The Hollenbeck Palms

Recently I added this very early C. W. Tucker photo postcard to my Covina ephemera collection.

Click on the image above to view a clean enlargement.

Although the view looks very different today, and the palms are way taller now, I doubt someone who grew up in Covina would have too much difficulty recognizing where this picture was taken.

But, just in case not, we are looking north on Hollenbeck Avenue from only a few feet north of its intersection with Badillo Street.

And the year? Well, let's do some history detective sleuthing and see what we can come up with.

First of all, Mr. Tucker opened his photographic studio in Covina in November, 1903,¹ and the postcard message from "Aunt Sofie" to "Miss Mary" was dated September 26, 1908, so, obviously, the photo must have been taken sometime in between. However, I think we can narrow that range even further.

An additional clue is that a variant of this photo appeared in a promotional booklet published in 1907² that was featured in this article 5 years ago:

The same photo also appears opposite page 97 in Pflueger (1964) with the caption: "Hamilton Temple drives his 1901 Merry Oldsmobile down Hollenbeck Avenue."³

If you look closely, you can see that the tracks in the dirt are basically identical to the ones in my postcard, which means the two photos were taken on exactly the same day, and probably only minutes apart.

Also, since it's doubtful that one of the very first things Mr. Tucker did after coming to Covina was to go around taking pictures of the local scenery, I think it's safe to say that the postcard photo dates to no earlier than 1904. And, since I know another picture in the 1907 booklet was taken precisely on October 11, 1906,⁴ I think the latest date we can logically assign to the postcard photo is also 1906. So, with 1904-1906 being the plausible range of possibles, I conclude that splitting the difference and saying the picture was taken c.1905 is about as accurate as we can get.

Now, what about the palms themselves? We don't have any specific documentation about who planted them or when—at least none that I know of—but can we maybe formulate an educated guess? Let's see!

First of all, the palms are of the species Washingtonia filifera var. filifera: the California fan palm. One thing in the photo that I noticed right away was that the palms on the right side of Hollenbeck look a bit taller than the ones on the left. Or maybe the ground is a little higher on the right side? That could be, too. Or is this simply an illusion of perspective? Hard to say for certain.

Anyway, it does look like almost all the palms on the left are about the same height, and the palms on the right are all about the same height, too. But how old are they? I asked a former botanist colleague of mine, and, based on their height, he guesstimated the palms in the photo were about 20-30 years old.

So, if our postcard photo is from c.1905, that would mean the palms began life between 1875-1885. And who was living on this land between those years? The first was Julián Badilla in 1876,³ and then Covina founder Joseph Phillips after 1882.³

However, we can quickly eliminate Sr. Badilla as the palms' planter. Reason being, Hollenbeck Avenue itself didn't even exist yet when he lived here. The road was created during the Eaton survey of 1884,⁵ and Julián Badilla had already left the country a full five years prior to that.⁶

But there might be another possible candidate, too: James H. Adams, who bought the land in 1889 after Phillips was foreclosed upon.⁷ In 1905, the Adams family still owned both sides of Hollenbeck.⁸ So perhaps it was Mr. Adams who planted the palms?

I tend to favor the theory that it was Phillips, though. For me, what tips the balance is what I have circled in the aerial photo below:

Aerial view of the former residence of J. S. Phillips, June 10, 1954. U.C. Santa Barbara Geospatial Collection.

As you can see, it appears that the line of palms on the west side of Hollenbeck originally continued around the corner onto San Bernardino Road, in front of Phillips's manse. Somehow I don't think Adams would have gone to that additional trouble/expense. Seems reasonable that Phillips might have intended the sight of his grand house and palms alongside the main road from Los Angeles would attract the eye of passersby, and perhaps encourage them to peruse his then-new development. Thence turning south from San Bernardino Road onto Hollenbeck, a visitor would have beheld an impressive and stately "palm drive," which were all the rage in southern California in the 1880s and 1890s.⁹

This scenario is speculation, of course, but I tend to think it's likely why the palms were planted where they were, and by whom.

Finally, who was "Aunt Sofie," the sender of our postcard? It wasn't too difficult to discover via FamilySearch.org and Ancestry.com that she was Sofia Anderson Broadwell (1865-1953).

Miss Mary Anderson's father was Aunt Sofie Broadwell's younger brother, Charles. The Deming Headlight (New Mexico Territory), August 6, 1904.

Sofie Anderson married Walter B. Broadwell (1863-1926) in 1891.¹⁰ A prominent citizen of Covina, he was the founder and proprietor of the popular Broadwell's dry goods store on the east side of the 100 north block of Citrus Avenue.

Broadwell's in 1914. Photo courtesy California State Library.

And, small world, it just so happens that Aunt Sofie was also the mother-in-law of the Covina Argus-Citizen's reporter/editor Mary-Etta Wise Broadwell, who authored these historical sketches on the Covina Valley Historical Society's homepage, one of which I referenced in my recent post about Italia Cook.

All this new Covina history from studying only one old postcard. Just goes to prove yet again that there's still a lot out there waiting to be discovered!

Grateful thanks to Michael Schoenholtz for genealogical help!

References:

¹ Covina Argus, November 7, 1903, p.5.
² Covina Argus, April 6, 1907, p.3.
³ Pflueger, D. H. 1964. Covina: Sunflowers, Citrus, Subdivisions. Castle Press, Pasadena, California, 372pp.
⁴ Pomona Daily Review, October 10, 1906, p.3.
⁵ Map of the Phillips Tract, Rancho La Puente, Los Angeles Co., Cal., Fred Eaton, surveyor. Renshaw Lithographic, 15 Downey Block, Los Angeles, December, 1884.
⁶ Badilla Family History, Facebook page.
⁷ Los Angeles Herald, August 16, 1889, p.7.
⁸ Los Angeles Herald, February 19, 1908, p.9.
⁹ Masters, N., A Brief History of Palm Trees in Southern California, PBS SoCal, December 7, 2011.
¹⁰ Covina Argus-Citizen, October 22, 1953, p.1.