Chapter 9

CHAPTER 9
Public Works
By Patricia Adler-Ingram
NEVER HAS THERE BEEN A TIME WHEN
the population of Los Angeles could forget or
neglect the need for public works. Padre Juan
Crespi, writing in August 1769, provided the
earliest description of the site that became Los
Angeles. He observed that there were hazards
as well as advantages here: a river flowed in this
spot, bright and clear, he wrote, but that a tan-
gle of uprooted trees gave evidence of a recent
inundation. Although he recognized the possi-
bility of recurring floods during the rainy sea-
son, he still considered this to be the best
locality of any that he and his party had seen,
having all the resources required for a large set-
tlement. The riverbank appeared to be fertile.
The Indians living there welcomed him. He
noted that the spot was shaded by cottonwood
and alder trees and there were wild grapevines
and roses.' Crespf s description brought the site
to the attention of Governor Felipe de Neve.
Twelve years later, when the king of Spain
granted approval for tlle establishment of a sys-
tem of presidios in California, Governor Neve
planned one of the ancillary pueblos (towns) for
the riverbank site with the wild roses.
2
Neve's detailed instructions for the found-
ing of a pueblo at Los Angeles included spe-
cific directions for the first public works
project. It was to be the construction of a dam
and a ditch with a view to irrigating the largest
possible area. The pueblo was to be constructed
on high ground near land suitable for planting
and near the river or main ditch. A plaza was
to be laid out facing the cardinal points of tlle
compass, with its eastern side reserved for pub-
lic buildings. There was to be a survey mark-
ing out the house lots for the individual settlers
and parceling the fields and gardens for which
they were to draw lots.
Neve's plan was never completely realized.
Like many subsequent designs for an ideal Los
Angeles, the original intent was overtaken by
the reality of weary settlers arriving to settle
new households as best they could. The very
popular legend of great pomp and pageantry at
the city's founding has not been confirmed by
recent scholarship. Emerging instead from new
translations of tlle Spanish documents and new
scholarly analyses is a picture of the gradual
entry of eleven families recruited in Mexico,
arriving overland to San Gabriel mission to be
escorted within a few days onto the town site.
The first of the settlers reached San Gabriel on
June 9,1781. More recruits arrived through July
and August. By the end of August, Governor
Neve ordered that house lots in town and plant-
ing fields outside town be marked off and dis-
tributed to the settlers, although it was
September 4,1781, before the governor formally
declared that the town had been established.
3
287
288· PATRICIA ADLER-INGRAM
Although the pueblo was able to maintain
itself, it showed no great evidence of prosper-
ity during the first two decades. The number
of families did increase to seventy and, in 1798,
there was a mention in the records of the
speedy completion of a jail, the first public
building on the Plaza.
Even with a small population there was a
growing concern about property rights: the ini-
tial grants had been provisional, and there was
no clear procedure for confinning the titles to
house lots or cultivated lands. The officers of the
pueblo, the alcalde (mayor) and the regidores
(aldermen), were called upon to settle disputes
and make new grants. The volume of requests
for title increased substantially during 1836-37,
leading the president of the ayuntamiento (coun-
cil) to appoint a committee to hearrequests, sur-
vey the claims with the assistance of the Police
Commission, and advise the council. Although
there was no tax levied on land or improve-
ments, there was a potential for overlapping
claims and the disruption of street lines, irriga-
tion ditches, and drainage channels. Resolution
of title questions, like all the other functions
that were later taken over by the city bureau-
cracy, was handled by the residents themselves
and their elected, unpaid representatives.
By 1846 and the beginning of hostilities
between the United States and Mexico, Los
Angeles had become the largest Mexican set-
tlement in California. A relatively small num-
ber of the town's adult males actually took part
in the scattered skirmishes that offered resist-
ance to the U.S. invaders. The town suffered no
serious damage. The final engagements of the
war occurred on the San Gabriel River near
present-day Montebello on January 8 and 9,
1847, with the formal capitulation to the United
States forces taking place a week later at Campo
de Cahuenga.
4
Historian Neal Harlow, in his chronicle of
California in the years between the defeat of
the Mexican regime and the establishment of
democratically elected government, observed
that "bureaucracy, visible and complex, was
the first fruit of democracy.'" He was describ-
ing the years of kaleidoscopic changes in Cal-
ifornia as the laws of the United States were
being extended to provide for this vast and
undeveloped western land.
BUREAUCRACY,
THE FIRST FRUIT OF DEMOCRACY
After the end of host iIi ties in 1847 the U.S. mil-
itary governors had been instructed to observe
the customs and laws of the land in local
affairs, pending a decision in Washington
about California's future. The changeover from
military to civil rule in the new land was
delayed in Congress by political considera-
tions, among them the controversy over the
extension of slavery. In 1849, however, the
newly inaugurated president, Zachary Taylor,
sent word to San Francisco that "it would not
matter whether the first step toward Califor-
nia statehood was taken by the people or the
Congress.'" With very little delay, delegates,
generally selected from what a contemporary
called the "common sense class," were elected
and convened in Monterey. They relied heavily
upon the published constitutions of Iowa and
New York and proceeded methodically to the
drafting of their own provisions. Over a six-
week period, they produced a workable consti-
tution under which California could petition
for statehood.
The first California legislature under the
new constitution created twenty-seven coun-
ties and provided for the incorporation of
cities. The Pueblo of Los Angeles, with a pop-
ulation of 1,610 (as enumerated in the official
census) was duly incorporated as a city by the
Act of March n, 1850.' Even though it was offi-
ciallya city,
Los Angeles in 1850 did not have a single
graded street, a water pipe, or a single public
building belonging to the community. Every
citizen was his own street sweeper and on Sat-
urdaywas obliged to perform this function in
front of his house. The municipal lighting
department was a simple affair, inasmuch as
every owner of a store or person who lived in
a house facing on the street, was obliged to put
a light at the door during the first two hours
of every dark night.
8
Los Angeles immediately held elections for
the required officials. The first meeting of the
common council was convened July 3,1850, with
the seven elected councilmen choosing a presi-
dent. The newly elected officials, comprising
the mayor, secretary, treasurer, assessor, attor-
ney, and marshal, all formally assumed their
offices. The council proceeded to appoint fif-
teen committees, including one to deal with the
water supply and irrigation, one on bridges,
another on street cleaning and garbage disposal,
plus one on sanitation and one on public works
generally. Prominent among the named and pre-
sumably permanent committees was one on
land and lots while another, designated as "pro-
visional," dealt with land and lot zoning.
9
Taken
together these committees addressed most of
the functions of the later Board of Public Works.
Los Angeles took the first steps toward bureau-
cracy with very little hesitation.
The old ayuntamiento had been accustomed
to appointing committees to deal with city
problems as they arose. The new council intro-
duced a greater formality into proceedings by
giving some committees permanent status. As
householders, the councilmen had experi-
enced firsthand the problems of weed-choked
zanjas (ditches), rutted roads, and flooded
drains. They were familiar with the hardships
oflife in this land of unforgiving weather. They
had seen the years of prolonged drought and
PUBLIC WORKS· 289
the sudden winter storms that carved channels
down from the mountains to the floor of the
plain. They recognized the practical wisdom
of assigning responsibilities among them-
selves before any emergency arose, but they
could not imagine-let alone pay for-large
comprehensive measures to defend against the
worst ravages of drought and flood.
Blake Gumbrecht, a modern historian of the
Los Angeles River, writing of early efforts to
control the periodic inundation of large por-
tions of the city, states:
More people have been killed in Los Angeles
in floods than by earthquakes. Flooding
became an increasing hazard as the popula-
tion grew and development expanded. Human
beings made matters worse by building on the
floodplain, removing trees and vegetation that
had kept soils in place, cutting openings in
stream banks to divert water for irrigation,
erecting levees that constricted the flood
flows, and constructing railroads that inter-
rupted natural drainage patterns."
The first twelve years of incorporation were
fortunately free of disastrous rain, but the
usual measures of maintaining the zanjas and
giving occasional attention to the riverbanks
were clearly inadequate. In 1854 the council rec-
ognized that supervision of the water system
had been lax under the committee system and
re-instituted from pueblo days the full-time
position of zanjero (ditch overseer). The posi-
tion was very well paid in keeping with the fact
that the attendant powers and duties were
extensive. Not only did the zanjero manage the
upkeep of the ditches and make repairs to the
city dam, but he also issued permits for the use
of irrigation water, collected fees, and policed
the system, having the power to arrest individ-
uals who unlawfully diverted water or dumped
garbage into the ditches.
The common council acted on February 24,
290' PATRICIA ADLER-INGRAM
1857, to improve the water distribution by
granting a franchise to Judge W. C. Dryden to
build a water wheel in the zanja madre (mother
ditch). Subsequently Dryden acquired owner-
ship of several natural springs known from the
days of the pueblo as the Abila Springs. From
these springs water was conveyed by a special
zanja to the plaza. Historian Harris Newmark,
chronicler of early Los Angeles events, recalled
that "There, in the center, a brick tank, perhaps
ten feet square and fIfteen feet high, was con-
structed; and this was filled by means of
pumps, while from the tank wooden pipes dis-
tributed water to the consumer.""
This early attempt to provide an important
part of the city's infrastructure by franchise
was not successful. The townspeople com-
plained that the brick tank was ugly, the
wooden pipes leaked, and the households were
still without water. The distribution of drink-
ing water continued to be by vendors going
house-to-house with their carts, selling water
from a barrel fIlled at the zanja madre. In Sep-
tember 1864 another committee was appointed
and charged with removing Mr. Dryden's water
tank. The committee first had to negotiate with
Dryden and pay his price of five hundred dol-
lars (in land scrip).
On November 13, 1857, the Common Coun-
cil had resorted for the first time to direct levies
on real and personal property, including one
specifically for the purpose of maintaining the
canal system. 12 The tax was not popular and
the improvement of the ditches did little to
improve the quality of the water. The city again
sought to negotiate a franchise. After contract-
ing with a local vineyard owner for the con-
struction of a water distribution system
consisting of about five thousand feet of one-
and two-inch iron pipe, only to have it swept
away in the flood of 1868, the city redoubled its
attempts to find a satisfactory franchisee.
Although there was a prolonged fight in the
common council against the project, centered
on the demand by the prospective franchisees
for a long-term contract, a thirty-year fran-
chise was finally negotiated with local busi-
nessmen John S. Griffin, Solomon Lazard, and
Prudent Beaudry, who had incorporated as the
Los Angeles City Water Company. For Beaudry,
the underlying motivation was to deliver water
to the tract ofland he owned on the heights of
Bunker Hill. The company was relatively well
capitalized and succeeded in building a distri-
bution system, drawing water from the old
Abila-Dryden Springs. By 1874 a schedule of
charges to the ratepayers was approved.
Charges per month were set at two dollars for
a single family, with an additional twenty-five
cents charged for a bathtub. Having a private
water closet cost another dollar. Water for a pri-
vate horse was one dollar per month, and that
included water for washing the carriage. With
a view to encouraging business enterprises,
water up to ten thousand gallons used for man-
ufacturing or mechanical purposes cost only a
dollar per month.
This franchise proved successful, and the
developers were pleased to find that cost of the
needed improvements were more than recov-
ered through direct payment by the individu-
als receiving the service.
The money to build elements of the infra-
structure that could not be marketed to devel-
opers as a franchise had to be obtained through
a loan, to be repaid by property taxes, or by
direct assessments on the properties receiving
benefits. In 1862 the California legislature
approved the city's request to borrow money
for unspecified municipal improvements. The
loan was to be repaid through property taxes.
Following that, Los Angeles was authorized to
levy a tax for certain public works improve-
ments including taxes for riverbank repairs,
for street improvements, and for the installa-
tion of gas streetlights. 13 In 1868 Los Angeles
requested and received approval of an act to
allow the purchase by the city of seventy-five
thousand dollar capital stock in the Los
Angeles and San Pedro Railroad Company.
A special council committee, appointed in
1859, had anticipated the state's enabling leg-
islation by drafting a city ordinance to borrow
seventy tlIousand dollars to expand the irriga-
tion system. It was also through the initiative
of a special council committee that negotia-
tions were begun with a local businessman to
manufacture illuminating gas under contract
to the city. If granted the job, the contractor
promised to supply gas free to the mayor's
office. When the contract came up for renewal,
however, a new committee was appointed. The
new committee decided that the services could
best be provided through a franchise, rather
than a contract, to furnish illuminating gas to
city hall and rate-paying householders.
Perhaps the earliest practical matter clearly
to exceed the capability of the council was the
need to establish lines upon the land to define
the existing and future boundary limits of both
public and private holdings. The transition
from the Spanish to the American (basically
English) form ofland-holding required a major
readjustment on the part of the conquered
population. The councilmen, having been
advised during the days of American military
governance that they could no longer approve
requests for house lots or for irrigated fields on
lands granted to the pueblo by the king of
Spain, were forced to look beyond their own
expertise to carry out the requirements of the
United States for establishing title. The bound-
aries of the early Spanish grant to the pueblo
had to be surveyed and marked, just as the old,
inherited ranchos and private land claims had
to be surveyed and approved by the United
States Board of Land Commissioners.
The council appointed a committee to find a
surveyor. Fortunately, a newcomer to Los
PUBLIC WORKS' 291
Angeles had placed an advertisement in the Los
Angeles Star offering his services as an attorney
and surveyor. His name was Henry Hancock, a
New Hampshirelawyer and veteran of theMex-
ican War." He was duly appointed and pro-
ceeded to review the existing records and
prepare a map. The position of surveyor/engi-
neer thus created proved to be central in the evo-
lution of the city's public works organization.
Hancock completed his survey in 1858, but
the very important work of establishing title
and obtaining a patent to the city lands contin-
ued until 1866, when the United States issued
a patent "to the Mayor and Common Council
of the City of Los Angeles."
Meanwhile, in 1855 George Hansen was
appointed city engineer. Hansen, a native of
Germany, had arrived two years previously,
practically penniless, and had obtained his sur-
veying instruments with a loan from business-
man John Temple. His services were contracted
for by the day, and he was paid a total of $375
to prepare a city plat map marking out thirty-
five-acre Donation Lots. Henry Hancock had
begun the survey in 1853 but the map was
largely Hansen's work. The lots were numbered
serially for easy identification by the council
and by the development-minded mayor, who
planned to sell them at one dollar per acre.
Harris Newmark recalled that Mayor John
G. Nichols tried for years to sell the Donation
Lots, exhorting townspeople to be patriotic
and show their faith in the town, but found
very few buyers. IS
In support of the efforts to improve the
water distribution system, the council com-
mittee responsible for irrigation engaged Cap-
tain William Moore to survey the reservoirs of
the city along with the zanjas. Moore, working
with George Hansen, also surveyed the city
lands lying east of the river, their map being
adopted in 1868 as "City Map NO.2."
The official "City Map No. I" was the survey
292· PATRICIA ADLER-INGRAM
and map purchased in 1849 by the old ayun-
tamiento from Lieutenant Edward O. C. Ord, a
young officer recommended by his army com-
mander as having the ability to provide the
map that would be needed to establish prop-
erty rights based on the grant to the pueblo by
the king of Spain. The three thousand dollars
paid to Ord was by far the largest public expen-
diture in the history of Los Angeles to that date.
The ayuntamiento expected to recoup the cost
by using the map to resolve the ongoing dis-
putes between original house-lot owners and
newer claimants and, most importantly, to pro-
vide a basis for future land sales by the pgeblo.
As years went by, however, it became clear that
the map did not serve the purpose.
Surveyor George Hansen, reporting to the
common council in November 1869, observed
that Ord's starting point for the measurements
could not be found. Hansen's experience in
doing surveys had revealed that none of the
several big rocks near the door of the pueblo
church that were customarily pointed out as
"Ord's Rocks" could serve as a monument. Fur-
thermore, he had located an old letter from
Lieutenant, now General, Ord stating that he
had not set rocks, or monuments of any sort,
to mark the corners of his survey, because the
city had failed to supply him with the neces-
sary means. Hansen subsequently learned that
the rocks near the church door had been
placed, with the best of intentions, by busi-
nessmanJohn Temple. Hansen recommended
that the council employ a surveyor to retrace
and mark the corners to conform to City Map
No. 1.
'6
The city's next major surveying job was
entrusted to Frank Lecouvreur, a gold rush
immigrant from East Prussia who had given
up on placer mining, tried various jobs in the
San Francisco Area and then came to Los
Angeles as a carriage painter. He willingly
interrupted his career as a carriage painter
when Captain Henry Hancock offered him a
job as a flagman for a survey party assigned to
work in the Mojave Desert. Apparently Lecouv-
reur became a competent surveyor very rap-
idly. During the winter of 1858 Lecouvreur
worked for Surveyor William Moore on a con-
tract to draw a plan for a new water supply for
Los Angeles. In between surveying jobs, he
worked as agent for Phineas Banning in his San
Pedro warehouses.17
By 1869 Frank Lecouvreur had gained
enough solid, practical experience to back his
tone of assurance when he notified the com-
mon council that the "City Map NO.1 is utterly
valueless as a record, since it contains not a sin-
gle word or figure which refers to dimension,
courses, distances, landmarks, starting points,
or in fact anything that can be of service or give
the smallest hint to a surveyor in attempting
relocations."18 What was needed, he told the
council, was a committee to decide upon and
mark a spot that would become Los Angeles
Station Number One. Meanwhile, Lecouvreur
himself used the corner of the plaza church as
the point of beginning.
Lecouvreur's great contribution to the devel-
opment of Los Angeles was his survey of ele-
vations of the existing and projected street
intersections, made in 1869, and the huge map
based on his survey that was presented to the
common council in the following year. It was
approved by the common council and declared
to be the "Official Map of the Grades of the City
Streets and Sidewalks."19
His field notes show a painstaking effort to
determine elevations, noting the differences
between one side of a street and the other, the
occasional encroachment of houses and, most
importantly, the fact that Alameda Street was
actually below the mean level of the Los
Angeles River, with only a low berm serving to
keep the water out. 20
Lecouvreur's report accompanying the map
gave his thoughts on sewerage and drainage, a
subject he considered a science in itself. After
describing the sewer systems of other cities,
including the famous sewers of Paris designed
to be cleaned manually and flushed with waters
of the Seine, he recommended the use of glazed
clay pipe from twelve to twenty-four inches in
diameter as most appropriate for the arid cli-
mate of Los Angeles. He emphasized that on no
account should the irrigation ditches be used
as overflow channels to relieve the city sewers.
He urged the immediate construction of a sewer
beneath Alameda Street as a public necessity,
"in view of the nuisance created by the dis-
charge of the Commercial Street sewer into
ZanjaNo.3, which the sooner abated the better
for the health and convenience of the city."21
Having the Lecouvreur survey and map
available did not immediately refocus the
attention of the various council committees on
the perennial public works concerns-the
sewer and storm-drain channels. The council,
and Lecouvreur himself, assumed the final des-
tination of all the sewer and storm waters to be
the Los Angeles River.
Harris Newmark described the condition of
the sewer system as the city gradually assumed
responsibility. He wrote:
Until near the end of the seventies, there was
little done toward the laying of sewers,
although the reader will remember that a pri-
vate conveyor connected the Bella Union with
the zanja running through Mellus' Row. Los
Angeles Street from First to Second, in 1873,
had one of brick and wood; and in 1875, a brick
sewer was built from the corner of Main and
Arcadia streets down to Winston and thence
to Los Angeles Street. It must have been in the
early seventies that a wooden sewer was con-
structed on Commercial Street from Los
Angeles to Alameda, and another one on New
High Street for about one block. In 1879, one
of brick was laid from Los Angeles and Com-
PUBLIC WORKS' 293
mercial as far north as Arcadia, and connect-
ing with the Main Street sewer. At about the
same time, vitrified clay was used on a portion
of Temple Street. My impression is that there
was no cloaca laid on Spring Street until after
1880, while it was still later that Fort, Hill and
Olive streets were served. As late as 1887, Hope
Street had no sewer and very little conduit
building, if any, had been undertaken south
of Seventh or west ofFlower."
Substantial houses and business blocks had
been constructed in the city before Lecouv-
reur's grading map was adopted. The old
pueblo streets had been extended by the new-
comers to serve their new buildings, some-
times dog-legged around an existing orchard
or garden, sometimes contoured around the
base of the hills. The needs of the newcomers,
ever more urgent, drove every aspect of what
became the functions of the department of
public works. Street alignments, sanitation,
bridges, and above all the water supply and dis-
tribution were chronically inadequate for the
growing city.
The appointment of successive committees
to handle the same type of task or, in the case
oflonger-running projects, the identical task,
reflects the fact that members of the common
council were initially elected to a one-year
term. The council members were frequently re-
elected, but there was a tendency to shift com-
mittee appointments with each new session.
Individual members, if they were energetic and
dedicated to their work, acquired a broad expe-
rience with the business of running the city.
They were directly responsible to the voters for
getting a job done. On the other hand, there
was a potential for setting in motion a multi-
plicity of schemes that drew upon tax funds
and created new indebtedness. The council was
expected to act as its own clearinghouse. It was
only indifferently successful.
Changes in the bureaucratic framework
294· PATRICIA ADLER-INGRAM
could be made at any time by vote of the com-
mon council, just as changes could be insti-
tuted by an act of the state legislature.
Sacramento sent down an amendment to the
city charter on March 5, 1868, limiting the
direct tax in Los Angeles to $1.25 per $100 val-
uation, and another on March 30, changing the
term of all elective officers from one to two
years and providing for ten council members,
five to be elected each year. 23 In addition to the
problem of keeping up with the multiplicity of
organizational changes, members of the com-
mon council had to contend with the fact that
many original copies of ordinances enacted
prior to 1869 were mislaid or simply lost. It was
necessary to rely on the institutional memory
of the old-timers or enact new ordinances,
whichever appeared more convenient in the
course of council deliberations.
In 1872 the common council appointed a
board of public works, members of which
served on the existing committees, of which
there were about twenty dealing with various
aspects of public works. At the same time the
council adopted a procedure requiring sealed
bids for all work, with the award going to the
lowest responsible bidder. The board super-
vised the activities of two operating depart-
ment heads-the street superintendent and
the city surveyor, each appointed by the mayor.
An organizational chart for the year 1873 shows
the Board of Public Works on a level with the
Board of Health, the Fire Department, and the
water overseer. 24 The council committees were
charted at a higher level, a confirmation of the
strong preference for reserving the overall
management of civic improvements to the
committees.
The California legislature passed a law in
April 1876 creating a new board of public works
for Los Angeles equipped with such powers as
to nullify the power of the common council.
The council immediately appointed a special
committee to investigate the law. Six men,
comprising half the entire council, were
charged with assessing the legality of the
action taken by the state. Ten days later a sec-
ond committee was appointed to consider a
communication received from three citizens
stating that they had been duly appointed by
the state as the Board of Public Works for Los
Angeles and stood ready to enter upon the dis-
charge of their new duties. The second com-
mittee promptly recommended and the
council just as promptly ruled that "the several
standing committees should continue to func-
tion as though no such board were in exis-
tence."25 The state legislature did not pursue
the matter.
Through the 1870S iliere was a constant revi-
sion in the titles of elected officials as well as
changes from appointive to elective status of
various positions. The city surveyor was some-
times on the ballot as ilie city engineer. In 1872
John Goldsworthy had been elected to fill the
combined job but resigned after six months
whereupon the council abolished the office of
surveyor and engineer by ordinance. 26 The fol-
lowing year, the job description was revised to
combine the duties of street superintendent
and surveyor and made an appointive position.
For twenty-eight years, from 1850 to 1878,
the city operated according to the patched
framework of the original charter. Meanwhile,
the population grew from the original census
count of 1,600 in 1850 to 3,700 in 1860, and
despite many deaths due to outbreaks of small-
pox, had increased to 5,728 by 1870. By the time
the charter of 1878 was signed by the governor,
there were estimated to be 10,000 people liv-
ing in Los Angeles.
The years of favorable weather in the 1870S
brought a boom in sheep raising, while the
business in cattle driven north to the mines
continued to add to the prosperity of the city,
which was still essentially an agricultural cen-
ter. In September 1876 the Southern Pacific
Railroad line from San Francisco was com-
pleted with the driving of a golden spike at
Lang Station in Soledad Canyon, north of Los
Angeles. Historian W. W. Robinson described
the lively celebration when ilie news came by
telegraph that the spike had been driven, and
expressed his opinion that
It was the culmination of the wishes of Ange-
lenos, expressed in 1872, when they went to the
polls and voted to meet the Southern Pacific's
subsidy demands in order to avoid being by-
passed. It was perhaps Los Angeles' most sig:
nificant moment, for it ended El Pueblo's
isolation and was the first step in opening Los
Angeles to the world. z;
The cost of bringing the rail line into the city
had been very high. Not only did the voters
have to agree to an incentive payment of 5 per-
cent of their assessed valuation but had to turn
over to the Southern Pacific their first and
increasingly profitable railroad venture, the
Los Angeles and San Pedro Railroad. The pub-
lic discussion before the vote was bitter and
complicated, with alternative proposals intro-
duced. City officials and businessmen election-
eered on all sides, the majority, however,
following the banner flying above the court-
house steps: "Los Angeles Must place Itself on
the World's Highway." 28
The spirit of expansion was reflected in the
increased activity of the city council, which
focused renewed attention on the business of
improving the infrastructure. All ten mem-
bers, now elected from three wards, served as
committees of the whole to deal with flood
control and with sewerage. They called a con-
ference on zanjas, with six council members
meeting with ilie water commissioners to deal
with an urgent problem regarding pollution in
Zanja Number 8. Another conference was
called regarding water rates. The usual three-
PUBLIC WORKS' 295
or four-member committees were appointed
to consider plaza improvements, draft a city
pound ordinance regarding the pasturing of
sheep and cows, establish a fire department to
augment the services of the volunteer compa-
nies, and to work out a contract with the Los
Angeles Gas Company for lighting the city for
sixteen months. One committee was appointed
to compare several franchise offers made to ilie
council for building street railways, another to
employ an engineer to locate a feasible route
for the disposal of sewage and provide an esti-
mate of ilie cost of building a separate canal for
sewage. The objective, however, remained the
same. As ilie councilmen saw it, ilie task was
to move the sewage out of the built-up areas
and into the river.
There was a special committee to examine a
complicated new street law that had been
framed in thirty-wee sections. The commit-
tee was to consult with the city attorney as to
its legality and with the city surveyor as to the
probable cost of putting the law into effect. 29
Micromanagement of the growing city by
council committees continued at a quickening
pace through the 1870S, with individual coun-
cilmen participating in an array of committees.
Functions that were later considered within ilie
purview of the Public Works Department were
handled as separate concerns. For example, in
1873 a committee was appointed to provide
lighting on ilie bridges across the Los Angeles
River and another to confer with the county
supervisors regarding the feasibility of plac-
ing half the bridge-lighting expense on the
county. Yet another was appointed to hire a
bridge lamplighter and instruct him to use
sperm oil instead of coal oil.
The following year, the council appointed a
committee to conduct research on the subject
of improving city government. The results of
their research may have contributed to some
extent to the enactment by the state legislature
296· PATRICIA ADLER-INGRAM
of a new charter for Los Angeles. No sweeping
changes were brought about by the charter of
1878, although the more cumbersome of the
many amendments that had accumulated like
so many layers of silt over the original charter
were removed or simplified. The standing com-
mittees of the council, however, were still set
forth in the council rules rather than being
included in the charter. Those having to do
with public works were, first, the Board of Pub-
lic Works, then individual committees on sew-
ers, zanjas, and land. It was a duty of the
council to handle all improvements and con-
tracts, which meant that the custom of work-
ing by means of special committees could
continue. When it appeared possible to abate
a public nuisance by simply prohibiting it, the
appropriate committee had the power to pro-
pose language to the council and have an offi-
cial declaration, with a fine, published. A
sanitation problem, for example, was taken
care of by simply prohibiting the carriage of
household garbage, or swill, through the pub-
lic streets between nine o'clock in the morning
and nine at night. The ordinance was later
amended to require the use of closed, water-
tight boxes on the wagons collecting the swill.
The sanitized wagons made their nightly jour-
ney to the hog farms south of the city where
the farmers reimbursed the drivers directly for
the swill they delivered.
In the interest of urban progress, the Board
of Public Works was given the power by the
council to order necessary sidewalk repairs at
any time and any place within the city and, in
cooperation with the surveyor, to provide
house numbers. The board ruled that odd
numbers were to be assigned on the north and
west sides of the streets, one hundred per
block, and with not less than twenty feet
frontage of vacant lots per number.30
Some small degree of order in the prolifer-
ating enactments of the council was estab-
lished in 1883 when W. W. Robinson, as auditor
and clerk, compiled the ordinances from 1878
on, finishing that task just as the mayor was
approving Ordinance 104. Henceforth, the
ordinances were to be numbered after adop-
tion but before publication, the compilation
by Robinson being officially approved. 31
Frederick Eaton, the first "native son" to
serve as city surveyor and engineer, brought to
public works a wide-ranging and innovative
approach beginning in 1885 and returning in
1889-90 as engineer under the terms of the
home rule charter. He was one of a number of
dynamic men to occupy the lead position in
public works and to influence not only the
organization but the direction of major proj-
ects. He designed a prototype sewer system and
worked to establish a park system. He did not
confine his civic interest to public projects but
served as superintendent of the privately owned
Los Angeles Water Company and as chief engi-
neer for the Los Angeles Railway Company. In
1998 he began a two-year term as mayor. Eaton
went on to become a rancher in Mono County
and incorporate the Owens Valley Land and Cat-
tle Company, and he was instrumental in pro-
moting the Owens Valley Aqueduct. 32
Eaton was followed as city engineer by John
Henry Dockweiler, a different type of innova-
tor. He is credited with procuring in fee sim-
ple the ocean frontage where the outfall sewer
was designed to terminate. He was interested
in organizational matters as well, being cred-
ited with originating the system of indexing
public works records in the engineer's office
by operating divisions.
33
Another attempt at improving the frame-
work for city government was made in 1888-89
under a state assembly constitutional amend-
ment. A fifteen-member board of freeholders
was elected and given ninety days to frame a
charter. By devising organizational ground
rules suited to local needs and setting up a sys-
tem guaranteeing open deliberations, the free-
holders sought to prevent corruption. At the
time, the fight against corruption in Los
Angeles tended to focus on blocking the pow-
erful Southern Pacific Railroad's political
"machine." Known as the "Home Rule" char-
ter, it contained 22 articles and 228 sections. It
was approved by a wide margin.
The chart of organization prepared by Bur-
ton L. Hunter to accompany his discussion of
the home-rule charter shows that no provision
whatsoever had been made for a separate board
or department of public works.
34
The mayor
and council jointly appointed a superintend-
ent of buildings and a water overseer. There
were an elected street supervisor and a city
engineer. Otherwise, the various functions pro-
vided for in earlier charter organizations, such
as the construction and maintenance of sewer
and sanitation systems, of bridges, and of
street lighting were not specifically assigned.
In 1898 when the thirty-year franchise for
water distribution expired, the city began a
four-year negotiation to regain from the fran-
chisee the control of the water works. Public
ownership of public utilities was one of the
tenets of the new, reformist, political thinking.
The council enacted an ordinance providing for
a seven-member commission to oversee opera-
tions, "pending a change in charter provisions."
The commission thus brought into being found
itself with the responsibility for establishing a
water-distribution system that could keep pace
with the burgeoning growth. Not only were
there more residents, but by 1899 the city had
expanded in size to comprise almost twice the
original area. The farmers and homebuilders in
the areas of Highland Park, Garvanza, Sycamore
Grove, and, to the southwest, the alfalfa grow-
ers on lands south of Slauson Avenue and west
of Arlington had persuaded the council to
annex their respective territories to the city.
Only 4.63 inches of rain fell in 1898, only 8.69
PUBLIC WORKS· 297
inches in 1899. For comparison, the average
rainfall recorded between 1878 and 2003 was
14.96 inches. It was the most severe drought in
twentyyears.
35
The city council was confronted
simultaneously by the two least-manageable
imperatives of its governance-the rainfall and
the city's growth.
The new Board of Water Commissioners of
the domestic water works system of the city
stated in its first annual report on November
30,1902, that:
The city has the paramount right to so much
of the water flowing in the river at any point
from its source to the southern boundary of
the city as it may require for municipal uses
and for the use ofits inhabitants, and thatthis
right inheres not only in its surface stream but
in the stream as it flows under the surface, and
in all subterranean waters which supply the
surface or underground stream; and that this
right is not limited to the territory covered by
the original Pueblo, but attaches to all addi-
tional territory from time to time brought
within the city limits. 36
The board's report was largely the composi-
tion of young William Mulholland, a self-
schooled hydraulic engineer who had been
chosen to be the superintendent and chief
engineer of the Board of Water Commission-
ers. In line with his report, he immediately
began working to provide storage facilities to
conserve the winter runoff from the river. He
proposed building reservoirs to be fed by a sup-
ply line along the river in the vicinity of Griffith
Park. He also led a campaign for conservation
and instituted tighter financial controls within
the bureau. All moneys received from the sale
of water were placed in the water revenue fund,
under direct control of the commissioners.
City water rates were fixed by the commission
subject, however, to council approval.
After the home-rule charter went into effect,
298' PATRICIA ADLER-INGRAM
there were no amendments made until 1903.
The council simply exercised its prerogative to
create additional officers as needed. Byordi-
nance, a board of plumbing examiners was cre-
ated, only to be disbanded a few months later.
A board of examining engineers and boiler
inspectors was created, with their salaries to
be paid through charges for inspections and
licensing. The post of city electrician was cre-
ated to install, operate, and maintain fire-
alarm and police call-box systems and to
handle street lighting, as the lights were mod-
ernized from gas to electric fixtures.
Following fourteen years of operation and
innumerable efforts to reform the home rule
charter, all of which failed of adoption by the
voters, a slate of amendments proposed in
1903, finally gained acceptance. Foremost
among the changes were an increase in the
power of the mayor, an increase in the debt
limit, a provision for new election laws, and
the creation of a civil service commission. This
revision was the product of a fairly intensive
campaign of education and debate sponsored
by some of the city's newly emergent social
clubs. In line with their ideas of efficient
administration, the mayor was to serve as pres-
ident of the various existing boards and com-
missions with the power to appoint members.
THE BETTER CITY:
THE PROGRESSIVE ERA
Los Angeles had something of a tradition of
influential social organizations. The earliest
had been the chamber of commerce, formed in
1873 as the Board of Trade, and reorganized on
a more effective basis as the Boom of the Eight-
ies dwindled. It became a booster organization
and was very effective in creating enthusiasm
for sunny southern California. By the turn of
the century, it had approximately one thousand
members, characterized by Charles Dwight
Willard as "the wealthy and progressive men
of the city, with sufficient funds to carryon an
active campaign.""
A number of the clubs drawing membership
from the ranks of newcomers at the turn of the
century were, indeed, Progressive-leaning and
tended to focus on reforming municipal gov-
ernment. Among the organizations for which
the club movement furnished a forum was the
League for Better City Government. This par-
ticular club had the good fortune to draw the
attention of a young doctor, John Randolph
Haynes, who had moved to Los Angeles in the
hope of improving the health of his family. The
league was a reform organization including
both "liberals and conservatives who were fed
up with scandals in municipal government and
the city school system. Its formation was a sig-
nificant step in the evolution of progressive
municipal reform in Los Angeles.""
Dr. Haynes's version of Socialism fused lib-
eral religious thought with immediate social
concerns such as direct legislation, women's
suffrage, abolition of child labor, full employ-
ment, graduated taxes, and civil service. He
was particularly interested in direct legislation
and saw the initiative, referendum, and recall
as processes by which voters might become
sufficiently enlightened on political issues to
pass or reject legislation by petition when leg-
islatures refused to do so. He worked tirelessly
to bring what he considered "Direct Democ-
racy" into municipal government.
39
The enthusiasm for civic betterment took a
number of forms, prominent among them was
a campaign led initially by the Reverend Dana
Bartlett for improvements in city living condi-
tions. He wrote a very popular book entitled
The Better City, calling for uplift generally and,
specifically, for the reform of public services,
workers' housing, city parks, and thelandscap-
ing of the banks of the Los Angeles River.
40
He
applauded the action of the Municipal Arts
PUBLIC WORKS' 299
commission in bringing to Los Angeles the
apostle of the City Beautiful movement,
Charles Mulford Robinson, and .he later
applauded Robinson's to the
art commission in 1907 that
should be financed by the city's becommg a
defense of the city's stewardship of the public's
business. The floor plan of the City Hall shows
that fully one-fourth of the whole area was
given over to the offices, the and
the me rooms of the Engineermg DlVlslOn.. .
The report presented in.full the .Clvil
service requirements for reSIdence and CItizen-
ship status, and for a minimum employnIent
age (twenty-one years except for el.evator oper-
ators draftsmen, chainmen, and lIbrary atten-
for whom there was a minimum of
seventeen years). There was, of course, no sep-
arate public works report, the report of the
city engineer lists all street
street, mileage, and cost. There IS a speCIal dIa-
gram of the cross sections ?f ele:en types of
graveled streets, and a sectlOn With a
graph showing the new outfall sewer pIer
Hyperion. There are also reports by the engI-
neer on the utilization of the separate funds for
sewers, bridges, and storm sewers. The
of the street superintendent is similarly detailed.
He reports on streets completed under the old
city charter, those completed under an act of
1903 (not otherwise identified), those com-
menced but not completed. He mcludes a four-
page compilation of "cash streets" and those
built with bond funding. For the water com-
missioners, this was the third annual report,
and they were pleased to announce that
new customers had been added and37·
62
miles
of street mains installed in the past year. An
abstract of franchises in the city is appended,
showing the range of services performed under
municipal franchise, from burglar
tems, gas lines, telephone, and electnClty
land developer in its own right. .,
The city's old-line bureaucracy was ;n.sprred
to show that it, too, had developed a CIVIC con-
sciousness. Giving belated attention to the
dition of the city streets, overcrowded .WIth
freight wagons, delivery carts, street raIlway
cars and the occasional private buggy, all
by horses, the street superintendent's
annual report for 1902-1903 notes that
The improper sweeping of our streets was of
great annoyance to this Department when I
took charge of it in January, 1903. Merchants
and property owners were continually com-
plaining, and it was useless to attempt to rem-
edy the defect on account of the system then
in vogue. Under your instructions I
two Furnas Pneumatic Street Cleamng
machines, and last August commenced oper-
ating them on ourfrrst class paved streets, with
results vastly more satisfactory than those
obtainable under the contract system, then
abolished. During the day the "white-angels"
with their brooms and pushcarts prove invalu-
able aid, in keeping frrst class streets clean. The
cans that were placed on street corners have
been abolished, and three pick-up wagons
carry the sweepings during the day."
One of the most elaborate annual reports ever
issued by the City of Los Angeles was that com-
piled by the auditor, L. H. SclIwaebe, for the year
ending November 30,1904. It was something of
a swan song for the old regime. In stoutly
bound volume of 403 page.s, replete With excel-
lent photographs, statistical tables, and a
gram of the office layout of the two-story CIty
Hall, Mr. Schwaebe presented an exhaustive
installations, through the large number of
il
. 42
street ra way seIVlces.
THE FLOWERING OF BUREAUCRACY
C. D. Willard, styling himself the editorial con-
tributor, created a weekly publication, the
300' PATRICIA ADLER-INGRAM
Pacific Outlook, representing the Progressive
movement to publish reports on Los Angeles
improvement work and legislation. It listed the
streets opened, graded, paved, or built with
sidewalks, noting especially work done under
the state-approved Vrooman Act, which
enabled the city to use bond funding on a reg-
ular basis to pay for improvements.
43
The Vrooman Act, approved March 18,1885,
by the California legislature, was an important
and very well-crafted law providing for "work
upon streets, lanes, alleys, courts, places, and
sidewalks, and for the construction of sewers
within municipalities.""
Henry Vrooman, Republican assemblyman
from Alameda, authored the bill as an attempt
to regularize California's local assessment dis-
trict ventures. The bill gave to municipalities
the power to order work, notify property own-
ers, advertise for bids, assess costs to owners
and costs to the city treasury, let and supervise
contracts, and, perhaps most importantly,
incur indebtedness and issue bonds. Taxes on
real and personal property were to cover pay-
ment of interest on the indebtedness and to
maintain a sinking fund to payoff the indebt-
edness within a period of not more than twenty
years.
There was a strict obligation incurred by
cities using the Vrooman Act to provide com-
plete financial records on every project. Under
the charter of 1889 there existed no Los Angeles
department with jurisdiction over the range of
public works covered, and no provision for sep-
arate bookkeeping and financial management
on a project-by-project basis. The Annual
Report of the Street Superintendent for the
year ending December 1, 1902, presents infor-
mation in tabular form for each type of
improvement. It shows the funds expended for
street improvement under the bond provisions
of the Vrooman Act to be $266,788 and under
the cash provision of the actto be $55,845, with
an additional $26,090 spent for paving with
asphaltum. Sewers constructed under the act
cost $65,762, for an unprecedented total of
$4170566 in improvements.
45
A manuscript tabulation filed with the
Annual Report of the City Engineer of the City
of Los Angeles for the Year Ending November
30,1904, lists by street name the street and sewer
improvements completed by means of Vrooman
Act funding. The tabulation, on sheets the size
of circus posters and in a beautiful Spencerian
hand, details by name the streets improved, the
length in feet of the work done, and whether
asphalt paving, simple grading, or gravel and
oil were used. Curbs, gutters, culverts, side-
walks, and crosswalks were also detailed. The
cost of the work, however, was not noted, and
consequently this accounting cannot be com-
pared with the prior report. The summary sheet
shows the $14,615.38 expended from the "Sundry
Vrooman Act Accounts" as one of twenty-four
accounts from which the $74,108.97 in total
department salaries were paid. Other revenue
accounts ranged from the work for the board of
health, the chain gang, and the Fire Department
to the Board of Education. 46
In his narrative accompanying the Sixteenth
Annual Report to the Honorable Council,
Harry F. Stafford, city engineer, complained
that "The work of this department continues
to grow to such an extent, that I have become
discouraged over ever attempting to get caught
up with it." He also admits that, "Delays in the
construction of our 'Outfall Sewer' has been a
great worry to this department ... as there is a
very large proportion of our people without
sewer facilities and it is impossible to extend
our interior system until such time as the out-
fall is nearing completion."47
The forces of governmental reform were
augmented in 1903 with the advent of a new,
politically motivated association that evolved
into the Good Government Organization. As
the league gained prominence, the Los Angeles
Times labeled them the "Goo Goos." They were
determined to fight machine politics. They
joined with the City Club in exercising the
newly approved recall provision to oust Coun-
cilman James P. Davenport on charges of col-
lusion with the Times on a contract for the city's
printing." The Times retaliated in 1906 by cam-
paigning alongside the unpopular Southern
Pacific Railroad machine to defeat the Good
Government candidate and elect their man as
mayor of Los Angeles. The Good Government
and other reformist groups then turned their
attention to promoting individual elements of
their platform within the new city regime.
In 1905, after years of campaigning by civic
clubs, innumerable speeches at luncheon
meetings, and weekly exhortations by the
Pacific Outlook, the voters had approved a char-
ter amendment creating a board of public
works. It was to consist of three prominent cit-
izens; assigned to it was the oversight of all
functions performed by the street superintend-
ent' the superintendent of buildings, the elec-
trical department, and the Street Assessment
Bureau. It was to include the supervision of an
accounting section for all public works proj-
ects. The city engineer was also placed under
the commission in the following year.
49
The aim of the Progressives in assigning
public works to the control of a commission
was to prevent political manipulation of the
many contracts handled in the course of con-
structing city projects. The charter amend-
ment stated clearly that the board was to be
made up of prominent citizens. It also stated
that the members were to be appointed by the
mayor.
The Los Angeles Times enjoyed taking a jab at
the prominent citizens of the Board of Public
Works reporting,
Yesterday the new Board of Public Works was
fairly inundated by complaints of failure to
PUBLIC WORKS' 301
collect garbage. Housewives have discovered
that the board is now responsible and they are
demanding their pound of flesh. Telephones
in the rooms of the board kept up an almost
constant jangle all morning. "The garbage
man missed us," was the burden of the com-
plaint. The new garbage wagons ordered for
use by the city have not yet arrived. Until they
are received and placed in commission the
board can do little toward bettering present
conditions.
50
The new mayor, Arthur c. Hatper, appeared
to enjoy his position enormously, taking full
advantage of the powers bestowed on the office
by the recently achieved reforms. In addition,
he found time to foster a stock scheme to line
his own pockets and, adding insult to injury, to
encourage the private interests that were
attempting to appropriate the city-owned Los
Angeles River bed for use as a gravel pit. 51 The
Municipal League and other civic groups had
opposed a riverbed franchise for years. They
foresaw that a private holder of the franchise
would be able to mine the city's own land for the
sand and gravel in great demand by the city itself
for the construction of streets. There was no
question of the growing need for the material.
The Annual Report of the Street Superinten-
dent 1902-1903 stated that:
This City has an average of 268 miles of grav-
eled streets, and with my present limited force
I have endeavored to accomplish as much
work as possible in keeping same in proper
repair. Gravel has been expensive, and in order
to economize I have obtained gravel from cel-
lars in different parts of the City at very little
expense, considering the prices of gravel at the
present time.
52
By 1907 Mayor Hatper reported one thousand
to two thousand wagonloads of sand and gravel
were being taken from the riverbed every day
by contractors. "If the gravel pit was owned by
302· PATRICIA ADLER-INGRAM
some individual or company it would pay enor-
mous dividends," he said. "I see no reason why
the city should not operate such a gravel pit.""
Mayor Harper appointed as a new member
on the Board of Public Works a keen advocate
of the riverbed franchise, Ed Kern, who had
served two years as chief of police. Kern's career
in city politics was actively supported by the
Times despite the fact that he had been forced
to leave the Police Department amid charges
of protecting vice throughout the city. For the
reformers, his immediate appointment to the
Board of Public Works was the last straw. His-
torian Mark H. Stevens, in his detailed analy-
sis of the municipal elections of 1909, points
out that the board was
highly respected throughout the city because
of its broad comprehensive powers in munic-
ipal affairs. Consequently, its members had to
be men of sterling character, beyond reproach,
capable, competent administrators, and con-
sidered unreachable by petty politicians. 54
Members of the Municipal League and the City
Club joined with the Good Government Orga-
nization and concerned individual citizens at
a meeting that voted to prepare a petition to
recall Mayor Harper. The Municipal League
began soliciting signatures on the recall peti-
tion' and "the signatures came in at the rate of
1000 a day."" Meanwhile, Edwin T. Earl, editor
of the Los Angeles Express, published a series of
investigatory reports detailing unsavory details
of police graft in the red-light district. Thomas
E. Gibbon, editor of the Herald, brought forth
examples of irregularities in Mayor Harper's
business dealings. The county grand jury
found that the mayor and the Police Depart-
ment had failed to enforce statutes prohibit-
ing gambling, prostitution, and the sale of
liquor. Ex-police chief Kern resigned quietly
from the Board of Public Works.56
The recall campaign continued to gain
strength. At the last possible minute for
changes to the ballot, Arthur C. Harper gave in
his notice of resignation, thereby avoiding the
recall. With the emotional charge of the recall
rhetoric defused, the question before the vot-
ers was a choice between candidates to fill out
Harper's unexpired term.
George Alexander, a former county supervi-
sor and one of the grand old men in Los
Angeles public affairs, an advocate of temper-
ance, law and order, and direct democracy, had
accepted the invitation of the Good Govern-
ment forces to head their ticket. He defeated
the Socialist candidate only narrowly but man-
aged to carry a number of men on the reform
slate into office.
The Board of Public Works had survived
Mayor Harper's attempted corruption and set-
tled into its position of considerable power.
Now, the members refused to resign when
Mayor Alexander made his formal request for
the resignation of appointees held over from
the previous regime. They declared themselves
averse to any substantial revision of adminis-
trative policies and procedures.
As in other cities experiencing a comparably
growing complexity of formal authorities,
such bureaucratic intransigence, coupled with
functional divisions within the boards, had
evolved into what one political scientist
described as "islands of functional power.""
Charter amendments of 1906 greatly
expanded the powers of the Board of Public
Works by giving it control of the design and
construction aspects of an aqueduct to be built
from the Owens River Valley to the San Fer-
nando Valley, the system to be completed and
then turned over to the Board of Water Com-
missioners. 58 In tandem with the aqueduct
project, a Bureau of Aqueduct Power, with a
chief electrical engineer, was created within
the Department of Public Works.
The first annual report of the Board of Pub-
lic Works, December 15, 1906, foresaw the com-
plexities of cooperating with William
Mulholland's Water Department and sought to
clarify the relationship. "This great undertak-
ing would naturally fall under the Water
Department, but this board has jurisdiction
because the same is to be built with money
from the sale of bonds of the City." The report
went on to acknowledge that
We fully appreciate the value to the City of the
experience and public spirit of the present
members of the Water Board, who are entitled
to the credit of initiating this great work and
had full charge of the same until the organi-
zation of this Board, and we have requested
the Water Department to co-operate with this
Department in the supervision of this work. 59
The dynamic, self-taught engineer William
Mulholland, having been superintendent of
water works for the Los Angeles Water Com-
mission since 1902, moved with his staff into
the new organizational structure with no dis-
cernable sacrifice of personal independence.
Mulholland had been working informally
since the drought of 1904 with Fred Eaton, erst-
while city engineer, mayor of Los Angeles from
1898 to 1900, and subsequently an enterprising
water-seeker. Eaton had been spurred into
action in the summer of 1904 when he took it
upon himself to tag along after an engineer
sent out by the new federal reclamation serv-
ice to survey the water resources of the Owens
Valley. Eaton came to the realization that the
snowmelt streams from the great eastern face
of the Sierra Nevada mountain range could
provide enough water for the immediate and
future needs of the parched Los Angeles basin.
He also realized that the city would have to
move immediately if the water resources were
to be brought under its control. As historian
Remi Nadeau described Eaton's next move,
PUBLIC WORKS· 303
Eaton took Mulholland to see for himself the
beautiful, abundant water flowing into Owens
Valley from the snow mountains of the Sierra
Nevada.
Driving a two-horse buckboard, the two
friends "roughed it" across the Mohave Desert,
camping in the open and living on simple
rations of bacon and beans. On September 24
they stood in the shadow of the massive Sierra,
two hundred and fifty miles from Los Angeles,
while Eaton showed Mulholland a placid val-
ley of green fields and abundant water ...
enough to provide a city of 2,000,000 people."o
For days Eaton went over the ground with
Mulholland, proving with barometer and rough
calculations that the water could be diverted
around briny Owens Lake and carried to Los
Angeles by gravity. They foresaw the technical
difficulties of ditches, pumping stations, and
siphons as routine problems. What they didnot
foresee were the scandals, bitterness, and vir-
tual warfare that would almost ruin the project.
The farmers and townspeople of Owens Valley
realized they were facing utter devastation and
fought back. Nor was the project unanimously
favored within the City of Los Angeles, espe-
ciallywhen it came to voting the necessary $23
million in water bonds. Harrison Gray Otis and
the Times were strongly in favor, while the lead-
ing Socialist spokesman, Job Harriman, was
convinced that there had been an egregious land
swindle and the aqueduct should not be built.
Chief engineer and superintendent of water
works William Mulholland entered the contro-
versyjust before the election, when "with a glib
Irish tongue," armed with maps and charts, he
"took his crusade before the men's organiza-
tions in every precinct of the city."6! On election
day, June 12, 1907, Los Angeles voted 10 to 1 in
favor of the Owens River project.
The new Board of Public Works gained a
rather anomalous responsibility with the
304· PATRICIA ADLER-INGRAM
enactment by the city council on February 5,
1907, of Ordinance 14,113, which required the
board to review plans and issue permits for the
construction or maintenance of house court
properties. The ordinance was sponsored
jointly by the College Settlement Association
and the Municipal League. C. D. Willard, as sec-
retary of the league, had, in fact, drafted the
ordinance. The campaign to improve housing
conditions for the working people of Los
Angeles was begun by the civic clubs after a
visit by a renowned guest speaker, the New
York slum-clearance activist Jacob Riis. He had
toured the house courts of Los Angeles and
pronounced them as bad, if not as extensive,
as anything to be found in New York. 62
The responsibility assigned to the Board of
Public Works was carried out by a seven-mem-
ber commission. It was made up of prominent
citizens including a doctor, a minister, three
businessmen (an architect, a plumber, a retired
stock salesman), and two women (an attorney
and a settlement worker). They stated in their
report of 1906-1908 that
The Commission feels that the work so far
accomplished has been of undoubted benefit.
The lessening of disease in these courts, and
the uplifting of the moral tone of the inhabi-
tants will not only now, but in the future,
make its effects felt upon these congested
areas, and upon the city at large. 63
The re-elected Good Government candidate,
Mayor George Alexander, re-appointed the
commission in 1910 with two new members,
the well-respected minister Dana W. Bartlett
and Robert Watchorn, the treasurer of the
Union oil Company of California and formerly
the commissioner of immigration of the Port
of New York. The report of the commission for
1909-10 includes statistical tables on the
progress being made. Two hundred sixty house
courts had been inspected, serving 4,480
inhabitants with 21 courts being demolished,
28 abolished, 10 vacated, leaving only 204
house courts active for which written notices
were sent out to file plans and obtain permits
from the Board of Public Works. Thirty nation-
ali ties were represented among tlre residents.
In the opinion of Robert Watchorn,
The growth it [Los Angeles 1 has already man-
ifested has attracted the attention, not only of
our entire country, but is well known through-
out the world. Coincident with the opening of
the Panama Canal, California in general and
Los Angeles in particular will be placed many
miles nearer to those sections of Europe which
are most prolific of manual laborers .... All
industrious classes added to a community are
producers of great wealth. A moiety of that
wealth ought to be wisely and prudently
expended in protecting them.
64
The Housing Commission was shifted from
the Board of Public Works in 1913 to become a
bureau witlrin the health department.
THE BIGGER CITY
The population of Los Angeles more than dou-
bled between 1890 and 1900. In 1901 Charles
Dwight Willard wrote, in the closing paragraph
of his History of Los Angeles City, "That it should
some day become one of the great metropoli-
tan centers of the nation is not a dream, but the
natural outgrowth of existing conditions."65 By
1910 the city's population had more than tre-
bled, standing at 310,198, while tlre incorporated
area was approximately three times that of the
pueblo's original twenty-eight square miles.
When water from the Owens Valley reached tlre
basin in 1913, it intensified the demand for
annexation, since the water was reserved by the
provisions of tlre bond measure for areas within
the city limits. Annexations had expanded the
city to 363.69 square miles by 1920.
Along with its daring reach for a water sup-
ply, Los Angeles moved to make up for anotlrer
fundamental lack in its resources by creating
an all-weather harbor. Following a long "Free
Harbor Contest" between San Pedro and Santa
Monica, Congress had settled the dispute by
voting money for San Pedro, and the building
of a breakwater had begun. Construction of the
port facilities was undertaken by the United
States Army Corps of Engineers. By 1910 the
Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce was
announcing in one of its pictorial tourist
brochures that
The Los Angeles Harbor at San Pedro recently
(by a vote of 70 to 1) made a part of the city of
Los Angeles, is absolutely safe for the largest
sea-going vessels and can be entered safely in
any kind of weather. It is the logical harbor for
the trade of the Orient, when the Panama carra!
shall have been completed. The City of Los
Angeles has promised to spend $10,000,000 in
the next ten years on the further improve-
ment.
66
A board of harbor commissioners was cre-
ated by ordinance, with the first commission
being appointed in 1908. The city engineer was
ex officio the harbor engineer. The Board of
Public Works was given control of the con-
struction of wharves, docks, piers, warehouses,
sea walls, and other improvements authorized
prior to January 1,1912, with construction after
that date to be under the control of the harbor
commissioners.67
Ideas of reform in Los Angeles had under-
gone an abrupt rethinking in the mayoral cam-
paign of 1911, when the Socialist party, led by
Job Harriman, had strongly challenged the can-
didate of the Good Government League. The
bombing of the Los Angeles Times building, the
subsequent trial of the McNamara brothers,
and their dramatic confessions of guilt on the
very eve of tlre voting had been ruinous for the
PUBLIC WORKS· 305
Socialists. Job Harriman had believed in the
innocence of the McNamaras and had drawn
strong support from sympathizers. When the
brothers confessed, Harriman's followers "lit-
tered the gutters with the buttons they had
been wearing."68 The humiliation of the Social-
ists, combined with the fact that the hated
Southern Pacific Railroad machine had been
given a setback during the scandals surround-
ing Mayor Harper, changed the tenor of the
effort to reform city government. The determi-
nation to restore local politics to the control of
the voters was not shaken but given more of a
centrist direction.
Professor Martin Schiesl has characterized
the Los Angeles Progressives of these years as
"structural" progressives, unreceptive to the
desires of workers to improve the social and
economic status of the underprivileged in the
city and, as elected officials, pressing mainly
for a government to be conducted by experts
according to the corporate ideals of economy
and efficiency.69
Burton L. Hunter, author of the Evolution of
Municipal Organization and Administrative Prac-
tice in the City of Los Angeles, believed the period
from 1911 to 1915 to have been marked by new
policies and ideas not heretofore found in the
local municipal government. His analysis is of
particular interest because he went on to
become an efficiency engineer in the Bureau of
Budget and Efficiency of Los Angeles.
It was in these years that the Municipal
League of Los Angeles, in its quest for reform
in city administration, hired the New York
Bureau of Municipal Research to survey the city
bureaucracy and make recommendations. To
no one's astonishment, the survey revealed a
lack of efficiency in the city government. The
council, thereupon, enacted an ordinance
to create an efficiency commission. It was to
have the
306' PATRICIA ADLER-INGRAM
power to investigate the administration of the
various departments of the city for the purpose
of determining the duties of each position
therein, to fix standards of efficiency, to estab-
lish a system of individual efficiency records,
and to recommend to the city council and to
the respective boards and commissions of the
city, measures for increasing individual, group,
and departmental efficiency; and providing for
simplicity of operation and uniformity of com-
pensation throughout the service.
70
The activities of the new commission were
not popular. It required extraordinary efforts
by the Municipal League, the chamber of com-
merce, the local press, and a number of indi-
vidual good-government advocates to keep the
commission in existence and to preserve its
independence.
A "Chart of Los Angeles City Government,
July 1, 1914" shows the lines of control extend-
ing from the office of the mayor, and from the
city council as well, to each of the commissions
and boards. Functions of the government were
divided into nine groups with a councilman
assigned to each. To emphasize the new objec-
tives of rational operation, a second chart,
"Organization of Large Private Corporations,"
is appended for comparison, the inference
being that the city should emulate business
(see page 61).
Another hard-driving, self-taught man was
appointed to the post of city engineer in 1906:
Homer Hamlin, who was to serve until 1917.
He completed the outfall sewer by driving a
series of tunnels through an area of water-
bearing rock strata that had stalled the proj-
ect. He also supervised improvements on the
harbor and completed the Hill Street vehicu-
lar tunnel. His personal campaign for the
acquisition of a strip of land known as the
"Shoestring" had perhaps the most far-reach-
ing consequences. The annexation of this
land-half a mile wide and sixteen miles
long-assured the city of a land-based admin-
istrative link to the harbor area.
71
To a number of prominent reformers, it
seemed that the growing factionalism in Los
Angeles necessitated a major re-ordering that
would centralize authority under officials com-
mitted to "scientific" administration. The
council appointed a fifteen-man charter-revi-
sion committee. Their proposal featured a
commission form of government, in line with
recommendations of the National Municipal
League. A few cities across the United States
were experimenting with the commission
form, whereby the work of governing was per-
formed by commissioners expert in their
respective fields. A similar plan was approved
for Los Angeles by a board of freeholders and
put before the voters in 1912 with the claim
that, if adopted, "it will give Los Angeles a posi-
tion of enviable distinction among the best
governed cities in the world."72 The proposed
charter was rejected by the voters.
Following this defeat, a group of conserva-
tive reformers met as the Citizen's Committee
of 1,000 to draft amendments to the existing
charter, while another group, including many
Socialists, met as the People's Charter Confer-
ence. Each group submitted a set of proposals
to the council that, in turn, submitted the
entire lot to the voters, who rejected every-
thing. The voters elected a board of freehold-
ers in 1915 but defeated the charter it submitted
and again, in 1923, elected a board with many
of the leading reformers still patiently accept-
ing membership. During the long delibera-
tions, the reformist idea of a pure commission
form was given up in favor of departments,
each to be headed by a single officer, presum-
ably a well-trained specialist. Only one func-
tion of the city government was to be under the
control of a commission-that of public
works. Finally a new charter for the city was
hammered out and adopted by a vote of 126,058
to 19,287 on May 6, 1924, going into effect in
1925. The provisions of this charter established
clear authority for the Board of Public Works.
During the final years of the old charter, and
without reference to the well-publicized work
of the freeholders to bring more efficiency to
city government, the council created by ordi-
nance a great number of individual depart-
ments within the Board of Public Works.
73
Most of these new departments were related
directly to projects that originated in the office
of the city engineer. They included one to build
monumental concrete bridges and viaducts
and another, most notably, to build the Mul-
holland Highway along the crest of the hills
that separated the basin from the San Fernando
Valley. Individual departments for the con-
struction of Cahuenga Pass Road and Beverly
Boulevard followed. Each of the projects was
to be funded by an independent assessment
district. Neither the Mulholland Highway nor
the other roads were the type of projects being
recommended in the ongoing studies for the
improvement of the Los Angeles street system.
Representatives of both the city and county
Engineering and Planning departments, the
chamber of commerce, and the Automobile
Club of Southern California, assisted by a team
of nationally prominent planning consultants,
had been working for several years to formu-
late an efficient plan for traffic flow. Their
objective was to facilitate cross-town travel by
automobile in a rational manner, benefiting
the whole community and having substantial
appeal for the voters who were expected to pay
the bill. The voters did approve a $5 million
bond issue, but in the opinion of the engineers,
the money would build only about 10 percent
of the plan. The more sweeping elements of the
plan met with opposition from the thousands
of property owners living in the proposed
assessment districts. The more modest ele-
PUBLIC WORKS' 307
ments of the major traffic street plan, however,
moved forward so quickly that "the Traffic
Commission recommended that the city coun-
cil impose a temporary property tax to support
d
. f' t "7'
a secon umt a street Improvemen s.
The enthusiasm for the traffic plan died
down in very few years, despite the resultant
improvements, such as the better traffic flow
resulting from an overhaul of the old traffic
and parking ordinances. It became apparent
that the number of cars was increasing expo-
nentially, outstripping the road builders, and
that downtown congestion was becoming
worse rather than better. The traffic plan, willi
its focus on bringing greater and greater traf-
fic into the central business district, ran
counter to the fundamental outward pull of the
new suburbs.
It has been suggested that the complications
of working among the myriad property inter-
ests in established downtown areas left the city
engineers frustrated and at a loss as to how to
go forward. The major street traffic plan did
not offer the grand scope and challenge of the
Owens Valley Aqueduct they had just com-
pleted. The golden age of Boulder Dam, Hetch-
Hetchy, and other heroic public works projects
had not yet reached an end.
When venturesome real estate promoters con-
cocted a plan to open a vast new territory for
development by running a highway atop the
Hollywood Hills [Mulholland Highway], the
engineers saw an opportunity to express what
was important to them: to build a major high-
way without opposition, to create an uninter-
rupted corridor, [and] to honor their own work
and those associated with it.
7S
The promoters formed Municipal Improve-
ment District 22, collected signatures ofland-
holders in the district, contracted for a survey
of the boundaries, and managed to have the
city clerk validate the signatures against the
308· PATRICIA ADLER-INGRAM
voter rolls in an uncommonly short time. The
affected land owners approved a bond issue to
fund construction by a 2 to 1 margin. The bonds
sold immediately.
For the engineers, working under the nomi-
nal oversight of the Board of Public Works, the
highway was to be an adventure in the rugged
outdoors and, like the aqueduct project, a grand
camping expedition with a purpose. But almost
from the beginning they were hard pressed to
explain the purpose. The roadway would not
connect with anything at either end of its tor-
tuous twenty-two-mile course and, since the
bond funds did not pay for any of the water,
sewer, or electric lines that might facilitate real
estate development, it would not invite any use
beyond the enjoyment of the vistas of the city.
The engineers suggested it would be of use to
the Fire Department in case of brush fires. They
further claimed that it fell under the emergency
provisions of the city charter and was, there-
fore, covered by a waiver from the bidding pro-
visions that governed city purchases. The Board
of Public Works went along with its engineer-
ing bureau in approving the suspension of usual
procedures. Construction was speeded through
the summer, and the opening ceremonies were
held December 27,1924, with William Mulhol-
land as the honored guest. It afforded a rare
moment of celebrity for members of the Board
of Public Works. Mulholland's biographer, Mar-
garet Leslie Davis, described the event.
Following respectfully behind the man of the
hour were civic leaders, the Board of Public
Works and the man who actually built the
highway, DeWitt Raeburn. Befitting an east-
ern potentate, the parade included a squad of
mounted police, followed by uniformed offi-
cers and a bugler; marching behind them was
the Third Coast Artillery Regiment with a
mobile searchlight, a field cannon drawn by
military tractor, and a motorized antiaircraft
gun. Behind them came a full naval band, five
thousand sailors, two hundred marines, and
bringing up the rear, bagpipes, mariachis, and
the American Legion Band.
76
The charter of 1925 brought sweeping
changes to city government that included spe-
cial consideration for the Board of Public
Works. It was unique among the newly recon-
figured departments in that it was the only one
c r e a t ~ d by charter to be headed by a full-time,
salaned commission without a general man-
ager.
77
Fred G. Crawford, who has written an
analysis of the first thirty years of achieve-
ments under the 1925 charter, noted that the
Board of Public Works was unique.
All other commission-headed Charter depart-
ments are governed by part-time, fee-atten-
dance-paid commissioners. A second dif-
ference is that most of the other city depart-
ments are of an almost single-purpose type of
organization while the Department of Public
Works is more nearly multi-purpose. Another
significant difference is that this Department,
which is usually thought of as a line organiza-
tion, has a relatively large number of organi-
zational units that perform staff services."78
The board was given wide powers to dele-
gate responsibilities along functional lines to
various bureaus that could be created, consol-
idated, or abolished either by board action or
by ordinance. The board designated its presi-
dent as administrative officer. Under Section
234 of Article XXXIII of the charter, the board
was put in charge of six tasks, namely:
1 construction and maintenance of all
streets,
2 all work in, on, over, or under the streets
including parkways, trees, and parking,
3 design, construction, and maintenance of
sanitary and storm drains,
4 cleaning and lighting all public buildings,
5 design, construction, alteration, mainte-
nance and care of all public works and
improvements, and
6 disposal of garbage, sewage, and street
refuse.
"It has the powers of street superintendent and
the powers and duties imposed by the general
laws of the state on any municipal board or
officer under special assessment and proceed-
ings relating to bids, awards, contractors'
bonds, [and the] determination of benefits,
damages, and costs, making and levying
assessments on all public improvements
ordered by the councilor board."'9
The Bureau of Engineering, headed by the
city engineer, was by far the largest and most
powerful of the bureaus overseen by the mem-
bers of the Board of Public Works. The board
now had the authority to appoint the engineer,
who was exempt from civil service regulations.
plans and specifications for all city projects
were prepared by his staff. For the first two
years of operation under the 1925 charter, an
inspector of public works, with his staff and
his clerical assistants, were budgeted as sepa-
rate entities within the Department of Public
Works. The inspector and his staff were then
transferred to the Bureau of Engineering, fur-
ther enlarging its scope.
The mechanical division was removed from
the Bureau of Engineering in 1926 and set up as
a separate department directly under the
supervision of the board. With eighty-four
employees, including auto mechanics, electri-
cians, machinists, and blacksmiths, the scope
of the division's work was considered more of
a maintenance function than the preponder-
ance of the work in the engineering section.
The mechanical division was given its own
accounting staff as a part of the change.
8o
The era of heroic engineering proj ects in Los
Angeles suffered a tragic setback on the night
of March 12, 1928, when the St. Francis Dam
PUBLIC WORKS· 309
collapsed. The dam had been constructed as
one of the storage facilities for the city's vast
aqueduct system. Following spring storms in
the mountains, a torrent of water raged down
San Francisquito Canyon and through the
Santa Clara Valley, destroying the dam. More
than four hundred people were killed. Abra-
ham Hoffman, in his study of the Owens val-
ley Aqueduct, describes the event.
On March 12, 1928, all Los Angeles city-owned
reservoirs, including the st. Francis, were filled
to capacity. During the day Mulholland and his
assistant, Harvey Van Norman, were called to
the dam by the damkeeper, who had noticed a
new leak in the dam. Concrete darns frequently
have cracks and small leaks, and Mulholland
found nothing unusual about this one. Various
workmen and employees of the dam had made
remarks about the dam's possiblefailure, more
out of mordant humor than serious concern.
Mulliolland inspected the leak and declared it
of no consequence. At 11:57 PM the dam failed."
Charles F. Outland, working from eyewit-
ness accounts, contemporary photographs,
and what documentary material was made
available to him from the departmental
reports, produced a convincing narrative of the
building and destruction of the dam. He notes
that, in compliance with the agreement of
cooperation between the Water Department
and the Board of Public Works, Mulholland had
reported to the board on the proposed reser-
voir and had pointed out the treacherous
nature of the rock formation at the dam site as
early as 1911. He had described the face of the
canyon opposite the lower power line to be
"exceedingly rough, and the dip and strike of
the slate such as to threaten slips, in case side-
hill excavations were made."" Although not
questioned at the time, this geological charac-
teristic proved to be one of the major factors
contributing to the failure. So strong was the
310' PATRICIA ADLER-INGRAM
board's reliance on Mulholland's judgment
that no other engineering opinion was sought.
There had been some concern about the site
on the part oflocal residents, but it was focused
on the possibility thatthe city might be captur-
ing the water from the natural stream in San
Francisquito Canyon. The Santa Clara River
Protective Association had hired an engineer to
render an opinion as to the right of Los Angeles
to store the natural runoff waters of the canyon,
but safety did not appear to be an issue. Aque-
duct water was turned into the reservoir on
March 1, 1926, two months before the comple-
tion of the dam. Some leakage appeared a
month later, when the water level had reached
what some geologists considered a "dead" fault
line on the canyon wall, but the workmen were
ordered to pack the area with oakum. Follow-
ing this period of mild concern few criticisms
can be found on record. Mr. Mulholland
declared, "of all the dams I have built and of all
the dams I have ever seen, it was the driest dam
of its size I ever saw."83
The city was stunned by the magnitude of the
disaster. The reality was bad enough, but the
newspapers circulated rumors and explanations
of mythic proportions. Mulholland took per-
sonal responsibility for whatever engineering
errors had occurred. The Board of Public Works
did not make a public acknowledgement of any
possible responsibility for control and over-
sight, but the enthusiasm for initiating grand
engineering projects disappeared.
The completion of the new twenty-eight-
story City Hall was the major accomplishment
noted in the Annual Report of the Board of Pub -
lic Works for the Year July 1927 to June 1928. The
architects had provided a beautiful design, and
the city had spent the $9.7 million needed for
first -class construction. The secretary of the
Board of Public Works was responsible for all
bookkeeping and related matters pertaining to
the City Hall and proudly reported details. The
board received his report on every aspect of the
building, including the weight of structural
steel (8,167tons), the number of columns (4
00
),
and the number of rivets used in assembling
the steel frame (900,000). There were nearly
twenty acres of floor space, and the staff in the
board's newly formed Department of the Build-
ing Custodian numbered 221, of whom 147 were
janitors and 8 were janitresses.
84
The duties of the secretary of the Board of
Public Works had been expanded to include the
purchase of supplies and maintenance equip-
ment, not only for the new City Hall downtown
but for six new branch City Halls. The area of
the city had increased to 441.25 square miles,
bringing in additional populations and new
demands for public works. The city council
sought to serve the expanding area through
branch city offices, each with public counters
for applications to various city departments.
San Pedro, Wilmington, Venice, Sawtelle, Eagle
Rock, and Van Nuys had permanently staffed
offices by 1928.
Despite the city's pride in the work of its
engineers, an attempt to obtain salary increases
for the technical employees of the department
failed of adoption by the council and was
referred back to a joint committee of members
of the finance and the efficiency and personnel
committees. The board's report stresses that it
had complied with the policy of eliminating
inefficient and undesirable employees, with 51
men having been discharged and35 requested
to resign. There were in 1928 some 500 techni-
cal positions in the office and another 500 in
the field, in addition to the clerical staff, with
the total of all classifications in the engineer-
ing department standing at 3,338. As the year
closed, the joint committee on finance and effi-
ciency was considering the elimination of auto-
matic pay increases in favor of fixed rates of pay
for each class, with increases dependent on an
employee's service ratings.
The board reported that
During the past year the engineering work of
the city has acquired a closer interlock with
the engineering work of the county and sur-
rounding communities. The necessity for the
construction of sanitary sewers to the ocean
to serve portions of the City of Los Angeles
jointlywithincorporated and unincorporated
areas adjoining the city has been an important
factor in pooling interests and consolidation
of engineering work in the entire metropoli-
tan area.
8S
The public tended to disregard
jurisdictional lines. The Board Works
received complaints about pollutIOn of
beaches, not only in front of the Hyper:on
Treatment Plant but at Venice, Santa Moruca,
and county areas beyond the city boundary
at Topanga Canyon. There also WIde-
spread complaints about offenSIve odors fr?m
areas where screenings from the Hypenon
plant were being buried.
Annexed areas south of Los Angeles such as
low-lying Watts and Green Meadows in
desperate need of sewer ties into the mam sys-
tem in order to get rid of the old cesspools that
were periodically contaminating wate.r-
way in the area. Individual m
many other neighborhoods, haVIng ?roVIded
independently for the disposal theIr sewage
by simply digging a cesspool behind the house,
were becoming aware of the danger of contam-
inated groundwater entering the local water
wells. Public pressure to extend the sewer sys-
tem became formidable. The scope of the prob-
lem was greater than the Board of Public Works
could handle through the annual budgets.
The board did report that work was nearing
completion on the handsome and
viaducts begun with bond fundmg m 1923,
1924, and 1925. The report notes that "The Glen-
dale-Hyperion Viaduct, which is perhaps the
PUBLIC WORKS' 311
most spectacular bridge so under-
taken by the City, is now form
and the public is beginning to VIsualIze what
• "86
will be accomplished by this large structure.
The Mullrolland Highway, on the other hand,
was not faring welL The original design had
extended only to the bluff above the
Pass and the access link that would brmg the
roadway down into the pass was stalled at the
bluff for years, further lessening the useful-
ness of the proj ect.
In a special section of the for
1928 the division of opening and WIderung of
went on record as advocating that "the
greatest care should be in giving first
preference to those projects that are a traf-
fic necessity. The institution of proceedmgs for
the exploitation of real sh?uld be
avoided."" The work of this dIVISIOn, like that
of the Department of Engineering, was relat.ed
to the decisions being made in another CIty
department, the Department of City Planning
and Zoning. Although there was only an eleva-
tor ride between them in the new City Hall, the
Board of Public Works was senior to the plan-
ning department and made very effort to
solve subdivision problems by mteragency
cooperation. The report of the Engineering
Bureau notes that subdivision activity had
increased 20 percent from the prior year, with
225 tracts having been recorded. The San Fer-
nando Valley continued to experience
est activity, with a trend toward the dedIcatIOn
of more of the tract area for streets. The trend
indicated smaller lot sizes, resulting in higher
population density and greater requirerr:ents
for services, beginning with street mamte-
nance. In the opinion of the Engineering
Department, certain improvements such as
paving, curbs, and sh?uld be required
of the promoters in consIderatIOn the acceP.t-
ance of subdivision maps by the CIty council.
This idea was not popular with the promoters
312' PATRICIA ADLER-INGRAM
of subdivisions who campaigned to influence
council members in favor of the status quo.
The board sought cooperation with the
county in resolving drainage problems in the
200-Square-mile area of the San Fernando Val-
ley. Before annexation and the rush of subdivi-
sions began, the area had been the province
of the Los Angeles flood-control district. The
demands of the farmers living in the Valley had
been met by the construction of special ford, or
dip, sections wherever storm channels inter-
sected roadways. Motorists who were not farm-
ers found the resulting irregularities of the road
beds very annoying. The Board of Public Works
now recommended that the road surface of
north-south streets be lowered and twelve-inch
curbs installed, thereby providing what seemed
to be a better means of conveying storm water
to the Los Angeles River. The streets would, in
effect, serve as run-off channels.
was chosen to host the 1932 International
Olympic Games. Promoters stressed the fact
that Los Angeles was to be the first city in the
United States to hold the games. With more
civic pride than ready cash, the Board of Pub-
lic Works undertook the enlargement of the
municipal stadium to accommodate
10
5,000
spectators and added architectural elements
befitting the spirit of the Olympics.
The annual report of 1927-28, in magnitude
of accomplishments, general tone of enthusi-
asm, and sheer bulk, attained a high point. By
the following September, the council had abol-
ished by ordinance seven departments within
the Board of Public Works, including Bridges
and Viaducts, Cahuenga Pass Road, Sherman
Way, Beverly Glen Road, and Mulholland High-
way."
Although the business interests that suf-
fered most acutely during the stock market
crash of 19
2
9 did not make up a very large part
of the local economy, Los Angeles was imme-
diately affected by the widening economic col-
lapse. No longer did the expansion of the city
seem to be inevitable. Home building and real
estate speculation dropped precipitously.
Workers lost their jobs and struggled to meet
payments on their mortgages. The number of
people accepting public aid from the county
rose from 35,700 in 1932 to 120,000 in 1933.
Despite the strictures of the Depression, Los
Angeles rallied to meet its obligations when it
Otherwise, the Annual Report of the Board
of Public Works for the Year 1933-34 of the
Depression reflected a sharply diminished
number of accomplishments and a shift from
an expansive to an economy-focused opera-
tion. Mayor Frank L. Shaw and the city Coun-
cil were informed by the board that the Bureau
of Engineering had reorganized itself in the
interests of economy. The work had been
divided into "logical units" with all the duties
and assigmnents to be correlated "without con-
flict" by the city engineer. 89
Lloyd Aldrich, one of the most colorful men
to hold the post of city engineer, was respon-
sible for the reorganization. He had been
appointed in AuguStl933, first as deputy engi-
neer and then, four weeks later, advanced to
the top position. He went on to serve for
twenty-two years, longer than any other city
engineer. Besides pushing through the con-
struction of the Hyperion sewage treatment
plant, constructing four hundred or so bridges,
and designing a comprehensive beach-expan_
sion project, he became active in local politics,
eventually seeking to defeat Mayor Fletcher
Bowron.
9o
Soon after his appointment, Aldrich was des-
ignated the coordinator for the city for all fed-
erally funded projects, including those to be
undertaken by the Civil Works Administration
(CWA), the Reconstruction Finance Corpora-
tion (RFc), the Public Works Administration
(PWA), and, for the state, the State Highway and
the State Emergency Relief Administrations.
F ur and one-half million dollars' worth of
:ark was undertaken during the fiscal year for
the RFC and CWA programs alone. The.sework-
relief agencies of the Depression Era mcorpo-
ted the New Deal programs of the early years
raf h Franklin Roosevelt administration. Under
ote rdbthe
the RFC program, labor was supp Ie y.
If department while the matenal, county we are .
equipment, and supervision were paid :or out
of city and county funds. Jobs were proVIded to
unemployed men using hand tools on as many
projects and for as many months as the money
lasted. men
The RFC program gave work to 5,200
for five months, with individual workers get-
ting paid for an average of only ten per
nth. The CWA program started m Los
mo b 3 and closed
Angeles on Novem er 24, .193 :
down on March 29, 1934, haVIng glVen employ-
ment to a total of twenty-two men.
In that time, 7.7 miles of sewer hne and 6.9
miles of storm drain were built, as much of
work as possible being done by men usmg
hand tools. The Board of Public ,:,",orks
pared and submitted $81,500,000 m
tions to the PWA administrators, of whlc
approximately $17.5 million was requested as
an outright grant. Eight projects were
approved for a total of $400,400 in fundmg.
The largest of the projects was the
Union Passenger Tenninal with serVIce streets,
sewer lines, and a subway beneath the tracks.
Construction was actually begun before the
year's funding ran out. .
Meanwhile, drastic cuts in personnel m all
the departments administered by the Board of
Public Works had been required. In the Bureau
of Engineering, the hours of regular employ-
ees were reduced, with less than half the staff
continuing a forty-hour week.,rhe total num-
ber of employees at the nommal
week fell from 2,271 in the already restncted
prior year to 1,787 in the report year. At the
PUBLIC WORKS' 313
t · e there was a substantial increase in same 1m,
the workload. The work increased, not because
f h b d's own undertakings but because oteoar .
it had been made responsible for comphance
with the federal requirement that each
pplication for funding had to be accompamed
a detailed proposal by the local
uthorities. Additional deSign work was gen-
:rated by the city's cooper.ation with the
. .. f H1'ghways to Improve thorough DIVISlOn 0 .
fares within the city that constituted links con-
tl'ng main arterial routes. The street
nec . . . . hi th
opening and widening dlVIslOn Wlt n e
Bureau of Engineering, with a staff reduced to
thirty-six persons, was to
maps and calculations for use m
rights-of-way for the new highway lmks. State
and federal funds expended during the report
year for designing the improvements
$ 6 00 with an additional $2,368,519 m
3 , . 91
preparation for future fundmg.
The report for 1933-34 also notes a marked
increase in work for the engineering
due to a re-awakening of subdivision achVIty.
After nine years of decline, forty-five new tract
maps were flied, covering 510 acres. The report
points out that
The heavy storm of December 31,1933, com-
bined with the depleted forces of personnel
d I ck of funds for street maintenance work
an a .
b ght forcibly to the attention of the city
rou . ..
the desirability of requiring a certam mlm-
mum of street improvement construction at
the time subdivision maps are recorded.
At the end of the report year, tract maps were
pending approval that would add another
twenty miles of streets by develop-
ers for dedication to the Clty. "
Plans to take advantage of a slgmficant
effort on the part of the United States
. 1 Survey (USGs) to extend the geodehc con-
Ica .. ted
trol network to local authonhes were repor
314· PATRICIA ADLER-INGRAM
to have been delayed by staff reductions. The
Engineering Bureau had completed in previ-
ous years about half of the district maps cov-
eringthe city; utilizing the USGS survey, but in
the report year only about 4 percent of the
remaining area could be mapped. The objec-
tive of the project was to prepare district maps
for the entire city area on a scale of one hun-
dred feet to the inch, with coordinated center
lines permitting better alignments of tract and
jurisdictional boundaries.
Depression constraints were also reflected
in the activities of the sewer design division.
With a staff reduced to forty-two persons, the
division was called upon to compile plans and
data for applications to the CWA, PWA, and the
State Emergency Relief Administration.
Although sanitary sewers were planned and
construction actually begun during the year
on federal projects valued at $104,222, and
another $636,700 in projects were planned but
not started, the report year fell substantially
below the needs of the city. A chart summariz-
ing mileage and value of sewer line improve-
ments since 1911-12 shows the total value to
have reached the highest level in 1927-28 when
$29,65
1
,067 was reported as compared with the
level for the 1933-34 report year, including fed-
erally funded projects, for a combined total of
only $3,157,456.
92
Mayor Frank Shaw continued in his post
from 1933 to 1938, when he was accused of cor-
ruption. He was recalled, despite the backing
of the Los Angeles Times. The old Good Govern-
ment forces were mobilized again and acted
together to elect a reform mayor to finish out
Shaw's unexpired term. The Municipal League
played a leading part alongside a new nonpar-
tisan group, the Citizens Independent Vice
Investigating Committee (CIVIC), which had
spearheaded the publicity and circulated the
recall petition. Their candidate was Fletcher E.
Bowron, a conservative Republican, known as
an honest public servant and highly respected
as a superior court judge. Taking office in 1938,
he immediately asked all sitting commission-
ers to resign, as was customary. He proceeded
to reconstitute entirely a number of commis-
sions. Mayor Shaw's well-known practice of
favoring certain contractors for city jobs
brought into question the integrity of the
Board of Public Works. All five members were
replaced. The bureau chiefs, being civil serv-
ice appointees, continued at their assigned
posts.
The annual report for 1939 presents an
organization chart detailing twenty-eight pub-
lic works divisions reporting to five bureau
chiefs who, in turn, reported to the city engi-
neer. There is no indication of the position or
the oversight responsibility of the Board of
Public Works on this particular chart. In line
with Bowron's objective of bringing a more
rational structure into the governance of the
city, the bureaus under the control of the board
were more clearly defined by function.
Accounting, formerly performed in the Bureau
of Engineering, was established as a separate
bureau in the 1941-42 budget, bringing the
total number of bureaus to six.
93
The 1925 charter specified the responsibility
of the Board of Public Works for awarding city
contracts in an unbiased, competitive, and
open manner. All meetings were to be open to
the public for comment and questions. The
board convened three times a week, with
Wednesday reserved for the opening of bids. A
ritual gradually evolved whereby the secretary
of the board entered the committee room at 10
AM carrying the box of sealed bids. With appro-
priate solemnity; the bids were opened in full
public view. A protocol was developed for chal-
lenges to bids, counter proposals, and the pres-
entation of performance bonds by the bidders.
Board members were required to be strictly
impartial in examining and comparing the
bids, and to be guided by reports from the
bureau chiefs most directly involved in the proj-
ect for which the bids were being obtained!' It
was an accepted practice, however, that the
councilmen whose districts would be affected
by the project would have an opportunity to
review and comment on plans in advance. The
protocol for bidding was generally respected
during the Bowron years.
In May 1940 President Roosevelt called for
the building of fifty thousand war planes
within the coming calendar year. Los Angeles,
with its growing airframe-production facili-
ties, found itself directly involved in the war
effort. Since 1938 Lockheed, Northrop, North
American, and Douglas Aircraft had been fill-
ing orders for war planes from Britain, France,
and the United States military. Now, "the Pres-
ident was asking the aircraft industry to turn
out in one year as many planes as had been
manufactured in the United States since the
invention of flight."95
The expanding aircraft plants and the shops
of subcontractors supplying component parts
looked to the Board of Public Works to provide
access roads, sewer lines, and storm drains to
serve their needs. New tract deVelopments
sprang up to supply housing near the jobs for
incoming workers. The tracts, as usual,
required automobile access and sanitation
services, all funded by the city. As wartime con-
struction was getting underway, Los Angeles
suffered another major flood. "For bom the Los
Angeles and San Gabriel Rivers, the inunda-
tionofMarch 1938 was the flood of greatest vol-
ume on record."96
This flood marked a change in the role of the
Board of Public Works in controlling the Los
Angeles River. Beginning with this disastrous
event, the board was no longer the agency of
first response. The federal government stepped
in promptly, first, to protect from devastation
its war-industry commitments, and second, to
PUBLIC WORKS' 315
utilize the Army Corps of Engineers' efforts
that had been instituted in 1935 as part of the
unemployment-relief programs. The corps
brought in huge grading and paving machines.
Its most noteworthy accomplishment was
paving the rivers of the Los Angeles basin.
Upon completion, the installations were han-
dled by the Los Angeles County Flood Control
District.
Mayor Bowron instituted a major emergency
council in 1940 and followed wim me appoint-
ment of a fifteen-member Defense Council of
the City of Los Angeles, later designated as the
War Council. In the Department of Public
Works, an eighth bureau was added by estab-
lishing the post of inspector of public works and
bringing together inspection duties formerly
assigned among the other bureaus. Publication
of the public works annual reports was sus-
pended during the years of World War II as part
of the national effort to economize on all non-
military activities. The workforce was subject
to the Selective Service Act of 1940, affecting
directly me younger employees and increasing
the workload for remaining personnel.
Major local real estate developers were quick
to realize that the incoming war workers pre-
sented a market for tract houses located near
war plants. Fritz B. Burns and Fred Marlow
were foremost among the subdividers, prefer-
ring now to be known as "community builders."
Fred Marlow acknowledged that they had for-
merly done nothing more than "file a record of
the survey map, crown up the streets with a
blade pulled by mules, and sprinkle a little
decomposed granite on the roads."9' By the
time the war plants had drawn in new cus-
tomers for housing, the developers were able
to take advantage of federal financing to stabi-
lize their operation and had learned how to
comply with federal standards for lot design
and tract improvements. Although now the
tract streets were paved, the tracts provided no
316' PATRICIA ADLER-INGRAM
police stations, fire stations, or emergency
medical facilities, and space for social centers
or churches was simply absent. Provision for
access roads, drainage, and all other custom-
ary services devolved upon the city and the
Board of Public Works.
On October 14,1940, Congress approved the
Lanham Act, "a measure designed to provide
relief to specified industrial areas with an exist-
ing or anticipated future shortfall in adequate
housing for workers in crucial defense indus-
tries."" In March 1945 Mayor Bowron sent a
telegram to President Roosevelt: "I appeal to
you for help in connection with a critical hous-
ing shortage in Los Angeles."" The federal gov-
ernment responded by providing 90 percent of
the funding to build five permanent and
twenty-two temporary housing projects,
including installation of the fifteen hundred
Quonset units called the Rodger Young Village.
The Q!1onset huts went up in the section of Grif-
fith Park that now accommodates the zoo and
the Autry Museum. All public housing, even
the later permanent projects that were more
thoughtfully designed and relatively expansive,
continued to depend upon local agencies for
infrastructure beyond the boundaries of the
project.
Wartime population growth brought
increased pressure on all resources adminis-
tered by the Board of Public Works, especially
the sewage treatment and disposal facilities.
The intensive development of industry and
housing south of town involved not only the
city but great tracts of unincorporated land, as
well as a number of smaller incorporated cities.
The county favored the formation of sanitation
districts along topographic and geographical
lines, without regard to jurisdictional bound-
aries. The first such county venture, the "South
Bay Cities District," opted to connect to the
city's Hyperion Sewage Treatment Plant.
According to county supervisor John Anson
Ford, the move was ill-advised. In his opinion,
the city had "a very sorry record with its sewage
system: huge pipes had collapsed or disinte-
grated and a pollution menace at the Hyperion
plant had proved costly to correct."'00
The Annual Report of the Department of
Public Works for 1956-57 notes that the
continuing crisis in the city's sewerage system
and the means to alleviate it again engrossed
the attention of the members of the board.
Considerable progress was made during the
year on a number of elements in the $60 mil-
lion program, financed by a public-approved
bond issue, to expand, improve and modify
the vast system of sewage flow, treatment and
disposal facilities. '"
The report details two large projects in the pro-
gram that would
1 extend the ocean outfall to seven miles,
making it "probably the largest of its kind
in the world," and
2 enlarge and modify the Hyperion Treat-
mentPlant.
In the closing weeks of the report year, six miles
of the outfall conduit were "pulled" out to sea
and laid to rest in a canyon some three hundred
feet below the surface.
In this report year, the board inaugurated the
citywide collection of residential combustible
rubbish in a campaign to combat the ever-
increasing smog. Up to this time each house-
hold had disposedofits own rubbish by burning
it in a backyard incinerator. A fleet of trucks fit-
ted with special chassis now rolled through the
streets to pick up the rubbish and haul it to land-
fills and central incinerators. The board had pre-
pared carefully for the vast new program, from
planning collection routes to testing truck
design to recruiting and training drivers and
helpers. The annual report stated that "prepa-
rations and planning had paid off. The verdict
of the public: 'Well done.' "'02 Backyard inciner-
ators were outlawed the following year.
Subdivision activity intensified, with 450
new maps flied over 4,926 undeveloped acres,
with 126 miles of new streets required to serve
14,279 new building lots. The postwar subdivi-
sions no longer depended on streetcar or
interurban rail lines. In fact, the end of the war
signaled the beginning of the rapid abandon-
ment by transit companies of miles of right-of-
way. The rail lines were taken over by the city.
The removal of the rails from some of the
busiest commercial streets improved automo-
bile travel and, on many routes, permitted the
creation of landscaped medians and left-turn
pockets. The work was handled by the Bureau
of Street Maintenance, which had been created
as a separate agency in 1947 through the divi-
sion of the Bureau of Maintenance and Sanita-
tioninto two bureaus. By 1956-57 it had a force
of 2,002 full-time and 66 part-time employees
responsible for lot cleaning, street tree plant-
ing, trimming and maintenance, street use
inspection, and, of course, maintaining the
thoroughfares.
The city's wartime civil defense and disas-
ter board had been abolished in 1951 but cer-
tain of the duties and responsibilities of the
board were reassigned among the public
works, police, fire, communication, and hous-
ing departments. The Civil Defense and Disas-
ter Corps Public Works Division reported in
1956-57 that it was continuing to conduct a
four-day basic training course with graduates
of the course now numbering thousands of
workers equipped for any type of rescue oper-
ation. Training included "damage surveys,
maintenance of streets, bridges, sewers, storm
drains and other facilities, debris clearance and
preparation of plans for the safety of occupants
of city buildings."'0'
The total number of bureaus reporting to
the public works board in 1956-57 was brought
PUBLIC WORKS' 317
to twelve by the board's administrative action
to create a bureau of transportation. This
action grew out of efforts to bring into more
rational order the various tasks of dealing with
downtown parking, beginning with the city's
own parking facilities under the City Hall.
Meanwhile, however, another city agency, the
department of traffic, had been created in 1953
to address the broader problems of traffic man-
agement. The city council had been influenced
to take action by growing public dissatisfac-
tion and by a series of studies initiated by the
Automobile Club of Southern California. The
studies, begun in 1948 and continued into 1966,
were bringing into focus the need for better
long-range planning for all aspects of automo-
bile travel, as well as planning for the problems
that had arisen from the increasing complex-
ity of related tasks being handled by various
local agencies. 10'
Following a long illness, Lloyd Aldrich
retired from the position of city engineer in
1955, whereupon Mayor Bowron appointed a
thirty-year civil servant from the engineering
department, Lyall Pardee, as his successor.
Pardee's early career was devoted to street and
freeway design. As city engineer he was instru-
mental in procuring more than $200 million
in state gas tax funds for the city. He contin-
ued to serve until 1972.'05
The overall form of city governance was dra-
matically changed during the reforms of the
Bowron administration with passage of a char-
ter amendment on May 29, 1951, creating the
office of city administrative officer to succeed
the Bureau of Budget and Efficiency. The new
office was given responsibility for bringing the
procedures and practices of all city agencies
into more rational and consistent order. The
Board of Public Works, with its diverse respon-
sibilities and revenue sources, was subject to
intensive examination. The city administrative
officer questioned the efficacy of a commis-
318' PATRICIA ADLER-INGRAM
sion rather than a single administrator to man-
age the city's most diverse agency. The annual
report for 1956-57 carried the board's own
defense of its efficacy:
The needs of the city are well considered as the
five-manfnll-time Board in open public meet-
ings discusses the constant flow of important
projects, policies and plans, and by this
method of open debate arrives at decisions
that represent the thinking of five well quali-
fied men and their technical aides rather than
the summary judgment of one powerful man-
ager.
I06
Ten years later the board was experiencing
more explicit criticism from the cityadminis-
trative officer focused now on its bureau of
accounting. The chief accountant, J. L. Barclay,
had occupied his position since 1954. He
announced in the annual report of 1967 that
the old concept and practice in municipal
departments throughout the land was tossed
onto the heap of discarded traditions by the
Bureau of Accounting this year. This practice
involves the err.ployment of an outside con-
sultant or management firm to investigate
some barnacled procedure, a long-established
way of doing things wrong, or a means of
improving the production, or the service, or
the efficiency of the hired help.'07
The chief accountant sought to satisfy the
requirement for a full-scale outside audit by
contracting for an independent audit director
to supervise a five-man team of city employ-
ees, three from within the Bureau of Account-
ing and two from the new special services
division of the Department of Public Works.
The team reviewed all cost accounting systems,
with emphasis on the Bureau of Engineering
and Bureau of Street Maintenance reporting,
and recommended changes designed to pro-
vide more timely and reliable job-cost infor-
mation, billing procedures, and collections
from the public, other agencies, and the vari-
ous tax and bond funds. Attention was focused
on the new special services division as well,
which had been assigned the task of devising
a system for analyzing payroll and other costs
and assuring full reimbursement. Originally
this division had been assigned the task of fact-
finding after heavy rains in June 1965 triggered
disastrous landslides that closed roads and
destroyed hillside properties. The division had
also worked on the Planning Department's
Model Cities Program and the mayor's propos-
als for a new equestrian center in Griffith Park.
It had been created, however, with no formal
set of procedures for paying its own way.
The Board of Public Works also announced
in its annual report for 1966-67 that the first
steps had been taken toward the redevelop-
ment of the Venice canal system and the con-
struction of a major public equestrian center.
Construction of a convention hall and exhibi-
tion center was in the design phase, with the
preliminary plans for streets, storm drains,
sewers, a lighting system, and utility services
for the thirty-five-acre development site on
Figueroa Street at Pico Boulevard well under-
way. The Bureau of Right of Way and Land
acquired through purchase and condemnation
some seventy-seven parcels for the project.
City engineer Lyall Pardee, calling his bureau
the "heartbeat unit of public works construc-
tion in Los Angeles," described remarkable
strides toward demonstrating that "effluent
(waste water resulting from sewage treatment
processes) can economically be reclaimed for
use in such diverse fields as irrigation and
industry." 108 In line with a directive the board
had received from Mayor Sam Yorty, the city
engineer ordered the suspension of work on an
additional San Fernando Valley relief sewer that
included a twelve-mile large-bore tunnel
through the Santa Monica Mountains in favor
of the new wastewater reclamation plants that
were expected to render a tunnel unnecessary.
The Bureau of Sanitation announced that its
operations had been facilitated by the acquisi-
tion of data-processing programs to utilize the
city's IBM 360 EDP system. Daily operating data
could now be key-punched by remote control
from each of the six refuse collection stations.
The bureau had begun to search for new land-
fill sites and to experiment with techniques for
surcharging the partially completed fill with
borrowed material for better control of settle-
ment and easier transition to a new land use.
Experiments were also underway to evaluate
the kinds of vegetation that might facilitate the
re-use oflandfill areas, the appropriate irriga-
tion rates, and the possibility of obtaining
compost from the sites.
The Bureau of Contract Administration pre-
sented statistics on high-rise construction
projects in the city during the decade since the
removal of the height-limit restrictions in 1957.
Based on the number and value of permits
issued for excavations in the public right-of-
way, the high point had been reached in the
current report year, with eighty-two permits
issued and the value of foundation work
inspected totaling $1,640,830.109 The annual
report failed to provide information regarding
provisions, if any, for the subsurface utility and
sewer lines that would be needed by future
population densities for which the high-rise
structures were designed.
In this report year, the Bureau of Assess-
ments appended to the customary report on
the value of its proceedings a justification-
in fact an appreciation-of its role in building
the city. Assessment proceedings, the report
stated,
are about the best way that can be conceived
by which a group of neighboring property
owners may jointly start an action which will
result in the construction of some form of
PUBLIC WORKS' 319
public works needed or wanted by the com-
munityin the interests of public health, safety,
convenience, enhancement. or other objec-
tive; and with its cost spread equitably and
with justice; and with sufficient time allowed
so that payments can be made without hard-
ship to the property owner. And by the appli-
cation of the various Assessment Acts (most
often used is the Improvement Act of 1911) the
City of Los Angeles has been improved with-
out cost to the general taxpayer.
l1O
On February 5,1975, the city council passed
a motion requesting that the city attorney pre-
pare the necessary documents to place a char-
ter amendment on the ballot for the May 1975
election that would replace the Board of Pub-
lic Works with a general manager or director.
The matter was referred to the charter and
administrative code committee that, in tum,
referred it to the city administrative officer.
The city administrative officer (CAO) studied
the ramifications of such a change for more
than a year, reporting back to the charter and
administrative code committee onJuly 16,1976.
He noted that, "Past studies have cited the
great increase in complexity of the Department
of Public Works, problems in expediting proj-
ects, and advantages of centralized planning,
direction, and control as reasons for supplant-
ing the Board with a single executive as depart-
ment head."'ll He recommended a study of
several alternative structural changes and fur-
ther recommended that the change be made by
ordinance rather than charter amendment. He
pointed out that the council had passed an
ordinance in 1949 establishing a public
works-administrator position but the position
had never been filled. He noted that the Little
Hoover Commission in 1952 had recommended
a general manager's position for public works
but that a conforming charter amendment pre-
pared by the CAO had been rejected by the vot-
ers in the May 1953 election. Again in 1960 the
320· PATRICIA ADLER-INGRAM
CAD had recommended that the old ordinance
providing for an administrator be fully acti-
vated. This recommendation had been dis-
cussed by the council, but on November 22,
1961, the council had voted to "receive and frle"
the proposal. 112
The Board of Public Works turned to its own
special services division for an analysis and
rebuttal of the CAD'S report. This report,
adopted by the board on August 6, 1976, con-
cluded that
It does not appear that the proposal to replace
the Board of Public Works with a general man-
ager or director is cost effective, organization-
ally sound [or 1 practical. The proposal does
nothing to change the level or quality of
department services. However, it does increase
departmental operating costs without atten-
dant benefits. Furthermore, change for the
sake of change is counterproductive and can
deteriorate efficiency and morale of a depart-
ment.
113
At this point, the council's charter and
administrative code committee noted that a
full management audit of the Board and
Department of Public Works had never been
performed and asked the CAD to estimate the
time required and the cost of such a study. The
CAD estimated that the audit would require 120
days and cost $40,000. The audit was author-
ized by the council committee.
The CAD completed the first version of the
audit in July 1977. The report not only amplified
the original criticism that "The Board of Pub-
lic Works, as a plural executive comprised of
political appointees, cannot effectively manage
the magnitude and diversity of programs for
which the Department of Public Works is now
responsible," but went on to find that several
other city departments should also be "restruc-
tured on the basis of common objectives to
focus on functional responsibility for major
programs, facilitate better management coor-
dination and reduce administrative costS."'14
The report analyzed four organizational
alternatives for the Board of Public Works. The
least disruptive added an administrator and
transferred the board's construction and
industrial coordinating and expediting officer
(primarily serving the motion-picture indus-
try) to the mayor's office. The second alterna-
tive reduced the board to a part-time advisory
status, installed a full-time professional gen-
eral manager to head the department, but oth-
erwise retained most of the existing bureaus.
The third alternative went further, to combine
functions and reduce the number of bureaus
from twelve to five. The fourth alternative elim-
inated the board and the department of public
works altogether and re-shuffled the bureaus
into five new entities reporting directly to the
mayor and city council. All four alternatives
recommended the elimination of the special
services division, the new Latin-American
affairs section, and all of the alternatives
dropped references to equal-opportunitypro-
grams, opportunities for women and other
outreach measures despite the fact that these
were mandated by projects involving federal
funding.
The Bureau and Department ofTransporta-
tion under the jurisdiction of the Board of Pub-
lic Works came in for extensive criticism. The
report found that
responsibility for the planning, operation,
and maintenance of a transportation system
in Los Angeles is now divided among a nUm-
ber of city departments and outside agencies
such as SCAG, SCRTD, CALTRANS, and the
recently established Los Angeles County
Transportation Commission. Federal agen-
cies, too, are involved insofar as they set
requirements and priorities for grant funded
improvement projects.
The CAD recommended that all or portions of
eight city departments and bureaus be com-
bined into a single organization to present a
solid position on transportation needs in rela-
tion to the planning activities of other govern-
ment agencies.
The Board of Public Works submitted its
response to the CAD's audit on December 21,
1977, in the form of a comprehensive, two-vol-
ume report. Included were detailed explana-
tions from each of the bureau chiefs describing
the current nature and scope of their work and
the disruption envisioned if drastic reorgani-
zation were to be mandated. The consensus of
the bureau chiefs was that the audit proposals
addressed neither the details for implementa-
tion nor the impact on operations. The propos-
als had been presented as a concept without
evidence that benefits would be derived, with-
out attention to financing the changes, and
without "awareness or concern for the seven
thousand employees of the department, all of
whom may lose seniority rights and some
of whom may lose their jobs."'lS As volume
two of the response, unsolicited letters from
the public were presented. Over a hundred let-
ters from individuals, church groups, schools,
businessmen, and other public agencies
expressed appreciation of services expedited
by members of the Board of Public Works.
Illustrations of the board's liaison service to
the community included providing delivery of
palm fronds from street maintenance yards
in time for Easter and Succoth celebrations,
scheduling ramps to be installed at neighbor-
hood crosswalks, arranging tours for schools,
accommodating visiting dignitaries wanting
to visit the water-treatment centers, and help-
ing with a university survey of public policies
regarding natural disasters.
One element of the proposed reorganiza-
tion, the creation of a new department of trans-
portation, gradually worked its way to the
PUBLIC WORKS· 321
forefront of the discussion. The Department of
City Planning prepared a report alerting the
mayor and city council to the problems of cre-
ating a specialized agency in a very complex
field. The report noted that
Simply by merging all activities that happen
to bear somewhere in their title the word
"transportation" does not make a logical case
for insuring that the best types of actions will
emerge to meet citizen needs or that the city
will be able to "speakwitlr one voice" on trans-
portation matters.
116
The city planner also pointed out that state
law and the city charter required that trans-
portation planning be part of comprehensive
planning, along with land use and environ-
mental planning. The Planning Department
offered its own organizational chart for the
proposed transportation department, de-
emphasizing the planning aspects while advo-
cating the creation of a transportation advisory
board.
The Police Department was drawn into the
discussion because the CAD'S audit had recom-
mended that traffic functions might rationally
be brought into the new transportation depart-
ment. The chief of police cautioned against the
proposal, citing, "the close relationship traffic
and parking control have to crowd and crime
control during special events," and noting that
"the people of the city have learned over a long
period of time to call the Police Department
when troubled over a parking or traffic control
problem. To educate them to call the Depart-
ment of Transportation may be an impossible
task."117
The council approved the proposal, as
amended to reflect concerns of the police and
planning departments, to create a Department
of Transportation. The council voted to delay
for six months the consideration of the overall
reorganization of the Bureau and Department
322' PATRICIA ADLER-INGRAM
of Public Works. The matter was placed on the
calendar for October 17, 1978. The council's
chieflegislative analyst took the occasion to
warn that the passage of proposition 13 (a
homeowners tax-relief measure to prevent rate
increases unless properties changed hands) in
the coming election "may bring about signifi-
cant organizational changes on a citywide
basis."'18 In anticipation of diminished taxrev-
enue, he went on to advance two alternatives
of his own to the CAO'S management audit
report on the reorganization of the Bureau/
Department of Public Works. He proposed that
the existing bureaus be combined into two
operating divisions, but that the five-man full-
time board be retained as administrator with
the power to award contracts.
The matter of reorganizing the Department
of Public Works remained on the council cal-
endar for ten years, being taken up, delayed,
returned to committee for updates, again
delayed, but always being re-activated when
procedural questions regarding any aspect of
public works arose. The board continued its
operations, making occasional changes in the
organization, usually in response to budget
cuts, but maintaining the old ritual of bid-
opening and the open-meeting policy. The
board guarded its power to award contracts,
buttressing its position by a firm policy of
awards going to the lowest bidder except where
that bidder failed to demonstrate the capacity
to perform.
The annual report for the year ending June
30, 1981, the bicentennial year of the city, cov-
ered the activities of seven bureaus: accounting,
engineering, sanitation, street maintenance,
street lighting, inspector of public works, and
management-employee services. The report
states:
This Board of Public Works is committed to
serving the public and forming a partnership
with the private sector. Where earlier boards
saw to the deVelopment of services using city
forces, the modern board administers the
programs and has other people building its
projects,119
The board had cut the number of bureaus by
merging the duties of the Contract Compliance
Bureau with those of the Contract Administra-
tion Bureau. The responsibility for monitoring
and enforcing equal opportunity, affirmative
action, and other federal labor regulations on
city-awarded contracts was assumed by the
expanded Bureau of Contract Administration.
Among the major projects in the 1980-8rreport
year was the construction of the large Sepul-
veda Water Reclamation plant, begun in 1981. It
was financed through75 percent federal grants
and 12.5 percent state grants, with the balance
being drawn from city bond funds. The work
was performed by private contractors. Also
under construction were the C. Erwin Piper
Technical Center, an administration building
at the Hyperion Treatment plant, the Terminal
Island Sewage Treatment Plant, and the East
Valley Relief Sewer System. In preparation for
the Olympic Games to be held in 1984, the Board
of Public Works did the design work, awarded
contracts, and monitored construction of a new
terminal and extensive improvements in run-
ways and passenger facilities at LAX. The board
also participated in a citywide beautification
program by planting new street trees, particu-
larly jacarandas that were expected to display a
crown of blue flowers during the Games.
The computers in use throughout the
Department of Public Works were being up-
graded to provide for direct entry of data. The
Bureau of Accounting realized immediate sav-
ings as the need for key-punch operators
diminished. At the end of the report year, the
greatest need was for specialized software to
handle the cost accounting involved in recov-
ering the city's expenditures under the state
and federal programs. Throughout the 1980s,
the Board of Public Works contracted with out-
side consultants for technical computer serv-
ices as capital improvement funds became
available from a wide range of sources, each
with its own accountability standards that
required special adaptations to the software
programs. The city received $44 million in
clean water grants and over $8 million from the
federal Urban Program (later administered
through the Housing and Urban Develop-
ment's Block Grant Program). The revenue
received through the various county alloca-
tions totaled almost $6 million, while the State
Gas Tax Allocation exceeded $33 million.
Working with grant funds required a higher
level of cash management in order to assure
that money would be available to make
progress payments to contractors. CALTRANS,
as administrator of the state gas-tax funds, and
the city administrative officer of Los Angeles,
as recipient, agreed upon a program to be
administered by the Board of Public Works
whereby grant anticipation notes were sold on
the bond market to generate "up front" money
for eligible street improvement projects.
'20
The administration of Tom Bradley (1973-93)
placed an emphasis on service to the public
that encouraged the Board of Public Works to
emphasize its long-standing policy of open
meetings where a broad spectrum of citizen
concerns could be heard and acted upon. Ever
since the first board, appointed in 1906, had
been inundated by complaints from house-
wives about the late pick-up of garbage, the
bureaus and departments handling public
works had taken pride in being able to respond
to the needs of individual citizens. Major
improvements in the city hall telephone serv-
ice included "hotlines" in each department for
the use of citizens in directly reporting pot-
holes, sidewalk breaks, street-tree problems,
trash accumulations, sewer odors, and street-
light failures. Complaints received by the
PUBLIC WORKS' 323
mayor's office or through the offices of the fif-
teen council members were also referred or
scheduled for a public hearing through the
hotlines. In addition, the Board of Public Works
cooperated with other city agencies to create a
"one-stop" permit-processing center to help
the building industry and property owners
obtain at a single public counter all the permits
and approvals needed for construction. '2'
Donald C. Tillman was appointed city engi-
neer in 1972, having served as a member of the
Board of Public Works and as board president,
the only civil servant ever to do so. He had
received B.S. and M.S. degrees in civil engineer-
ing from the California Institute of Technology,
served in the U.S. Navy Engineer Corps during
World War II, spent twelve years as an engineer-
ing assistant with the city, and was eminently
well qualified to guide the work force of twelve
hundred men and women comprising the pub-
lic works department in the postwar years. He
took the lead in focusing public attention on
the aesthetic aspects of city projects, issuing a
manual of design for agency use. He also
emphasized emergency preparedness, prepar-
ing a training manual to cover procedures for
responding in the aftermath of fires, floods, or
earthquakes. Tillman was responsible for the
engineering and development of modern water-
reclamation plants, such as that at Terminal
Island with its egg-shaped sludge digesters. He
improved effluent treatment levels at the Hype-
rion Sewage Treatment Plant, installing an
energy-recovery system. Tillman also began
construction on the Sepulveda Water Reclama-
tion plant designed to process wastewater
upstream for reuse in park areas.
l22
By the time of the board's annual report for
1986-87 the computer program for tracking
disbursements from the clean water grant pro-
gram had been expanded to include a financial
management information system. Full-scale
trials were performed, and on December 11,
324· PATRICIA ADLER-INGRAM
1986, the system was adopted as the standard
for cost accounting citywide.
Efforts to separate and recycle household
rubbish, begun twenty years earlier, when Sam
Yortywas the mayor, were reactivated through
a public relations campaign and the introduc-
tion of dual-purpose refuse collection trucks
designed to separate recyclables and refuse at
the time of pick up. A limited number of the
trucks were assigned on a test basis. A prelim-
inary cost analysis showed a net cost to the city
of $1.24 per unit per month or $88.09 per ton of
recyclable material, projected citywide. Sav-
ings in landfill space were not significant. San-
itation problems on a much larger scale
involved the upgrading of the Hyperion
Sewage Treatment Plant spurred by public
demands that ocean discharge be discontin-
ued. The plant was now more efficiently
removing solids from the wastewater, deliver-
ing reclaimed waterto irrigation systems, gen-
erating electric power by burning gases
generated by the process, and reducing odor
emissions. The East Valley interceptor sewer
was nearing completion, allowing the Bureau
of Sanitation to meet a court deadline for shift-
ing the processing of effluent to the new Don-
ald C. Tillman Water Reclamation plant.
The Los Angeles Public Library was virtu-
ally destroyed by a fire in 1986, requiring the
Board of Public Works to assign staff from the
Engineering Department to participate in the
relocation of services and the planning of
reconstruction and expansion of a new library
structure. Other major projects reported in tIre
1986-87 annual report included improvements
at LAX and Ontario Airport. Air-cargo facili-
ties, new runways, and a new passenger termi-
nal were in the initial construction phase at
Ontario. Work on the Metro Rail line between
Los Angeles and Long Beach was begun,
requiring the relocation of utilities, sanitation
and street facilities. The Board of Public Works
also had the responsibility for inspections on
all excavation permit jobs along the route.
'23
The annual report of the board for the years
1990-91 reflected increasing emphasis on envi-
ronmentally beneficial handling of all aspects
of public works. Each of the seven bureaus
emphasized contributions to recycling pro-
grams, preventing pollution, improving sys-
tems-management, and promoting innovative
community outreach while performing an
increased range of work.
l24
The voters indicated their approval of
preservation and emergency preparedness by
voting in 1990 for Proposition G, a $376 million
bond issue to upgrade city-owned buildings
and bridges to current seismic-design stan-
dards. The Bureau of Engineering developed a
proposal for the seismic upgrade of City Hall,
focusing not only on withstanding earthquake
forces without collapse but also on preserving
the existing masonry, providing for maximum
energy efficiency and preserving historic
aspects of the architecture. Together with an
engineering consultant, A. C. Martin and Asso-
ciates-successor to Albert C. Martin, one of
the original architects for city hall-the city
engineer adopted as a goal the reinforcement
of tIre building to survive a quake of magnitude
8.1 on the San Andreas earthquake fault and 6.1
on the Elysian Park fault. The city subsequently
adopted a plan for "base isolation" whereby
City Hall foundations were to be cushioned
from earth movement and retrofitted with
reinforced concrete shear walls.l25
In 1992 a disastrous civil disturbance aris-
ing from a police incident marred the close of
the twenty-year mayoralty of Tom Bradley.
Burning and looting sweptthe city for six days,
leaving fifty-five people dead and the city in
shock. Bradley rallied the public agencies and
took the lead in forming a citizens group to
raise funds forrebuilding. Damage to the city's
infrastructure proved to be extensive.
The emergency efforts required from every
level of the Department of Public Works had
not been completed when, in 1994, a severe
earthquake with the epicenter in Northridge
caused new destruction. City Hall sustained
major structural damage. The engineering
department immediately joined with A. C.
Martin and Associates to assess the nature and
extent of the new problems. The building was
inspected in minute detail by the seismic-engi-
neering team already at work, augmented by
newly hired specialists. The cost estimates
were expanded by an estimated $153 million.
The entire project was approved by the coun-
cil on July 29, 1994, a little more than six
months after the quake. The council voted in
fact for a very thoroughgoing and innovative
retrofitting of City Hall from the subbasement
to the tower.
The census of 1990 enumerated 3,485,390
people in the City of Los Angeles. By the year
2000 there were 3,694,823 people in the city. The
total regional population thatlooked to the city
for support in some aspect of daily life was even
greater because of shared transportation ties,
interconnections of the infrastructure, and the
interlacing of jurisdictions. Keeping the city
running continued to grow ever more complex,
just as it had since the founding of the pueblo.
Public works continued to rely on the probity
and energy of a few individuals to carry out
wave after wave of improvements while the
details of upkeep and maintenance of every
aspect of the infrastructure, from computer
programs to earthmoving equipment, contin-
ued to require unflagging attention. The city's
multinrillion dollar improvement projects were
carried forward at the same time and by the
same agency that responded to citizens
demanding the repair of potholes after the rains
while a prompt response to the needs of the
public remained as important as in the days of
weed-choked zanjas.
PUBLIC WORKS' 325
NOTES
Juan Crespi, ADescription of Distant Roads: Originaljoumals
of the First Expeditioninto California, 1769-1770, ed. and trans.
AlanK. Brown(San Diego: SanDiego State UniversityPress,
2001),337-38.
2 J. M. Guinn, A History ofCalifornia and anExtended History of
Los Angeles and Its Environs, 3 vals. (Los Angeles: Historic
Record Company, 1915), 1: n
3 Harry Kelsey, ''A New Look at the Founding of Old Los
Angeles," in The Founding Documents of Los Angeles: ABilin-
gual Edition, ed. Doyce B. Nunis Jr. (Los Angeles: Zamorano
Club and Historical Society of Southern California, 2004),
3-15.
4 Leonard Pitt and Dale Pitt, Los Angeles A to Z:
dia of the City and County (Berkeley and Los Angeles:
sity of California Press, 1997), 327.
5 Neal Harlow, California Conquered: War and Peace on the
Pacific, 1846-1850 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
California Press, 1982), 337·
6 Ibid., 324.
7 Maurice H. Newmark and Marco R. Newmark, Census of the
City and County of Los Angeles, California,for the Year 1850:
Together with an Analysis and an Appendix (Los Angeles:
Press, 1929), n8.
8 Burton L. Hunter, The Evolution of Municipal Organization
and Administrative Practice in the City of Los Angeles (Los
Angeles: Parker, Stone & Baird Co., 1933), IS.
9 Municipal Reference Department of the Los Angeles Public
Library, comp., "Chronological Record of Los Angeles City
Officials, 1850-1985," typescript, 3 vols. (Los Angeles: Los
Angeles Public Library, 1938; reprinted 1966: Project
Works ProgressAdministration), 1: 3-7.
10 Blake Gumbrecht, TheLosAn9eles River:ltsLife,Death,
sible Return (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1999), 131-
11 Harris Newmark, Sixty Years in Southern California: 1853-1913,
Maurice H. and Marco R. Newmark, eds. (Los Angeles:
son's Book Shop, 1984), 211.
12 "Chronological Record," 1 (1857-1858): 7·
13 Hunter, The Evolution of Municipal Or9anizatton, 23·
14 W. W. Robinson, Maps of Los An9elesfromOrd's Survey of 1849
to the End of the Boom of the Ei9hties (Los Angeles: Dawson's
Book Shop, 1966), 16.
15 Newmark, Sixty Years, 33·
16 Francois D. Uzes, Chainin9 the Land: AHistory ofSurveyin9 in
California (Sacramento: Francois D. Uzes, 1977), 44-45·
17 Frank Lecouvrem, FromPrnssia to the Golden Gate: Letters and
Diary of the California Pioneer, Edited in Memory of Her Noble
Husband by Mrs.Josephine Rosanna Lecouvreur (New York:
Angelina Book Concern, 1906), 207, 308.
18 Frank Lecouvreur, letter, "To the Honorable the Mayor and
Cornmon Council of Los Angeles City, April 20, 1870," box
15, Collection, Huntington Library, San
Marino, California.
19 Robinson, Maps oiLos An9eles, 48.
20 Lecouvreur's field notebooks for the survey made in 1869,
in preparation for his map and report, are in the
ton Library.
326· PATRICIA ADLER-INGRAM
21 Lecouvreur, "To the Honorable the Mayor," 5.
22 Newmark, Years, 472.
23 Hunter, The Evolution of Municipal Or9anization, 23.
24 Ibid., 45.
25 "Chronological Record," 1 (1875-1876): 8.
26 M. C. Desnoyers, The Ordinances andResolutions of the City of
Los Angeles, AU9ust 19, 1872-ApriI8, 1875 (Los Angeles:
aId Publishing Co., 1875), 20.
27 W. W. Robinson, Los Angeles from the Days of the Pueblo:
T0gether with a Guide to the Historic Old Plaza Area Includin9
the Pueblo deLosAngeles State Historical Monument (San Fran-
cisco: California Historical Society, 1959), 78.
28 John W. Robinson, Southern California's FirstRailroad:The Los
Angeles and SanPedro Railroad, 1869-1873 (Los Angeles: Daw-
son's Book Shop, 1972), 80-89.
29 "Chronological Record," 1(1870-1871): 10.
30 Hunter, The Evolution of Municipal Or9anization, 57-59.
31 Ibid., 59.
32 John P. Hunt and Bernice Kimball, City of Los Angeles City
En9ineers 1855-1981, Prepared in conjunction with the City of
Los An9eles bicentennial observance by direction of City
neer Donald C. Tillman (Los Angeles: n.p., mimeographed,
[1981]) n.p.
33 Ibid., n.p.
34 Hunter, The Evolution of Municipal Or9anization (chart show-
ing Charter Organization of City of Los Angeles year 1889),
73-
35 Los Angeles Times, "Los Angeles Rainfall" (June 30, 2004).
Published at the close of each recording year, the graph
includes rainfall amounts beginning in 1894.
36 Los Angeles Board of Water Commissioners, ''Annual Report
for the fiscal year ending November 30,1902," 3, box 1055,
Los Angeles City Archives, C. Erwin Piper Technical Cen-
ter (cited hereafter as LACA).
37 Willard, The Herald'sHistory of Los Angeles City, 345.
38 Tom Sitton, The Haynes Foundation and
thropy in Los An9eles: A History of thejohn Randolph Haynes
andDoraHaynes Foundation (Los Angeles: Historical Society
of Southern California, 1999), 23.
39 Ibid., 25.
40 Dana W. Bartlett, TheBetterCity:ASociologicalStudy ofaMod-
ern City (Los Angeles: Neuner Company Press, 1907), 27-50.
41 E. R. Werdin, Street Superintendent, ''Annual Report of year
ending December 1, 1903," box C-2294, LACA.
42 L. H. Schwaebe, camp., ''Annual Report ofL. H. Schwaebe,
Auditor of the City of Los Angeles, For the Year Ending
November 30,1904" (Los Angeles: n.p., 1904), 98, 118-28,
167-80.
43 Pacific Outlook 7 (July 10,1907): 7. The Pacific Outlook had a
long-running arrangement with the Municipal League to
mail a weekly copy to each member. It also reported activ-
ities of the City Club.
44 "Statutes of California, Twenty-sixth Session," 147-65.
Office of the City Attorney, Los Angeles Law Library.
45 Street Superintendent, ''AnnualReportforyear1902-1903,''
box C-2294, LACA.
46 ''Annual Report of the City Engineer, Los Angeles, California
for the Year Ending November 30, 1904," box C-2294, LACA.
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
Ibid., transmittal letter.
Pitt, LosAngeIes Ato Z, 178.
Office of the Board of Public Works, "Annual Report,
December 15, 1906" (Typescript, n.p.) box C-I054, LACA.
This is the fIrst annual report issued by the Board of Public
76
Works.
Department of Public Works, ''Annual Report, 1981, Pref-
77
ace," box C-2011, LACA. This report includes numerous ret-
78
rospective quotations to memorialize the department's
seventy-five years of service.
Pitt, Los An9eles Ato Z, 191.
Street Superintendent, ''Annual Report for Year 1902-1903,"
5, boxC-2294, LACA.
79
Gumbrecht, The Los An9elesRiver, 115. 80
Mark H. Stevens, "The Road to Refonn: Los Angeles Muruc- 81
ipal Elections of 1909," Southern California Quarterly 86 (Fall
2004):208.
Pacific Outlook 7 (December 11, 1909): 3. 82
Pacific Outlook 7 (December 18, 1909): 3.
MartinJ. Schiesl, "Progressive Refonn in Los Angeles Under
Mayor Alexander, 1909-1914," CaliforniaHistorical QJLarterly
55 (Sprinp975)' 4', 43.
Charter, 1889, amended to 1909, Sec. 146 1/4 as quoted by
83
Hunter, The Evolution of Municipal Organization, 113.
Department of Public Works, ''Annual Report, December
15,1906," n.p., box C-1054, LACA.
84
RemiA. Nadeau, The WaterSeekers (Santa Barbara: Peregrine
Smith, 1974), 15.
Ibid., 33-
85
Housing Commission, "Report of the Housing Commission 86
of the City of Los Angeles, February 20, 1906 to June 13,
87
1908," 3, collection of the author. 88
Ibid., 16.
Housing Commission, "Report of the Housing Commission
of the City of Los Angeles, June 30, 1909 to June 30,1910,"
89
8,10, box B-1060, LACA.
Willard, History of Los An9eles, 354.
90
Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, Los Angeles Today (Octo-
ber 1, 1910), n.p., Huntington Library.
91
Hunter, The Evolution of Municipal Organization, 132.
W. W. Robinson, Bombs and Bribery: The Story of the McNa-
92
mara andDarrow Trials Following theDynamitin9 in1910 of the
93
LosAn9eles TimesBuildin9 {Los Angeles: Dawson's BookShop,
1969),21.
94
Schiesl, "Progressive Reform inLos Angeles," 43.
Hunter, The Evolution of Municipal Or9anization, 145.
Hunt and Kimball, City of Los Angeles City En9ineers 1855-1981,
n.p.
John Randolph Haynes, quoted in Schiesl, "Progressive
95
Refonn in Los Angeles," 49. Haynes was a member of the
charter-revision committee as well as a member of the free-
96
holders committee that created the charter of 1925.
Ordinances, New Series, 47,833, 49,330, 49,683, 50,401,
53,446, box B-1465, LACA.
97
Scott Bottles, Los An9eles and the Automobile: The Making of
the Modern City {Berkeleyand Los Angeles: University of Cal-
ifornia Press, 1987), 114.
Matthew W. Roth, "Mulholland Highway and the Engineer-
98
PUBLIC WORKS . 327
ing Culture afLas Angeles in the 19205," in Technology and 99
Don Parson, "The Burke Incident: Political Belief in Los
Culture, The International Qy.arterly of the Society for the
Angeles' Public Housing During the Domestic Cold War,"
tory of Technology 40 (July1999)' 557·
Southern California oyarterly 84 (Spring 2002): 53·
Margaret Leslie Davis, Rivers in the Desert: WiIliamMulhol- 100 John Anson Ford, Thirty Explosive Years in Los Angeles County
landandthe Inventing oiLos Angeles (NewYork: Harper Collins
(San Marino: Huntington Library, 1961), 104.
Publisher, 1993), 156.
101 Department of Public Works, "Annual Report, 1956-1957,"
Charter, 1925, Art. XXIII, Sec. 78 and Sec. 230-36. 4, box C-547, LACA.
Fred G. Crawford, Or9anizational and Administrative DeveI- 102 Ibid., 5.
opment of the Government of the City of Los An9eIes During the 103 Ibid., 13.
Thirty-Year Period july 1, 1925 to September 30,1955 (Los 104 Carlton C. Robinson and Peter G. Koltnow, Progress in TraF
Angeles: School of Public Administration, University of
fie Management in Los Angeles, 1966 (Los Angeles: Automo-
Southern California, 1955), 141.
bile Club of Southern California, 1966), 4·
Hunter, The Evolution of Municipal Or9anization, 223· 105
John P. Hunt and Bernice Kimball, City of Los An9eles City
Ordinance 55567, box B-1465, LACA.
Engineers 1855-1981, n.p.
Abraham Hoffman, Vision or Villainy: Ori9ins of the Owens 106 Department of Public Works, "Annual Report, 1956-1957,"
VaHey-LOS An9eles Water Controversy (College Station: Texas
5, box C-547, LACA.
A&MUniversity, 1981), 203-4. 107 Department of Public Works, ''Annual Report for Year Ended
Charles F. Outland, Man-Made Disaster: The Story of St. Fran-
June 30, 1967," 207, box C-548, LACA.
cis Dam, Its Place in Southern California's WaterSystem, Its 108 Ibid., 21.
ure and the Tragedy in the Santa Clara River VaHey, March 12 109 Ibid., 101.
and 13, 1928 (Glendale, Calif.: Arthur H. Clark Company, 110 Ibid., 219-20.
1977).37.
111 City Administrative Officer, "To Charter and
"Transcript of Testimony and Verdict in the Coroner's Jury
tive Code Committee, 7-16-76," Council File (here-
in the Inquest Over Victims of St. Francis Dam Disaster,"
after cited as CF) and Supplement, 1, boxB-574, LACA.
quoted in ibid., 46.
112 CF 93,339, boxA-1549, LACA.
Department of Public Works, ''Annual Report of the Board 113 Special Services Division, "Report NO.3," adopted by the
of Public Works of the City of Los Angeles, July 1,1927 to
Board of Public works August 6, 1976, box LACA.
June 30,1928," 34, box LACA. "4
C. Erwin Piper, City Administrative Officer, "Management
Ibid . .34·
Audit Report of the Department of PublicWorks,july, 1977,"n.p.,
Ibid., 59.
File boxes B-573 and B-574, LACA.
Ibid., 69·
115 Governmental Efficiency Committee, "Report to the Council
Ordinance 64,876, New Series, September 17, 1929, box B-
of the City ofLosAngeles,"n.p., File75-589, LACA.
1498, LACA.
116 Calvin S. Hamilton, Director of Planning, "Reorganization
Department of Public Works, ''Annual Report of the Board
of the Department of Public Works, December 22, 1977," CF
of Public Works of the City of Los Angeles, July 1, 1933 to 77-589,5, box LACA.
June 30, 1934," box C-2911, lacA. 117 Daryl F. Gates, Chief of Police, letter, "To Honorable Tom
Hunt and Kimball, "City of Los Angeles City Engineers
Bradley, Mayor, June 21, 1978," CF 78-105, n.p., box C-2004,
1855-1981," n.p.
LACA.
Department of Public Works. "Annual Report, July 1, 1933," 118 KenSpiker, ChiefLegislativeAnalyst, "To Honorable Mem-
50, box C-2911, LACA.
bers of the City Council, March 14, 1978," box C-2037, LACA.
Ibid.,55-57·
119 Department of Public Works, ''Annual Report for Year Ended
"Chronological Record of Los Angeles City Officials," Sup-
June 30, 1981," vi, box C-2011, LACA.
plement (1941-1943), n.p.
120 Department of Public Works, ''Annual Report for 1983-1984,
Department of Public Works, ''Annual Report, 1981," iii-iv,
Bureau of Engineering Report," box C-2011, LACA.
box C-2011, LACA. In honor of the city's bicentennial 121 Ibid., "Letter of the President of the Board of Public Works
bration, this annual report features a number of retrospec-
transmitting the report to the mayor and council," box C-
tive passages describing projects and procedures of earlier
2011, LACA.
years.
122 Hunt and Kimball, City of Los Angeles City Engineers 1855-1981,
Kevin Starr, Embattled Dreams: California in War and Peace, n.p.
1940-1950 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 134· 123 Department of Public Works, ''Annual Report for 1986-
Jared Orsi, Hazardous Metropolis: Floodin9 and Urban Ecol09Y
1987," 16, 31, 32, 36, box C-2011, LACA.
in Los Angeles (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of Cal- 124 Department of Public Works, ''Annual Report 1990-1991,
ifornia Press, 2004), 110.
LACA.
James Thomas Keane, Fritz B. Burns and the Development of 125
Department of Public Works, Bureau of Engineering,
Los Angeles: The Bi09raphy of a Community DeveloperandPhil-
"Report NO.3, November 14, 1994, Additional Personnel for
anthropist (Los Angeles: Loyola Marymount University and
the Seismic Strengthening of City Hall," box D-424, Office
the Historical Society of Southern California, 2001), 40.
of the City Clerk, LACA.
Ibid.,79·