Chavez Ravine Residents Fought to Save Homes

by Kitty Felde
From July 08, 2008
89.3 KPCC Website

One of the wonders of Dodger Stadium is the fact that it's surrounded by freeways. Fans leaving the stadium can jump on the Pasadena, the Golden State or Hollywood Freeways. It was those freeways that first attracted Walter O'Malley to the land; but it would be a long battle before the Dodger owner could finally build in Chavez Ravine. In part five of her series, KPCC's Special Correspondent Kitty Felde tells the tale of the battle of Chavez Ravine.


Kitty Felde: There was a housing boom in Southern California after the Second World War, and not just the dozens of suburbs that sprung up like mushrooms. There was also a public housing boom, courtesy of the federal government.


Los Angeles decided to spend some of its money on high rises in the hills of Chavez Ravine. But there already were homes in Chavez Ravine, and homeowners who weren't happy about getting evicted to make room for those high rises. Charlotte Negrete-White wrote her doctoral thesis on the ravine.


Charlotte Negrete-White: Often times in history books we hear about families or certain ethnicities just being bowled over, but in fact, the people of Chavez Ravine, they banded together.


Felde: Many of them were poor, the children of Mexican immigrants. They collected signatures on petitions and went to city hall meetings. And they found an unlikely ally in real estate developers. Negrete-White says the group called itself CASH.


Negrete-White: The Citizens Against Socialist Housing, it was just really an interesting acronym. And they sided with the residents because real estate, for one, didn't want what they termed "socialist housing," nor federally subsidized housing.


Felde: It was the era of Joe McCarthy, stoking fears that Communists lurking around every corner. Even in L.A. City Hall. The late Frank Wilkinson was the city's Assistant Housing Director. Wilkinson said he was at another in a long series of eminent domain hearings, when a question was aimed at him.


Frank Wilkinson: One of the lawyers for the slum landlords turned to me, and this man turned to me and said "Now, Mr. Wilkinson, will you please tell us all organizations, political or otherwise, you've belonged to since 1931."


Felde: Wilkinson said he was surprised since he was a Republican, even a Youth for Herbert Hoover organizer in the 1930s. He suspected it was racial politics at play. The U.S. Supreme Court had just struck down race-based property rules that said who could live where.


Wilkinson, who was the driving force behind the public housing high rises planned for Chavez Ravine, had vowed they would be integrated. Whatever the motive, J. Edgar Hoover's FBI put Wilkinson under a microscope. He was drummed out of L.A.'s housing department. Former L.A. City Councilwoman Roz Wyman says the war was on.


Roz Wyman: That public housing fight got involved in the mayor's race of 1953 between Mayor Bowron, who was the incumbent, and Congressman Paulson, who ran against him. And there was a referendum on the ballot at the same time of that mayoralty election. The referendum was over the public housing site in the ravine. And anyway, to make a long story short on that, the people of the city voted down, at that time, that form of public housing.


Felde: But for the families of Chavez Ravine, it was too late. The federal government had already used eminent domain to take their land. Most houses were vacant. Only about a dozen families remained. But their memories of that community are still strong and clear. Next week, we'll hear stories from some of the former residents of Chavez Ravine.


by Kitty Felde
From July 08, 2008
89.3 KPCC Website
and walteromalley.com

A Helicopter Ride Led Dodgers to Chavez Ravine

On May 2, 1957, Dodger owner Walter O'Malley takes a 50-minute helicopter ride to view prospective sites for Dodger Stadium. From left is Los Angeles County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn; Undersheriff Peter Pitchess; Del Webb, co-owner of the New York Yankees; O'Malley; and pilot Capt. Sewell Griggers at Biscailuz Center. Only O'Malley and Capt. Griggers took the helicopter ride over the Los Angeles area in the two-seat Sheriff's helicopter. It was only O'Malley's third visit to Los Angeles.

by Kitty Felde

From July 01, 2008

89.3 KPCC Website

Fifty years ago this week, more than 66,000 fans showed up at the Coliseum to watch the Dodgers play the St. Louis Cardinals in a doubleheader. In their first season in L.A., the Dodgers were a box office hit at the Coliseum; but they figured to be a bigger sensation near the Arroyo Seco, a few miles north. In part four of her series about the Dodgers' move west, KPCC's Special Correspondent Kitty Felde explains how Dodger Stadium ended up in Chavez Ravine.

Kitty Felde: In early 1957, Walter O'Malley wasn't telling the world he planned to move the Dodgers from Brooklyn to Los Angeles. But he took a big step in that direction. He bought the minor league L.A. Angels, and with them, the right to put a team in Los Angeles.

He bought the ballpark, too: Wrigley Field in South L.A. But it held less than 20,000 fans. Not enough for the Dodgers. So in May of 1957, O'Malley came to L.A. to scout locations for a new ballpark. County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn drafted a sheriff's helicopter to give O'Malley the grand tour.

Jim Hahn: They flew the helicopter over Wrigley Field and looked at it, and as they were turning around also they flew over the Coliseum, but then they flew over Chavez Ravine.

Felde: Former L.A. Mayor Jim Hahn is the son of the late county supervisor. He remembers his father's stories about that day.

Jim Hahn:What was amazing to me, what my dad said was amazing to him, is that he thought O'Malley, being from New York City, wouldn't understand what freeways were. But he instantly saw all these freeways coming together at the famous four level, or "the stack" as we call it here downtown, and saw this big piece of vacant land, kind of a big hole there, and he said, "Well what's that?" And my dad said, "Well, that's Chavez Ravine. The city was going to build public housing there, but nothing ever happened with it." And O'Malley said, "I think you could put a ballpark in there."

Felde: The only problem was the 300 acres of Chavez Ravine weren't quite vacant. The ravine was named for Julian Chavez, who got it through a Mexican land grant. Chavez came to Los Angeles in the 1830s, after backing the wrong side in a revolution. Two decades later, when California joined the United States, Chavez became a successful L.A. city councilman and a county supervisor.

Charlotte Negrete-White: A man of honor in the city.

Felde: Charlotte Negrete-White was born in Chavez Ravine and wrote her Ph.D. dissertation on its history. She says it was another revolution that sent the next wave of immigrants to Chavez Ravine. When Mexican President Porfirio Diaz was overthrown in 1911, Negrete-White says a flood of refugees streamed over the U.S. border.

Negrete-White: If a family happened to ally themselves either with the revolutionarios or the federalistas, if you said the wrong one, you could be shot right on the spot. So people left.

Felde: Many of those refugees came to Los Angeles, and camped out on the banks of the L.A. River. L.A. lawyer Marshal Stimson, who owned property in Chavez Ravine, sold parcels of land very cheaply to these new immigrants. Negrete-White says the immigrants built houses and created a tight-knit community.

Negrete-White: Chavez Ravine was a rural, remote area somewhat removed from downtown. And they didn't seem to be bothering anybody, the city wasn't that interested in that region. So they came and they settled.

Felde: Electricity, sewers, and other services were spotty, and political clout at city hall was nil. Chavez Ravine was largely ignored. Until 1949. After the Second World War, the nation faced a severe housing shortage.

Congress passed a bill to tear down slums and build nearly a million new low income housing units all over the U.S. Los Angeles was promised $110 million. The late Frank Wilkinson was L.A.'s Assistant Housing Director.

Frank Wilkinson: We went out for three months and toured the city of L.A. both by air and by land to pick sites for the new housing. We wanted to look with our own eyes to make decisions.

Felde: Just like O'Malley would a few years later, Wilkinson focused on Chavez Ravine. Architect Richard Neutra designed two dozen 13-story towers that would rise above the city. The "Elysian Park Heights" project would house 17,000 Angelenos.

In July of 1950, a letter to the families of Chavez Ravine said surveyors would drop by to assess the value of their homes. For those who qualified for public housing, Wilkinson dangled the possibility of a brand new, Neutra-designed high rise apartment.

Wilkinson: I promised every person on that land, a letter, you'll be first in line.

Felde: But most residents didn't want to leave. Next week, we'll talk about the battle for Chavez Ravine.

by Kitty Felde
From July 01, 2008
89.3 KPCC Website
and walteromalley.com

Walter O'Malley Was Influential in Bringing Dodgers to LA

by Kitty Felde
From June 24, 2008
89.3 KPCC Website

Lots of people helped bring the Dodgers to Los Angeles 50 years ago, but the late Dodger owner Walter O'Malley was the only one with the vision and the business smarts to make it happen. The New York Irishman, who's still loathed in Brooklyn, out-maneuvered politicians on both coasts to find a bigger audience for his "Boys in Blue." In part three of her series on the Dodgers' move west, KPCC's Special Correspondent Kitty Felde profiles the old Irishman who brought big league baseball to L.A.


Kitty Felde: The late Dodger owner Walter Francis O'Malley grew up in New York cheering for... the Giants. He watched games at the Giants' home park, the old Polo Grounds, near his boyhood home in the Bronx. O'Malley played some baseball in school, until he was hit in the nose with a ball and gave it up for good.


Walter O'Malley: I also was handicapped by the fact that I wore glasses, and at that time, there weren't many ballplayers who wore glasses.

Felde: At the University of Pennsylvania, O'Malley was elected president of the junior and senior classes. He didn't dance, but he ran the school dances and made quite a profit. The late L.A. County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn remembered O'Malley as a tough negotiator.


Kenneth Hahn: A very tough business man. Work out with the pencils in dollars and cents. Very shrewd. You couldn't put anything over him. And he had an eye on the game, but an eye on the cash register, too.


Felde: O'Malley's engineering classes in college came in handy. He got a job as an engineer for the City of New York during the day and attended law school at Fordham University at night. Former L.A. City Councilwoman Roz Wyman says that's where he met the love of his life, Kay Hanson.


Roz Wyman: They were engaged, and she had a cancerous throat thing and she had to remove her box, her larynx, her speaking. And I'm sure a young man, many young men in that day and age, would say, what do I want to get into this? You know, maybe marriage, and how will it work? I mean, it was a beautiful love affair between Kay and Walter O'Malley. It was beautiful.


Felde: O'Malley's legal work introduced him to the Brooklyn Dodgers. He'd had season tickets for years so he could entertain clients. But in the late 1930s the ball club owed money to a lot of people, including some clients of O'Malley's law firm.


In 1943, O'Malley became the Dodgers' general counsel. He started buying stock in the ball club, and in 1950, O'Malley bought out Branch Rickey to become the majority owner of the Dodgers. That was the same year the team hired a new broadcaster, a red-headed college kid fresh out of Fordham named Vin Scully.


Vin Scully: Walter O'Malley was everybody's best friend. He was like my extra father. He was warm, genial, jovial. His favorite day, if anybody asked me about a Walter O'Malley favorite day, would be to get up very early and plant. He loved the earth, he loved to grow things, he was an orchid fancier.


He loved to be out on his hands and knees, digging and planting bushes, and doing all of that. Then, he would love to play golf, he would love to watch a ballgame, he would love to have maybe a steak dinner, and then he'd love to play poker with the boys. I mean, he was just that kind of a man.


Wyman: Walter O'Malley was a Democrat. Never changed, the richest, the richer he got.


Felde: Again, Roz Wyman.


Wyman: Walter O'Malley and I used to love to talk Democratic politics. He, as I say, was devoted to his family, but yet he was a hunter, and a golfer, and a storyteller, and an Irish drinker! (laughs) I mean, he had it all.


Felde: All except a new ballpark with enough parking for Dodger fans. In October of 1956, Walter O'Malley stopped off in Los Angeles on his way back from a Brooklyn Dodger exhibition tour in Japan. He met secretly with L.A. County Supervisor Hahn. It was the first of several clandestine meetings to discuss exactly where the Dodgers might build a ballpark if they came west.


Hahn: Walter O'Malley said to me, I'll deny even meeting you, and I'll deny even saying we're gonna go, because, he says, the Brooklyn Dodger fans, the bums, are so loyal or vicious, or whatever he said, I think, he said they'll murder me if I tell them I'm leaving. So he says I have another season to play, and I'm gonna deny it, because I got a whole 'nother season to go there.


Felde: Hahn and O'Malley started talking, and a plan to move to Los Angeles began to take shape. Next Tuesday, we'll find out exactly how the Dodgers ended up building a stadium just north of Chinatown, in Chavez Ravine.


by Kitty Felde
From June 24, 2008
89.3 KPCC Website
and walteromalley.com

LA's Baseball Team Almost Became the 'Senators'

by Kitty Felde
From June 10, 2008
89.3 KPCC Website

Most of us in Southern California came here from someplace else. Fifty years ago, L.A.'s most famous sports transplants, the Dodgers, unpacked their bats and gloves to settle in the Southland from Brooklyn. In the second of a seven-part series, KPCC's Special Correspondent Kitty Felde tells the tale of how the Dodgers came to L.A. fifty years ago.

Kitty Felde: In the 1950s, Manhattan was the center of the universe. Chicago was "Second City." And Los Angeles? Well, L.A. boosters, like former City Councilwoman Roz Wyman, had big plans.
Roz Wyman: I felt that you were not a big league city unless you had big league sports. Because I had done some studying, and I found that major corporations especially, one of the things that they ask before they come and settle in your community was what kind of arts and what kind of sports did you have?

Felde: But not everyone was a true believer. The late L.A. County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn talked about that in an interview 20 years ago.

Kenneth Hahn: Everybody said Los Angeles was not ready to be a big city. Not ready for major league baseball. But there was a baseball writer named Vincent X. Flaherty at the old "Los Angeles Examiner" who was an absolute fan. And everything he wrote, thought, and talked about was bringing a major league team.

Felde: By the fall of 1956, the L.A. County Board of Supervisors got into the act. Hahn, the youngest board member, was dispatched to the World Series to see if he could bring a major league team to Southern California. Hahn flew to New York for the World Series between the New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Hahn: Vincent Flaherty was going back to cover, so we went back together. And he says, "Now, Kenny, you'll never get a winner to come to Los Angeles. Let's go for the bottom of the league." I said, "Great." He said, "Well I know Calvin Griffith."

Felde: Calvin Griffith owned the hapless Washington Senators. The team was so awful, it inspired "Damn Yankees," the Broadway musical about a Washington fan who sells his soul to the devil to get his team to the World Series.

Felde: Griffith, like every baseball owner, had taken note of the Braves' move from Boston to Milwaukee a few years earlier. The team was now drawing a National League record two-million fans a year.

A secret meeting was set up at Toots Shor's, the famous Manhattan sports saloon. Griffith seemed interested in L.A. and Hahn was ready to head home with news that the Senators might come west. But at the ballpark the next day, Hahn said he was handed a message on a napkin.

Hahn: He said, "Don't make any deal with Calvin Griffith. I want to see you when I come to Los Angeles. I'm interested." And it was signed "Walter O'Malley."

Felde: That might not be exactly the way it happened. But Hahn, somehow or another, came back to Los Angeles with the idea that O'Malley might be interested in coming west. The Dodger boss had been touting a futuristic domed stadium in Brooklyn to replace the cramped and aging Ebbets Field.

But New York's powerful city planner Robert Moses wanted O'Malley to build in Queens. Queens! The owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers was appalled. Here's Walter O'Malley in an interview 30 years ago:

Walter O'Malley: We wanted to stay in Brooklyn, but we had exhausted a 10-year campaign to make it possible for us to buy land and to build a ballpark with adequate parking. When we struck out on that, it appeared that we had our choice of going to San Francisco or Los Angeles.

Felde: Horace Stoneham, the owner of the New York Giants, had his own attendance and parking lot problems. O'Malley said he heard Stoneham was closing in on a deal to move his ballpark to Minnesota.

O'Malley: And I told him if he went to Minneapolis and I stayed in Brooklyn, the old Giant-Dodger rivalry would be dead. And maybe both of us should consider moving, and I told him there were possibilities in both San Francisco and in Los Angeles. He expressed a strong feeling toward San Francisco. I said, "Well, that's fine. We'll go to Los Angeles."

Felde: Again, that's not exactly how it happened. O'Malley was talking to L.A. officials before he heard that the Giants might leave town. But the telling of the tale says a lot about Walter O'Malley. Next Tuesday, we'll tell you more about the old Irishman, the most hated man in Brooklyn.

by Kitty Felde
From June 10, 2008
89.3 KPCC Website
and walteromalley.com

Dodgers Move to LA Wasn't Popular

by Kitty Felde
89.3 KPCC Website
From June 03, 2008

Fifty years ago, Angelenos packed the polls for one of the biggest elections in city history. On the ballot was a referendum on LA's deal to swap land so the newly-arrived Dodgers could build a baseball stadium in Chavez Ravine. Proposition B - "B" for baseball - passed by a whisker. It was almost the last step in the Dodgers' journey west from Brooklyn. KPCC's Special Correspondent Kitty Felde begins a seven-part series looking at the politics and the personalities that brought major league baseball to Los Angeles.

Kitty Felde: It's hard to imagine Los Angeles without the Dodgers. But there was a time when it didn't seem that L.A. cared all that much about bringing a major league baseball team to town. The Dodgers' late owner Walter O'Malley remembered it well in a 1970s interview.

Walter O'Malley: We did not have an idea that we would be received as well as we have finally been received. We immediately, on coming here, ran into all sorts of political problems: a referendum, lawsuits. How we ever survived all of that, I don't know, but we did.

Roz Wyman: People will say now, "Was it really that controversial?" I cannot tell you how controversial.

Felde: Roz Wyman was a 22-year-old USC graduate when she ran for L.A. City Council in 1953. She won, and became the youngest person and only the second woman on the L.A. City Council. Wyman credits her victory to a promise that resonated with voters.

Wyman: I had on this little piece of literature: "Let's bring major league baseball to Los Angeles." And I must say, this was the one thing I hadn't studied in depth. (laughs) I just thought you went out and said, "Why don't you come to our city?" Well, it just doesn't work like that.

Felde: Wyman's promise of big league baseball in Los Angeles became more difficult to fulfill when voters rejected a 1955 city ballot measure to build a baseball stadium. That meant any team that settled in L.A. would have to build a ballpark with its own money.

That didn't stop Wyman. She wrote a letter to Walter O'Malley and asked if he was interested in moving his Brooklyn ballclub west. O'Malley replied that L.A. already had "two teams in organized baseball," the Pacific Coast League's Los Angeles Angels and the Hollywood Stars.

Besides, he was busy trying to build a new stadium in Brooklyn to replace Ebbets Field, the Dodgers' 40-year-old ballpark in Flatbush that O'Malley thought was too old and too small. Longtime Dodger announcer Vin Scully remembers Ebbets Field:

Vin Scully: Well it was very small, it was very intimate. The fans were very much closer to the players than they are here. They were very vocal. But because they were so close to the players, you were aware of the vocalness of the crowd.

Also, it was a hodge podge. It was, in those days, a team that was built on, on poor play, so when the good years came, they were relished thoroughly.

Felde: The Brooklyn franchise was one of the oldest in professional baseball. Born in 1884, the Trolley Dodgers were named after the citizens who dodged the trolley cars that crisscrossed the borough. After a half-century of mediocrity, the Dodgers got good in the 1940s.

In a span of 16 years, they won seven National League pennants, and almost grabbed four more. In 1947, team president Branch Rickey put baseball's first black player, Jackie Robinson, into Dodger blue. In 1955, Brooklyn won its first and only World Series. That was also the year Americans bought more new cars than ever before. For Walter O'Malley, that was a problem.

O'Malley: In Brooklyn, we didn't have a single parking lot. We parked in the driveways of people who had homes in the vicinity. The day of the Brooklyn trolley dodger was over. And we had to reckon with the automobile.

Felde: The Dodgers also had to reckon with the Milwaukee Braves of the 1950s, a team with a newer stadium, more fans, and better players. O'Malley's public solution was to scrap Ebbets Field and build a futuristic domed baseball stadium in Brooklyn. And if city planners in New York didn't go along, O'Malley had a private solution, too: Los Angeles. That's for next time.

by Kitty Felde

From June 03, 2008

89.3 KPCC Website

and walteromalley.com