Quote:
Originally Posted by Flyingwedge
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"Mr Coulter had a woolen mill over the hill near the present corner of Figueroa and Fifth Streets. The old brick walls of this factory may still be seen
- the main part of a modern-fronted garage. There was a little stream there called Los Reyes"
Bixby Smith's quote from "Adobe Days" is wonderfully confirmed by your photo. I am so pleased to see it. Such a handsome building.
Your series of images, showing the mill transitioning from rural outpost to an urban setting, was both typical for LA and totally astounding.
e_r tells us that
the Bernard Bros built the mill in 1872.
I was delighted to see "Mill Street" on your plat map. Other blocks, from the same series show, "Canal St" was the next
street west of Mill St:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Flyingwedge
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As you indicated, the flume entered the back of the mill (#3) on a trestle. The waste water exited at the front of the building,
and, after being piped under Pearl St, continued on its way, together with the stream.
Woolen Mill Ditch, in those days, carried the waters from
Los Reyes (together, apparently, with LA River water captured at Elysian Park), which started above Echo Park Lake,
and, after filling that (and a swimming hole at 2nd and Beaudry), made its way down through the hills to sometimes cause flooding havoc at 5th and Flower.
The Los Angeles Canal and Reservoir Company made these changes, in part, to power industry.
I'm guessing that the trestle delivered water to a wheel to power the mill to spin the wool (?) I can't quite work that out.
LOL, the technology is lost on me.
Glover, 1877:
loc
After the mill ceased operations, the facility became an ice company. By 1909, the building was a garage (it got a concrete floor that year and "two new openings").
In 1919, the garage (still owned by the BF Coulter Association) got the "modern front" that Bixby Smith mentions and the photo above shows:
ladbs
I wasn't able to locate the demo permit.
The mill must be just out of shot to the right in this post-1886 view (I think the shed, south of the mill, and the tank are just in view though). I kept missing it:
Quote:
Originally Posted by tovangar2
lapl/wm henry fletcher, n.d.
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Note the little arroyo (behind the dark house in the center foreground at the NW corner of 5th and Flower), which carried Los Reyes and the
waste water away from the mill. The waste water was piped under what-was-then Pearl Street (as shown) before being, once again, exposed to the air.
Note that the water was piped under Flower St too.
5th and Flower today, now Ray Bradbury Square:
google maps
1876: The shed and tank on the south side of the mill and the flume on its trestle. The stream is hidden by the berm in the foreground:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Flyingwedge
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One memory of Los Reyes' course. I've read others:
LAT via creek freak
Thank you again
so much.
P.S.
Here's the info I was looking for:
"Echo park, containing thirty acres, is another park evolved from the city’s refuse lands. In 1868 the city council contracted with the Los Angeles Canal & Reservoir Company,
a corporation, with a capital of $200,000, of which George Hansen was president and J. J. Warner, secretary, to construct a system of reservoirs and canals in the northwestern
part of the city. The reservoirs were to be filled by water from the river conducted in a canal. A dam, twenty feet high, was built across a canon near the head of the Arroyo de
Los Reyes and a ditch following the canon of this arroyo down to Pearl street, now Figueroa, was constructed. This zanja in later years was known as the Woolen Mill ditch.
Los Angeles had an ambition to become a manufacturing city. The water brought down by the ditch could be used for power to propel machinery and for irrigation. The ditch was
extended down to the southern part of the city. For this improvement the company was to receive several thousand acres of hill land in the northwest part of the city. In 1873
a woolen mill was built on the line of this ditch near Figueroa and Fifth streets, and for a decade or so manufactured a fair quality of blankets. Then it was turned into an ice
factory. Competition froze it out. The Woolen Mill ditch disappeared before the march of improvement and all the city has left for its leagues of land is a pond or reservoir now
known as Echo Lake. The other reservoirs that appear on the old maps as reservoirs 1, 2, and 3 were never completed. The land surrounding reservoir No. 4 (Echo Lake) was
converted into a park and the land below the dam—about four and one half acres—belonging to the city was converted into a children’s playground. Echo Lake is the largest
body of water in any of the parks."
-A History of California and an Extended History of Los Angeles and Environs by James Miller Guinn (1915)
Also
this.
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