One thing leads to another and as so often happens, a search set in motion for one thing
leads instead in a wholly unexpected and infinitely more interesting direction.
C.C. Pierce led me to Julius Shulman who then led me to Herman Schultheis,
each with his own unique take on Los Angeles…and thence to Edward Weston,
credited with working in Los Angeles but who, alas, did very little with landscapes
or architecture. He did produce this shot of his studio at Los Feliz and Brand Boulevard in Tropico…
Weston Studio, Tropico, ca_ 1920, (In Focus), 140)_
And then I found this lovely little photograph of a beautiful woman in thoughtful repose…
and I had to know who she was and where she’d been sitting when Weston captured her image…
Katz, 1920
Edward Weston photograph. J. Paul Getty Museum, 85.XM.170.11. (From Warren, p. 202).
And I came to find out that her name was Betty Katz and Weston had come to know her
through Margrethe Mather, a fellow photographer, socialist, free thinker and some-time prostitute
who had set up her studio in the carriage house of the Hildreth mansion at Fourth and Flower Streets.
Betty Katz was likewise a radical who had come to Southern California at the urging of Emma Goldman
and because of her health (she, like so many others had tuberculosis) took up residence in a little
bungalow in Palm Springs. Mather produced a small group of well-received shots of Katz whose
intelligence and forceful personality came through the lens.
They fell easily into a casual physical and emotional relationship.
Betty Katz, Mather, 1916
Betty Katz, 1916. Margrethe Mather photograph. J. Paul Getty Museum, 85XP.249.1.
(From Artful Lives: Edward Weston, Margrethe Mather and the Bohemians of Los Angeles by Beth Gates Warren, p. 126).
At the time Weston met Katz, she was occasionally visiting Los Angeles
(when her condition would permit) and had become an active member of the
local art scene which included several well known political thinkers and agitators.
She had the use of a friend’s apartment on Fort Moore Hill. Roy Rosen had hoboed
across the country and finally landed in the attic apartment of the old Hancock Banning
house at 416 N. Broadway. But Rosen also suffered from tuberculosis and spent months
at a time in the Barlow Sanitarium up in Elysian Park. It was in those times that Betty Katz
came to Los Angeles. She sat for Weston…
Betty Katz Brandner, 1920
Betty Katz, 1920, Edward Weston portrait from Edward Weston in Los Angeles
by Susan Danly and Weston J. Naef, Huntington Library and Art Gallery, Plate 2, p. 13.
Original image courtesy The J. Paul Getty Museum. Collection Center for Creative Photography
Weston, a married man of convenient moral flexibility, who had bedded Mather
and several of his assistants, began an affair with Katz.
During this time he produced the ‘Attic Pictures’…
Edward Weston, The Attic, 1921
Betty Katz in Roy Rosen's attic apartment in the Hancock Banning house on Fort Moore Hill.
Edward Weston, The Attic, 1921, Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum.
betty katz in her attic, edward weston, 1920
Image by Edward Weston of Betty Katz in the attic of the Hancock Banning house
on Fort Moore Hill. 1920
Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum.
View looking north from the county courthouse, C.C. Pierce, ca.1895/1905
Fort Moore Hill, Los Angeles, 1905 (left) and Justicia Street, 1895 (right) - a quick stitch
of two photos taken from the same vantage point (LA County Courthouse) about 10 years apart.
(thanks, ProphetM) Because of the different dates of these two Pierce photographs the stitch
doesn't turn out quite so well but still provides a view of the area about 1900.
The Hancock Banning house is up, brand spanking new and shiny
(above and just to the right of the tunnel portal), the south facing cupola can be seen,
the little white house on Justicia with the turret can be seen clearly and the Broadway
tunnel is open for business making the left photo post-1901.
USCdigital archive/C.C. Pierce collection
the hancock banning residence, C.C. Pierce, ca. 1900
Description
Photograph of the exterior of the Banning Residence at 416 N. Broadway on Fort Moore Hill
in Los Angeles, ca.1900. The large Victorian home has two stories with a covered porch
at left and a tall chimney at right. The peak of the roof is covered in tall spikes. The south
facing cupola containing Betty Katz's balcony is clearly seen. There is an assortment of
trees in front of the house, and in front of the trees is a wide unpaved street
partially overgrown with weeds. I believe this image is later than August 1, 1901.
This would have been contemporaneous with the tunnel being opened under Broadway on
Fort Moore Hill hence the weeds growing in what is now a dead-end street overlooking the tunnel entrance.
Seaver Center for Western History Research, Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, neg no. 1008481
the hancock banning residence, C.C. Pierce, ca. 1900 (uncropped)
This uncropped image has the additional charm of showing C. C. Pierce's shadow and that of his camera at work.
USCdigital archive/C. C. Pierce collection
City Hall construction, 1927
An interesting, if somewhat typical, shot of the Hall of Justice from the iron works of the City Hall
going up across Spring Street. But sometimes it's more interesting what's captured inadvertently
in the background. Here we have a pretty clear shot of the Hancock Banning house over on Fort Moore Hill
a few years after Weston and Rosen and Betty Katz. Now, of course, the view enjoyed by Betty Katz, and captured by
Edward Weston, is gone forever.
LAPL
Justica Street in Los Angeles, looking south from Sunset Boulevard, C.C. Pierce, ca.1928
Photograph of Justica Street in Los Angeles, looking south from Sunset Boulevard, ca.1928.
The tower of City Hall is faintly visible in the background. Justica Street is not paved, and there
are large ruts in its dirt surface. Tree covered Fort Moore Hill appears at right, while on the left
are several Sonora Town buildings (these, although they don't look like it, front on Justicia and 'back up'
to properties lower down that front on New High Street). Prudent Beaudry’s house would be just behind
the white two story building on the left and downslope maybe fifty feet. There are two people standing
in the middle of the road in the distance. There is a wooden fence on the left side of the road, and
written on it are the words "[Au]to" and "Kelley Kar Co.".
USCdigital archive/Title Insurance and Trust/C. C. Pierce Photography Collection, 1860-1960
Sunset and North Broadway, 1929
View looking south at Sunset Boulevard and North Broadway showing
the north tunnel portal as it empties traffic into the intersection. On the left,
a dirt Justicia Street winds up and around the shoulder of Fort Moore Hill.
LAPL
Looking northwest from City Hall tower, panorama, C.C. Pierce, 1930
I stitched together two Pierce photographs from 1930 to get this panorama
looking north from the City Hall tower as demolition gets under way on Justicia Street
in preparation for the coming street realignment. Spring Street will soon extend
through the old Los Angeles Central Jail on Temple Street north to Sunset Boulevard
and take with it all the houses on Justicia and the roadbed itself. The Hancock Banning
house is seen at left holding its ground but down slope the little white house with the turret
has lost the turret and its second story and will soon be gone altogether. Of particular interest,
over on New High Street, Prudent Beaudry's house is gone, torn down this very year after
having been purchased by the Brunswig Drug Company so that they might move an existing
building south onto the Beaudry property. In fact, it appears preparations have been made to
begin the move, the ground at the Beaudry lot looks to have some 'rolly things' similar
to the Alhambra Apartment move of five years earlier. [I came back on just long enough to
say how much I like this image. It shows so much and, of course, Pierce is really a special
resource for us all. I love this shot.]
USCdigital archive/C.C. Pierce collection
Hancock Banning residence, side view, 1938
A side view of a two-story house with redwood siding, having been built by
Hancock Banning (1865-1925), at 416 N. Broadway. This portion of Broadway
was located on Fort Moore Hill. This photo shows a driveway on the right side of
the house. At the back, a small structure that looks like a shed. This 1938 shot
of the house shows it in hard times, the spikes gone, the chimney gone,
the malaise that has gripped Bunker Hill to the south in full swing here on
Fort Moore Hill as well.
LAPL
Snow on mountains, 16 March 1952. View from City Hall Tower looking toward Montrose area.
Fort Moore Hill is gone and with it the high school, Banning house and the cemetery.
Bozzani is holding on at Sunset and the suits got their parking lots. More's the pity.
USCdigital archive/Los Angeles Examiner Negatives Collection, 1950-1961
“With her masses of ink-black hair and dark, expressive eyebrows, Betty Katz
made an indelible impression on Weston. She was then staying in Roy Rosen’s
attic crow’s nest in the Hancock Banning house on North Broadway, high above
the streets of downtown Los Angeles, and it was here that she and Weston
conducted their clandestine affair.
Although Weston kept his romance with Katz a closely guarded secret,
he could not resist commemorating their pas de deux in a series of images
destined to take their place among his most important photographs of the
period. He first photographed Katz lounging on the attic balcony of
the Hancock Banning House, veiled like some twentieth century Scheherazade
spinning Arbian Nights tales. Then he positioned her in juxtaposition to the
balcony’s Moorish-style arches and the tower and turrets of the city’s
fanciful 1891 sandstone courthouse in the distance.
In other photographs Katz poses against the spare angles of her attic room,
in various states of undress and with an assortment of props. In one she
wears only a lacy shawl as she exposes her right breast; in another she sits
on the floor, fully clothed, smoking a cigarette; and in a third she appears to
be moving a fabric-covered panel. Weston’s affair with Katz continued for several
weeks, and he sent her a series of highly passionate letters as a paean to their
electric embraces
Weston was deeply grateful for the time they spent together, and he continued to
press her for further liaisons. Within weeks of their first tryst, however, Katz was
forced to return to Palm Springs after symptoms of her tubercular condition began
to recur. Upon hearing of her imminent departure, Weston wrote a farewell letter
in which he seemed to breathe an almost audible sigh of relief that their affair was
coming to an end. He may have realized Katz was too vivid a presence, and very
possibly too demanding a consort, to fit inconspicuously into his carefully
compartmentalized life:
‘If this be the end-the last episode-farewell sweetheart of the shadowed
attic-I am sad-perhaps my eyes are moist-but I think the Gods are good
to force an ending by sending you away before even one little cloud has
passed over the intriguing glamour of our many nights…’
Artful Lives, Beth Gates Warren, pg 203-204, Getty Publications, 2011
Katz, 1920
Betty Katz on balcony of Hancock Banning House, Los Angeles, 1920.
Edward Weston photograph. J. Paul Getty Museum, 85.XM.170.11. (From Warren, p. 202).