ordinarily, Bill made my travel arrangements. I could always count on Bill to make sure everything went smoothly," she writes. But this time someone else, her mother's friend, made arrangements, and things did not go so well - there were missed connections and mixups.

She returned from her vacation on May 9, and began shooting her next film, "Carefree." She doesn't mention Bill again.

William's death seems to have split the family asunder. By 1939, ABW and William's mother Emma split up - ABW moved to an apartment on Ardmore Avenue in Hollywood. William's widow Ellen moved to Atwater Village, north of downtown L.A. Emma remained in the house on Bellevue Avenue.

How could such a young man be so suddenly stricken down from a meal at a drugstore counter? Food poisoning is rarely this deadly, and so swift.

Were his family with him when he died? Did he die at Peter's home or at the hospital? Did he go to Peter's place when he felt sick, or had the visit been planned? And who grabs lunch at a drugstore while on a Sunday visit, anyway? Did he receive medical treatment, or not?

Why would his employer avoid mentioning his death - and yet in a round-about way hint that he was no longer available to help her? Why would his wife move away from her mother-in-law, instead of going to her for support? Why would his stepfather leave his grieving mother?

There's a mystery here.

It makes me sad to think of William's little girl Loretta - losing her Daddy so suddenly, and remembering her own near-fatal brush with a tummy-ache.

Because [The Man I Love]'s family had lost contact with ABW, we don't have family tales and anecdotes to weave a clear narrative around these happenings. All we know about William, his career in Hollywood and his untimely death we found from census reports, voter registration reports, City Directories, and newspaper articles we can dig up. And we follow the trail where it leads - to Ginger Rogers' biography, to the Movie Database.

A promising young man worked on the best movie of the decade, with top stars, and two geniuses of theatrical dance - his passion. And then he was suddenly, violently, gone. The story is incomplete. We'll keep looking, but we may never know more.

Searching for ABW - Silverlake adjacent

First and Vermont, 1930

In an essay written near the end of his life, [The Man I Love]'s grandfather ABW says that he worked in Santa Monica as a linotype machine operator until 1930. After that, he says, he returned to Los Angeles and began working for a community newspaper called the Southwest Wave.

The 1930 census shows ABW now living at 2904 Belleveue Street, in a neighborhood northwest of downtown Los Angeles. North of MacArthur Park and south of Sunset Boulevard, it's considered part of Silverlake today.

Today, shabby single-family homes, small commercial strips, stucco Spanish duplexes, and mid-century apartment houses run up and down the rolling foothills of the Santa Monica Range that begin the further north you go from MacArthur Park and Wilshire Boulevard.

In ABW's day, it was a suburb, former farmland being developed into residential streets. This 1930 photograph shows the intersection of Silverlake Blvd. and London Street - just a few blocks away from ABW's home at Bellevue and Occidental, looking southwest. The large building in the center of the photo is the 1928-built Pacific Telephone and Telegraph building on Beverly Boulevard at Temple Street. Today the building is a storage facility and U-Haul rental site.

The Sanborn Insurance Maps show a small structure, probably a bungalow, on ABW's property. Its value was $5,000.00, and ABW is listed as the owner of the property.

This house, located a few blocks away on Lafayette Park Avenue, was typical of the homes in the neighborhood.

Across the street from 2904 Belleveue, was this modest retail building. In 1930 it probably housed a neighborhood market, just like it does today.

These duplex houses, across the street, have been stucco-faced and remodeled over the years, but they probably date from the 1920s and 1930s when the neighborhood was developed.

ABW doesn't mention it in his essay, but the census shows is that ABW lived there with two other people - his wife, Emma P. and her son, William E.

According to the census, Emma P. was from Texas. She was 47 years old, and had been married before, at the age of 23. Her mother had been from Germany. Her son's father was from Indiana.

The Los Angeles City Directory show Emma and William living in the small house at 2904 Bellevue during the 1920s, before ABW joined the family. As a boy, William attended nearby Belmont High School.

At 23, William was seven years older than ABW's son Richard, living in Santa Barbara with his mother.

We don't know anything about how ABW and Emma met, the story of their relationship. We know from census records and other documentation that they lived together at 2904 Bellevue for about nine years. We know that they split up, sometime around 1939.

Just after ABW moved in with Emma, his son Richard came to Los Angeles from Santa Barbara, transferring from Santa Barbara Teacher's College to UCLA. He was young and precocious - seventeen, a few years younger than the young man sharing ABW's home. Did he come to Los Angeles to join his father? How did he feel about his father's new family?

What kind of relationship did ABW have with his wife's son? Were they friends or were they uneasy living in the same house?

We don't know.

But while trying to find out more about ABW, we discovered a fascinating story about his stepson, William.

Coming up next. Stay tuned.

Searching for ABW - Santa Monica

[The Man I Love] and I have been following the footsteps of his grandfather, ABW, who lived in Los Angeles. In 1928, ABW moved to Santa Monica. In an essay he wrote near the end of his life, he says that he went into business operating an Intertype machine - which was an improved version of the linotype machine invented in 1881 that revolutionized the newspaper printing business.

The Pacific Electric Car made it easy for Los Angeles residents to visit the beach. Santa Monica and its neighbor to the south, Venice, built amusement piers that attracted thousands of people. Santa Monica had two bustling business districts - one in Ocean Park, and the other centered on Third Street south of Wilshire Boulevard.


West from Third Street was Palisades Park, which stretched along the bluffs above the beach, providing a beautiful place to take in the view. At the beginning of the 20th Century, Ocean Avenue in front of Palisades Park was lined with large Victorian and Queen Anne homes. By the 1920s, hotels and commercial development had begun to change the quiet residential streets. Like nearby Los Angeles, Santa Monica boomed during the '20s, more than doubling its population from 15,000 to 32,000.


The city-owned Santa Monica Pier and the privately owned Looff Pier housed restaurants, carousels, roller coasters and other places of entertainment. In 1924, the La Monica Ballroom opened on the pier. The main room, decorated in a French Renaissance theme, could accommodate 5000 dancers at one time. In 1926, a fierce winter storm damaged the pier and the pilings beneath the ballroom. It was such a popular attraction that $75,000 were put into repairs immediately, to get it up and running again.

Stars of film, radio and theatre came to Santa Monica - Will Rogers built a polo field on his ranch in Santa Monica Canyon. Down on the beach below the bluffs, William Randolph Hearst built a palatial beach house for his mistress, actress Marion Davies. Other stars built beach houses nearby and the stretch of beach was known as the Gold Coast.

What was ABW's life like, in Santa Monica? He was 55 years old, and had been single since 1921. His address was 1333 Second Street, between Arizona and Santa Monica Boulevard.


The neighborhood was developing, so it's hard to know what ABW's home was like. 1333 could have been a small bungalow, like the wood-frame cottages shown in contemporary photos at Second and Colorado.

Or he could have rented an apartment, in a building like the one above that still stands at 1305 Second.

Ornate wooden Victorian and Queen Anne homes along Ocean Avenue faced the park, some broken into rooming houses by 1926. One by one they would give way to hotels, like the Art Deco Georgian - but some remain. If you stand on the sidewalk on Second today, you can see the back of the 1890 Gussie Moran House, beyond a parking lot.

Mixed architecturally though it was, ABW's neighborhood would have been a busy and exciting one. It was just a block from Palisades Park in one direction,

and busy Third Street in the other.


On Santa Monica Boulevard was the Majestic Theatre. This pretty little theatre, was built in the popular Spanish Colonial revival style, with applied decoration called Churrigueresque, marked by elaborate molded baroque detailing. On 3rd Street, the Criterion Theatre was built in 1925.

At Wilshire and Ocean, the Hotel Miramar offered dancing and music a little more refined than you could find down at the LaMonica Ballroom, and seafood buffets on Fridays.

There were restaurants nearby, both fancy and plain. The Poinsetta Inn at Second and Arizona, served Christmas dinner for only $1.25. You could even get good Mexican food - on the West Side! - at the Mayan Spanish Inn, at 313 Arizona, their 1928 menu included enchiladas and tamales.

Even though Santa Monica was more staid and conservative than its southern neighbor, Venice, a man with a taste for adventure could find it, if he looked. There were speakeasies in the basements of Ocean Avenue hotels - even movie stars came there. In 1928 a smart guy opened moored a ship off Santa Monica Bay, just beyond the 3-mile jurisdiction of the police, and ran a gambling casino from it.


We walked ABW's streets, and then decided to go grab something to eat. We found a restaurant in a local landmark, the Bay Cities Guaranty Bank Tower - a fine Art Deco structure, the tallest in Santa Monica for over 40 years. Today it is considered one of Santa Monica's most notable landmarks.


The ground floor, once the bank itself, was now a chic restaurant, modeled after a classic French turn-of the century bistro.


For me, mindful of our research into L.A. of the 1920's, it reminded me instead of an old postcard I'd seen once. The bentwood chairs, the tin ceilings, the warm colors. This was Nat Goodwin's Cafe, a popular restaurant on the Santa Monica Pier in 1919.

[The Man I Love] and I sat at the zinc-topped bar and sipped a half-carafe of French white wine. We had some oysters on the half-shell. I wondered if they were as good as the ones ABW could have gotten at the Hotel Miramar, back then.


When we left, we passed the old Majestic Theatre - now closed, having been damaged in the 1993 Northridge quake.


We walked down 3rd Street, now the Promenade - just as busy or busier than in ABW's day.

This building now stands at 1333 Second Avenue, where ABW had lived. The slick '80s feel of this building made me wonder how many structures have stood on this property.

ABW arrived in Santa Monica at the beginning of the 1920's boom, and left before it had reached its peak. His time here falls into a funny window, a blank spot between the early days of the Victorian homes, and before the most notable landmarks - like the Bay Cities Guaranty Building - were built.

Here's the Santa Monica Pier today. The pier was first built in the 1890s, then burned, was rebuilt and burned again. It succumbed to harsh winter storms, bankruptcy, changing popular tastes, and economic depression. Bits of it, like the carousel building, date from the beginning of the 20th century. Bits of it, like the LED solar-powered Ferris Wheel, are brand new.

Like most of our Southern California communities, Santa Monica has allowed its past to disappear....but sometimes you can still find a glimpse.

Searching for ABW - Hill Street in the 20's

View of S. Hill Street, facing south, from 7th, circa 1926.

In 1918, ABW sold his printing business in downtown Los Angeles to take a job with the Hilo Tribune Company in Hawaii. His wife, Oro, and his 4 year old son Richard, [The Man I Love]'s father, went with him. His grown daughter stayed behind in Santa Barbara with her new husband.

Up until 1898, Hawaii was a sovereign nation, ruled by a monarch. The islands became the U.S. Territory of Hawaii on February 22, 1900. There were fortunes to be made in this new tropical paradise, and it's no surprise that ABW, with his wanderlust, would succumb to the allure. It was a way to start anew, in a new land - and maybe revitalize his marriage, which may have been strained by his frequent traveling.

Whatever it was, it didn't take. Only three years later, in 1921, the family returned to Los Angeles - on different ships. There is no record of divorce, but the family had separated. Oro and Richard settled in Santa Barbara again. ABW moved to Los Angeles. He was 47 years old.

Los Angeles was booming. The population in the 1920s grew from half a million to 1.5 million. There were dozens of print shops and newspapers - lots of opportunities for a newspaperman.

From downtown L.A., ABW could ride the Pacific Electric Car to any of the local papers he claims to have been "connected" to, including the Santa Monica Outlook, the Venice Vanguard, the Long Beach Press-Telegram and the Long Beach Morning Sun.

In 1926 the voter registration records show him residing at 845 S. Hill Street. This photo from the early '20s shows S. Hill Street looking north from 9th Street. 845 is the Hotel Percival at left.

A newly single man could find a lot to do in this part of town. Beyond the apartment hotel, anchoring the corner of Hill and 8th, stood the Hill Street Theatre.


The theatre, which opened in 1922 as part of the Orpheum chain's "Junior Circuit", featured five-act vaudeville shows alternating with movies, running all day long. Seats were 36 cents, 50 cents on weekends. In the next block north was the Alhambra Theatre, and on 6th between Broadway and Hill was Grauman's Metropolitan - the largest movie house in the city, with a brilliantly lit marquee.

You could grab a bite to eat at Herbert's, a restaurant at 745 S. Hill, where $2.00 bought a full Thanksgiving Dinner. Or for something a little finer, the Victor Hugo Restaurant at 623 S. Hill featured French cuisine.

Across the street from the Percival, the May Company department store chain occupied the former A. Hamburger store. This magnificent building had opened in 1905, featuring the first escalator west of the Rockies. In the '20s a shopgirl named Sadie Marks worked in the ladies' lingerie department - a vaudeville performer named Jack Benny was so smitten he hung around to court her, buying so many pairs of stockings from her it set a sales record. In 1927 he married her, and she became part of his act, using the stage name Mary Livingston.

Through the 1920s, the relentless building boom continued. On Hill at 11th, two new theatres - the Mayan and the Belasco - were built side-by side, intended for the presentation of plays. A block to the east, development on Broadway was rampant In 1926, construction began for the Pacific National Bank at 9th and S. Hill - right next door to the Hotel Percival.

This view looking north on Hill Street shows the Belasco Theatre at center, with the Mayan immediately north. The tallest structure in the photo is the gothic-design water tower atop the newly-constructed United Artists Theatre on Broadway. The Pacific National Bank building is the large building to the left of the street, with the row of arched windows on the top floor.

Perhaps it was the noise and inconvenience of all this construction, or perhaps rents were skyrocketing in the changing neighborhood. ABW writes he went back into business in the linotype trade, and moved to Santa Monica, where he lived until 1930.


Today, there is an empty parking lot where the Percival Hotel once stood. The Hill Street Theatre was torn down in 1964, and today a modern parking garage runs the width of the block between Hill and Olive, where it once stood.


The Mayan and the Belasco are still standing - the Mayan operating as a salsa music nightclub. The Belasco, while shuttered, has been preserved and is used for film locations.

The Pacific National Building still stands, surrounded by empty parking lots, home to a branch of Washington Mutual Bank, which declared bankruptcy in September, 2008.

On a recent Saturday afternoon visit, S. Hill Street was deserted, with even the parking lots empty.

Photo note: all historic photos are from the USC Digital Archives.

Searching for ABW - 1918

Broadway, looking South from First Street. The old City Hall is the building with the tower down the street on the left. The Chamber of Commerce building is in the left foreground. On the east side of the street is the Mason Opera House. Photo from USC Digital Archives.

Near the end of his life, [The Man I Love's] grandfather, ABW, wrote an essay about his life to genealogist Donald Lines Jacobus, for publication in a volume of his family's history.

In it, he describes how in 1912, he had moved with his wife and daughter to Santa Barbara, taking a job as a linotype operator at the Santa Barbara Independent.

In July of 1914, his second child, Richard, was born.

This was a busy time for ABW. He also homesteaded some property in the Mojave Desert - quite a distance from Santa Barbara. He started a business in Los Angeles, purchasing a linotype machine and going into the printing trade downtown.

Linotype operators, 1904 - from New York Public Library

The linotype was new technology. It had been invented in 1884, and it revolutionized the newpaper printing business. Instead of painstakingly assembling each line of print by setting each letter into a "stick" of type, typesetters sat in front of a keyboard, and the machine assembled the letters to be cast as a single line of type. A job that once took twelve men could now by done in the same time by one. In his memoir, ABW recalls listening to his peers around that time, saying that the new-fangled machine would never replace the traditional typesetting technology. Shrewdly, ABW had taken the opportunity to learn linotyping in 1901, and it served him well in California.

In March of 1918, in an article ABW wrote for a paper back home in Iowa, he listed his own address as 118 North Broadway, Los Angeles.

Today, if you stand just north of the intersection of Broadway and First, you will be looking at Los Angeles' City Hall. Completed in 1928, this landmark art-deco building was until 1964 the tallest building in Los Angeles - higher buildings being prohibited by the building code due to earthquake concerns. Nearby are other government buildings, including the County Courthouse, the Hall of Records, the headquarters of CalTrans, and LAPD's Parker Center - which is why this part of town is called the Civic Center.

In 1918 this part of town was also called the Civic Center, but the public buildings were quite different than the modern white structures of today. They were huge, dark stone piles, Richardsonian Romanesque or Gothically grand, somber as public buildings should be. The massive County Courthouse was located at Temple between Broadway and Spring.

Photo of L.A. Times building, 1905, from USC Digital Archives

In 1886, the Los Angeles Times built an imposing stone building on the corner of First and Broadway - the better to cover local government. This building, with its curved corner entry and massive arched stone windows, attested to the power of the press.

Chamber of Commerce Building, circa 1905 - USC Digital Archives

Just a block south was the Chamber of Commerce building with its classic Ionic columns and bay windows, housing offices of the Los Angeles Herald, a competitor newspaper.

In those years, the neighborhood had been rocked by violence and labor struggles. The Ironworkers' Union were trying to organize steelworkers and construction workers on the many projects associated with the downtown building boom. Unlike San Francisco, Los Angeles' civic leaders were vehemently anti-union. Harrison Gray Otis, the publisher of the Los Angeles Times, supported the employers, and used his newspaper to campaign against the unions.

In the spring of 1910, the local Ironworkers went on strike, and a heated struggle came to a head.

On October 1, 1910, a bomb went off in an alley behind the building. The bomb was more destructive than its planters had intended - they had set it off directly above a main natural gas line without realizing it.

The bomb destroyed the main building, and also the next door building, which housed the printing presses. The bombers had set the timer wrong - instead of going off at 4:00 a.m. as intended, when the buildings would have been empty, it went off at 1:07 - when 115 people worked the night shift. 21 people died, including a young 23 year old typesetter named Elmer Frink, burned to death in the print shop.

By 1912, the bombers had been convicted and jailed, and the Times operated from a newly constructed building on the same site. It must have been a good place to be an entrepreneur in the new linotype field.

Broadway, looking North from Second Street, circa 1920. Photo from USC Digital Archives.

The new Times building's dome and tall clock tower can be seen in this undated photo of Broadway at Second. 118 North Broadway would have have been in that block. If ABW had worked here, he might have lived in one of the rooming houses or apartment hotels in the neighborhood.

In 1913, the Los Angeles Aqueduct was completed, bringing water from the Owens Valley to the city. Water spurred growth and development. The Times's Otis actively promoted the city's growth. There were still some wood-frame Victorian rooming houses along the streets below Bunker Hill, but increasingly, they were being replaced by large masonry industrial and office blocks. Despite the war raging in Europe, Los Angeles boomed. Department stores and theatres flourished. Theatres and civic buildings were built. The Chamber of Commerce building held exhibits extolling the wonders of trade and agriculture.

It would have been an exciting place to be a young man, but by 1918, ABW would have been 45 - not a young man ready to sow wild oats before settling down, but an established man with a wife and two kids.

But ABW had always been footloose. From age 17, he'd bounced around newspaper jobs from Kansas to Chicago. Even while Oro was having their first child, ABW joined a military band and wrote "for several years [I] held myself subject to call at any time and from any place to fill an engagement."

And ten years later, after landing in Santa Barbara, he was unable to relax in that beautiful beach city. Still peripatetic, still bouncing.

ABW's journeys took him from one extreme to another - the plains of the Midwest, the High Rockies. The beaches, the homestead on the arid plateau of Victorville, and the bustling center of the fastest growing city in the nation.

You have to wonder - what of the family? Did they pack, pick up and follow him? Or did they stay behind, in a stable home, that he could cast off from and return to? Did Oro find her own interests, as they traveled separate orbits?

It must have been difficult. It must have gotten pretty old. There were more adventures to come, and more changes.

This is the view today from the corner of Spring Street and Second, toward Broadway and toward Bunker Hill and the Arts Center. The parking garage is located on the site of the drug store from the photo above. The west side of Broadway between First and Second is virtually vacant. The glass and steel building to the left is located where the Frost Building is seen in the top photo.

The view takes in a landmark ABW would have found uncanny - Frank Gehry's Disney Hall.

Searching for ABW

First and Broadway, Los Angeles, 1906 - USC Digital Archives

Recently [The Man I Love] has been researching his ancestry. I have mixed feelings about this. My mother has been an avid genealogist; painstakingly researched my father's family for many years, tracking down obscure distaff relatives in distant county courthouses across the south. She's gone off it recently, but in years past it wasn't unusual for her to buttonhole you, going on at length about someone whose birth certificate had been recorded as being located Here, but it turned out that it was another relative entirely and the real record was actually discovered There. This kind of immersion in detail is - as I have said before - a family disorder.

So I was a little alarmed when [The Man I Love] got into this. But - so far - it's been fun

Mom was always an Old-School genealogist, working without a computer. [The Man I Love] has been using Ancestry.com. And he's gathered a lot of information about his grandfather, who he did not know well, having never met him.

His grandfather, who I'll call ABW, was born in Iowa in 1873. Working in the newspaper business was in his blood - at the age of five, he began playing with movable type in his father's shop. In the summer of 1887, he started typesetting during summer break, and then his dad bought the paper and he continued working. He traveled around the region, working for local newspapers.

In 1895, at 22, he married an Iowa girl, Oro Cooper, and five years later they set out for Colorado Springs. They stayed there for 12 years, then ABW took a job with the Santa Barbara Independent newspaper in California. By this time, there were two kids - [The Man I Love's] father, and his aunt.

In 1915 he went into the printing business for himself in Los Angeles. But in August 1918, he moved the family to Hilo, Hawaii to work for the Hilo Tribune. He stayed there until 1921, when he returned to Los Angeles.

Near the end of his life, he wrote an essay about his life, and sent it to a genealogist for inclusion in a volume about the W family.

But one thing he doesn't talk about in his essay is the fact that he split with his wife and kids.

When ABW returned to California in 1921, he returned alone. Oro and the kids made their own journey, moving back to Santa Barbara, while ABW moved to Los Angeles - and lived in several locations until he died in 1946 at the age of 73.

Because the family split up, we don't have much personal information about ABW. No pictures. Not many stories. So as we tour of the places he lived in Los Angeles, we can look for our own stories. Come join us.