When bankers were philanthropic: the Hellman Brothers

Sam Watters, a chronicler of the architecture of Los Angeles, wrote his post-Christmas column on the buildings constructed in the early years of the 20th century by Isaias and Herman Hellman.

Watters tries to draw a parallel between the actions of the Hellmans with  today's bankers:

"Brinks must be stuffing its armored delivery trucks with Goldman Sachs' annual bonuses. The company's compensation and benefit pool for 2009 is expected to top $20 billion, an average of more than $600,000 for each of the 31,700 company employees whose jobs were saved a year ago by a taxpayer bailout. Among the questions raised by this bonanza: What will bankers do with the money? "

As you see, today's bankers come up short. Watters then goes on to talk about how each Hellman brother constructed a building on their old homesteads that still stand today.

Herman Hellman lived in a small house on Fourth and Spring in Los Angeles, and in 1903 he started construction on one of the city's first steel-reinforced concrete buildings. He brought in Albert Rosenheim, an architect from  St. Louis, to design the future home of the Merchants Bank. It is now known as Banco Popular (see photo above) I only learned recently that Rosenheim was related to Herman's wife. The building cost $1 million, a huge amount of money at that time.








A few years later, Isaias Hellman hired the architectural firm Morgan and Wells to design a new headquarters for the Farmers and Merchants Bank, Los Angeles' first successful bank. The building on Fourth and Main streets still stands and is used for commercials and parties. I gave a talk last year there for the Jewish Historical Society of Southern California.

Watters' piece is nice. He even mentions my name. My only complaint is that much of the information comes from Towers of Gold and he never mentions the title of my book.

Going Right to the Heart of Hellman's Financial Empire

I am heading back down to Los Angeles, where I will give a talk this evening at Metropolis Books, a small independent bookstore in the heart of the city's downtown and banking districts.

I am really looking forward to this reading because the store sits next door to the building Isaias Hellman constructed in 1905 for his Farmers and Merchants Bank. It is also the site of his old homestead. He constructed a house here in 1877, one that was so far away from the center of Los Angeles that he gave an adjacent plot of land to a friend with the caveat he build a house, too. See, Hellman didn't want his wife, Esther, and son, Marco, to be lonely living so far away from everyone else.


The house Isaias Hellman built in 1877.




What the same intersection looked like in the early 20th century. The building on the corner is the Farmers and Merchants Bank. The L-shaped building wrapped around the bank is the Isaias W. Hellman Building, a large office building.



Hellman's brother Herman built this office building on Spring Street in downtown Los Angeles around 1903. It is known today as Banco Popular.

The current owners of the bank and office building (now converted to lofts) are going to give me a tour before my talk. They also own the popular Pete's Cafe across the street, where there is a delicious Hellman burger on the menu.

In advance of my arrival, the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles gave Towers of Gold a great review.

The Frustration of Choosing Photos for a Book

This is Isaias W. Hellman sitting in the president's office at the Farmers and Merchants Bank in Los Angeles. I think the photo was taken around 1905. Note the telephone on the top of the desk.

I’ve been pulling together photos for possible use in Towers of Gold and once again I have run up against the bane of biographers: missing information.

The man I am writing about, Isaias W. Hellman, was a pack rat. If you delve into his papers at the California Historical Society, you can find all sorts of minutiae: newspaper receipts from 1890, dressmakers' receipts from the same period, plumbing bills, etc.

Then why are there so few pictures from his life?

I can not find a single picture of his parents or a portrait of him and his wife and three children. I have one picture – only one – of one of his daughters as a young girl, but none of his son and older daughter.

Since Hellman came to Los Angeles in 1859, this may not seem so unusual. It’s hard to find photos from that far back. Yet that logic falls apart when I realize I have a copy of his report card from Germany from 1854. If papers like that are still around, where are his photos of early Los Angeles?

One explanation is that a lot of his early photos burned up during the 1906 earthquake and fire. While Hellman’s house on Franklin Street was spared, the Wells Fargo Bank building on Pine and Montgomery streets was dynamited and then burned. So maybe a bunch of his stuff was reduced to ashes. I read a reference to this in a newspaper article, but I have not found any reference to this in his personal papers.

I don’t think I will ever know the answer. But as I collect photos (my editor asked me to submit about 40, which St. Martins will winnow down to 16) I keep fantasizing that an unclaimed photo album will turn up with photos no one has seen in decades.

I will just have to work around the missing pieces.