SurveyLA Citywide Historic Context Statement Context: Spanish Colonial and Mexican Era Settlement, 1781-1849 LOS ANGELES CITYWIDE HISTORIC CONTEXT STATEMENT Context: Spanish Colonial and Mexican Era Settlement, 1781-1849 Prepared for: City of Los Angeles Department of City Planning Office of Historic Resources February 2016 SurveyLA Citywide Historic Context Statement Context: Spanish Colonial and Mexican Era Settlement, 1781-1849 TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE 1 CONTRIBUTOR 1 INTRODUCTION 1 HISTORIC CONTEXT 2 THEME: SPANISH COLONIAL AND MEXICAN ERA SETTLEMENT, 1781-1849 34 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPY 35 Page | i SurveyLA Citywide Historic Context Statement Context: Spanish Colonial and Mexican Era Settlement, 1781-1849 PREFACE This context is a component of Los Angeles’ citywide historic context statement and provides guidance to field surveyors in identifying and evaluating potential historic resources relating to Spanish Colonial and Mexican era settlement in the area that is now the city of Los Angeles. Refer to www.HistoricPlacesLA.org for information on designated resources associated with this context as well as those identified through SurveyLA. CONTRIBUTOR Daniel Prosser is an historian and preservation architect. He holds degrees in history and architecture from Northwestern and Ohio State Universities. Before retiring, he was the Historic Sites Architect for the Kansas State Historical Society. INTRODUCTION The Spanish Colonial and Mexican Era Settlement context examines resources dating from the time that Los Angeles was a part, first, of the Spanish Empire and, then, of the Republic of Mexico. It begins with the establishment of the pueblo of Los Angeles in 1781 and ends with the incorporation of California into the United States in 1849. It includes resources from that time within the current boundaries of the city of Los Angeles. It relates these resources to the exploration, settlement, and social/cultural history of the period and, when applicable, to significant individuals and families. Resources relating to Spanish Colonial and Mexican Era settlement are highly significant to the early history and development of Los Angeles and the State of California. For that reason, it appears that resources from this period have been identified and are designated under local, state, and federal programs. These are referenced throughout the text. Only one additional resource was identified through SurveyLA, which is discussed on page36. Evaluation Considerations The Spanish Colonial and Mexican Era Settlement context may have some overlap with other SurveyLA themes and contexts as follows: Properties significant for their architectural quality may also be eligible under themes within the Architecture and Engineering context. Page | 1 SurveyLA Citywide Historic Context Statement Context: Spanish Colonial and Mexican Era Settlement, 1781-1849 HISTORIC CONTEXT The Spanish and Mexican era contained three distinct social institutions that produced three distinct architectural forms. First, the fusion of church and state that characterized the Spanish period, from 1781 until the early 1820s, gave us the mission and its architectural vocabulary. Second, the large-scale private landholding that replaced the mission during the Mexican period, from the early 1820s until 1849, provided us with the rancho and its ranch house. Third, the pueblo of Los Angeles, which endured through both the Spanish and Mexican periods, left us the plaza and its concept of a community outdoor gathering space. The Ideal of New Spain Any understanding of life in Spanish California requires a familiarity with the ideas that governed the Hispanic New World. At the core of the vision was a society which integrated church and state into a single authoritarian and hierarchical entity. The settlements of New Spain were organized as tightly controlled communities that combined religious and secular institutions, in which individuals had specific economic and social roles. This concept was first laid out in the 1570s through regulations issued by Spain’s Council of the Indies and later codified in 1680 in the Laws of the Indies.1 Economically this was accompanied by the doctrine of mercantilism. The doctrine maintained that the relationship between a mother country in Europe and her colonies was a closed system. The colonies produced raw materials for the mother country and in turn received manufactured goods. This relationship was to take place under tight control, with little if any room for individual initiative, and trade with other countries was forbidden. All the European powers practiced mercantilism in the period during which Spain controlled California, but the Spanish version, on paper at least, was the most authoritarian.2 This theory of society and its economy governed the Spanish territories in the New World from their founding the 1500s. But it took more than two hundred years, until the 1760s, for it to reach Alta California. The motive for the reach was not a desire to open the region for settlement, but rather to protect it from perceived foreign threat. For generations there had been a fear of British intrusion, dating back to the time of Sir Francis Drake in the 1570s. To this was added a more recent concern with the extension of Russian fur trading down the Pacific Coast from Alaska.3 Spain acted on these fears in 1769. Captain Gaspar de Portolá mounted a combined overland-maritime expedition to Alta California from his home base in Baja. Accompanying him was the Franciscan 1 Kevin Starr, California: A History. (New York: Modern Library, 2005 [2007], 28. 2 Steven W. Hackel, “Land, Labor and Production: The Colonial Economy of Spanish and Mexican California,” in Contested Eden: California Before the Gold Rush, edited by Ramon A. Gutierrez & Richard J. Orsi (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998), 113. 3 Hackel, “Land, Labor and Production,” 113; Starr, California, 22-28. Page | 2 SurveyLA Citywide Historic Context Statement Context: Spanish Colonial and Mexican Era Settlement, 1781-1849 Junípero Serra. These two individuals embodied the combined authority of church and state that characterized Spanish rule. Their assignment was to create institutions that would secure Alta California and make it safe from foreign incursion.4 Portolá and Serra reached San Diego by July of 1769 and then proceeded further north. By the next year, 1770, Portolá completed his expedition and Alta California was established as a separate territory from Baja. The Portolá Trail Campsite (California Historical Landmark No. 655), at the entrance to Elysian Park, is said to be the place where his party stayed on August 2, 1769, before heading west and then north along the coast. The Serra Springs (California Historical Landmark No. 522), located on the campus of University High School in the Sawtelle neighborhood, is the supposed site of a mass performed by Father Serra.5 During the next three decades the social order of Spanish California took form. It followed from the union of church and state symbolized by the partnership of Portolá and Serra. Three institutions formed the basis of this social order. The first was the presidio.6 This was the military institution that protected the territory from foreign incursions and, if needed, domestic unrest. The second was the mission. This was the religious institution that was to convert the Native Americans into Christians and loyal subjects. The third was the pueblo. It was the secular entity that supported the missions and the presidios and would, eventually, be the basis for expanded settlement.7 The goal of these three institutions was the creation of an Alta California that would be self-sufficient, with government support to the presidios as the only cost to the Crown. Ideally, the missions and the pueblos would eventually produce enough foodstuffs and handicrafts for sale to the presidios. A single annual Spanish supply ship, sailing north from the New Spain Pacific port of San Blas, would provide, it was hoped, all that was needed in the way of more sophisticated goods. Self-sufficiency was needed to maintain the prohibition of any direct trade with foreign vessels. Officially only the port of Monterey was open to ships of other lands, at which point they could arrange with Spanish officials to take on needed supplies or undertake scientific expeditions.8 The government that emerged under this system was, like that of the other territories of New Spain, hierarchical and authoritarian. The governor, located in Monterey, was appointed and held both military and political power. He combined legislative, executive and judicial functions in his single office. He was represented by captains at the presidios and by comisionarios elsewhere. The pueblos, with 4 Andrew Rolle & Arthur Verge, California: A History (Wheeling IL: Davidson, 1963 [2008]), 33-34. 5 Kurt Baer, Architecture of the California Missions (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1958), 1; Landmark Adventures Website Entry for Portola Trail Campsite; Starr, California, 36; Wikipedia Entry for ”Serra Springs (California).” 6 There were five presidios: San Diego (1789), Monterey (1770), San Francisco (1776), Santa Barbara (1782), and Sonoma (1810). 7 Rolle & Verge, California: A History, 41. 8 Rolle & Verge, California: A History, 41; Henry P. Silka, San Pedro: A Pictorial History (San Pedro: San Pedro Bay Historical Society, 1984 [1993]), 16. Page | 3 SurveyLA Citywide Historic Context Statement Context: Spanish Colonial and Mexican Era Settlement, 1781-1849 their alcaldes, or mayors, and ayuntamientos, or city councils, had a small degree of autonomy, and the missions had a good deal more. But both the pueblo and the mission functioned under a society that acknowledged authority and hierarchy at the local level as well as at the top in Mexico City and Madrid.9 Contemporaries of Spanish California complained of a lack of development and a failure to use the land to its best advantage. But it must be remembered that the goal of the Spanish Crown was never to develop Alta California in the way that the Anglo-American frontier was developed.