Remembering Bob Ihsen

I was quite saddened to learn that Bob Ihsen passed away at his home this Christmas Day. He was 93. A beloved teacher of history at Covina High School for most of his career, Mr. Ihsen was also a founding member and long-time president of the Covina Valley Historical Society, and that's how he and I came to cross paths.

Mr. Ihsen in his native habitat. Photo by Marty Getz, used with permission.

Like Glenn Reed before him, Bob Ihsen was an invaluable source of knowledge about Covina history, and both men also enthusiastically encouraged my own research. Years ago, Mr. Ihsen gave me a stack of his own personal copies of the CVHS's newsletter—the Covina Citrus Peal—going all the way back to the turn of the century, and time and again these have proven to be useful references, indeed. For my efforts, Bob also awarded me a lifetime membership in the historical society, which was a great honor as you might imagine.

Unfortunately, because I live so far from Covina and am limited in my ability to travel, the only time I got to meet Mr. Ihsen in person was during my medical trip to the Southland in May, 2024. We met at Powell Camera where went through Mark Thiel's amazing collection of old Covina photographs, with each of us giving commentary on them when we saw someone or something worth noting. Afterwards, Bob and I went over to the Firehouse Museum, which I'd never had the opportunity to tour before. And when one visit to the museum proved to be not quite enough, he invited me back for another go-around a few days later! It was a real privilege to be able to spend all that quality time with Mr. Ihsen and the historical society's treasures from Covina's past.

Rest in peace, good sir. I'll do my best to keep the torch burning, and will always remember you fondly.

 

"The Man Who Built Covina"

He died the same day as the famous singer Lark Ellen, and his death announcement was set right next to hers headlining the front page of the town paper. In his time, he was lauded as "the man who built Covina,"¹ but his name—and most of his life's work—was subsequently lost to history.

Edward Aaron Hubbard was born in Fairfield, Illinois, on June 2, 1880. He initially plied his building trade in Lyons, Kansas, before coming to Covina in 1922.¹ Not long after setting up shop here, he was commissioned to construct his first and most enduring commercial edifice: the bank building on the northeast corner of Citrus and College that's been a downtown landmark for many generations of Covinans.

The new home of the First National Bank of Covina opened for business in March, 1924.²
Photo courtesy Covina Valley Historical Society.

Plaza Progress

Something more recent for a change!

The regional indoor shopping mall known today as Plaza West Covina is a half-century old this year. Originally called West Covina Fashion Plaza, its grand opening took place September 25, 1975.¹

A couple weeks ago, I discovered a newly-available series of aerial photos on the UCSB Geospatial Collection website which appears to have been taken to document the yearly progress of the BKK landfill in the San Jose Hills. Far up near the top edges of these photos, however, were glimpses of the main West Covina shopping center which is the subject of this article, and they visually document in detail how the Plaza under its various names has evolved over time.

All photos courtesy of UCSB Geospatial Collection; captions and credits below. Click on the image above to view an enlargement.

1973: The last year of the original West Covina Plaza shopping center, which first opened in October, 1956.²

1974: Construction of the new indoor mall.³

1975: The completed West Covina Fashion Plaza.⁴ The west wing of the old Plaza was demolished, temporarily sparing the building formerly occupied by J. C. Penney.

1977, 1992: The east wing of the old Plaza was kept open for business until its demolition commenced in Fall, 1991.^5,6

1995: This configuration has remained relatively unchanged to the present day,⁷ except that the building formerly occupied by Tower Records and Desmond's before that was demolished in 2009.

More dates, photos and factoids below!

The Squatter Era

In 1859, long before the Badilla brothers or J. S. Phillips arrived on the scene, that northern section of Covina that today lies between San Bernardino Road and Arrow Highway began being settled by enterprising American and immigrant pioneers. Featured in this article is a recently discovered telling of those settlers' story that was written in 1887, when all the events described were still in the living memory of those who witnessed them.

The land that is the subject of this newfound contemporary account was originally part of Henry ("Don Enrique") Dalton's Rancho Azusa, which the Englishman had purchased from Don Luis Arenas in 1844. At that time, Dalton's ranch encompassed most of the territory east of the San Gabriel River and south from the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains to the old San Bernardino stage road.

Rancho Azusa de Dalton originally extended south to the northern boundary of Rancho La Puente. Alignments of selected section and quarter-section roads of today are labeled for reference.
Source: U.S. Dept. of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management, General Land Office Records. (Click on the image to view an enlargement.)

As the article below will recount, in 1858 the U. S. Government ordered a new survey of Dalton's holdings, the result of which was the invalidation of Rancho Azusa's southern and eastern boundaries. Surveyor Henry Hancock drew a new southern line for Dalton's rancho (today's Gladstone Street), thus creating 2,428.25^a acres of new public land that thereupon became available for preemption, and later, homesteading.

While Pflueger (1964) gave an admirably thorough account of Covina's squatter era, this article from the January 23, 1887, edition of the Los Angeles Times^b tells the story from a unique perspective I hadn't seen in print before. So, without further ado...

Original Covina Landowners

While digging into old real estate records earlier this month, I decided to make a map showing the names of the first owners of every parcel in the Phillips Tract. Whenever I found an original title conveyance by trustee James F. Houghton, I made a note of the grantee and the date in the corresponding square on Eaton's survey.

Earliest owners of lots in the Phillips Tract. Click image to view an enlargement. A legend for the colors displayed can be found there.

Why would I go to the trouble of doing that, you might ask? Well, it was primarily to fact-check a similar cartographic record in the collection of the Covina Valley Historical Society, the accuracy of which I have since come to question.

The Tract, Trials and Tribulations of Joseph Phillips

J. Edward Hollenbeck and Joseph Phillips: the two men without whom Covina would not have existed.

These past six weeks I've been doing a deep dive into Covina founder Joseph Swift Phillips, and I've uncovered many surprising new facts. The subjects are fairly complicated and make for a long, dry read, however, so I thought I'd approach this article differently and start off with a list of my main points and then delve into the particulars afterwards.

I should perhaps note here at the outset that none of the following findings have been described in any previous published history of Covina. This is all new stuff here, especially the legal blockbuster near the end!

tl;dr summary:

• As I stated in a previous article, the real estate deal between Phillips and Hollenbeck for the tract of land which would become Covina took place in 1881, not 1882.

• The 1881 deal was only a contract for deed, not an outright sale, and Phillips may have used real estate instead of cash for his down payment.

• In 1885, Phillips had to borrow $40,000 to pay off Hollenbeck, and the loan was secured by a deed of trust that conveyed legal title from Hollenbeck directly to trustee James F. Houghton. Phillips himself never actually held marketable title to the tract which bore his name.

• Although Phillips was empowered to arrange and negotiate sales, all of the original land purchases and title conveyances in the Phillips Tract from 1885-1889 were brokered and closed by Houghton.

• Phillips ultimately failed to repay his 1885 loan, so in 1889, Houghton foreclosed and Phillips forfeited all of his Covina properties.

• Hollenbeck and Houghton both made big bank on the Phillips Tract, while Phillips himself lost everything.

• In 1894, Phillips sued almost everyone who had been involved with his past land dealings in a last ditch effort to recoup his financial losses.

• In sum, litigation expense was likely a significant contributor to Phillips's financial downfall.

Details and references below.