A Walk Through Old Santa Ana

Couples sneaking a kiss in the Old Courthouse cupola, movie stars drinking tea at Mrs. Daniger’s Tea Room, and patients waiting at the back porch of Dr. Willela Waffle’s house were common sights in Santa Ana’s heyday.

These days, the old buildings in Santa Ana aren’t the same.

The courthouse cupola was knocked off in 1933 by an earthquake. Daniger’s Tea Room closed its doors in 1944 after 10 years of serving the Hollywood elite. And Dr. Waffle’s house was moved two blocks away to make room for a parking lot.

Despite the changes, Santa Ana’s oldest buildings have weathered the years, many of them bearing some of the city’s more interesting stories.

“The older buildings are much warmer than the ones being built now. They were inviting and not at all intimidating like many of the modern concrete ones that go up,” said Diann Marsh, vice president of the Santa Ana Historical Society.

Some of the oldest buildings, like the Old Courthouse on Sycamore Street, are also the city’s most famous. Architect Charles L. Strange designed the building--with its red sandstone from Arizona and fancy cupola--to be the tallest building south of Los Angeles, said retired court reporter Lecil Slaback, 77, whose father was the first permanent court reporter hired by the county.

Strange almost didn’t get to build the courthouse because the Board of Supervisors twice rejected his design. He prevailed, but only after others allegedly conspired to award the contract to another architect.

When the courthouse was half completed, Strange--true to his name--disappeared, Slaback said.

“Mr. Strange is Santa Ana’s own Judge Crater,” said Slaback, referring to New York Superior Court Judge Joseph Crater, who disappeared in 1930. “He was last sighted in Mexico. But everyone who’s missing is sighted there.”

Despite its odd beginning, Slaback has many memories of the fortress-like building, which once housed all the county offices.

As a toddler, Slaback would play after-hours in the courthouse, where his parents often worked through the night to type transcripts for the following day.

“It was a big, mysterious place with shadows like caves. And when I got sleepy, my mother would fold up her coat and I would take a nap off in a corner,” Slaback said.

Slaback’s fondest memories of the courthouse were the hundreds of marriages that took place. Lovers used to hop on an electric Red Car for less than $1 and go from Los Angeles to Santa Ana to be discreetly married.

A few blocks away from the courthouse on the corner of Bush Street and Civic Center Drive was one of Santa Ana’s finest Victorian mansions, Dr. Willela Howe-Waffle’s majestic home. It was built in 1889, the same year that the city became the county seat.

As one of Orange County’s first female doctors, Waffle practiced medicine out of her two-story home. More than 1,000 infants, known as “Waffle babies,” were delivered by the doctor or her sssistant, Marsh said.

The bespectacled Waffle raced across the countryside by horse and buggy to visit her patients. Sometimes, patients too sick to wait until morning would arrive at her back porch and yell for help through a speaking tube that was connected to her bedroom. On hot, summer nights, it was easier to reach the doctor because she often slept out on her bedroom balcony.

“She had snow-white, beautiful hair,” said Dorothy O’Donnell, whose son and daughter were delivered by Waffle. “You didn’t have just a doctor with her, she was your friend too.” Waffle was not one without controversy. She quietly divorced her first husband, Dr. Alvin Howe, who was acquitted on a charge of performing an abortion, according to an 1890 grand jury report. She married Edson Waffle, the socially prominent livery stable owner, who provided her with fine horses for her house calls.

Waffle died at the age of 70 after collapsing at the bedside of a patient in 1924.

Her home, threatened by the construction of a fast-food restaurant parking lot, was moved in 1975 to its current location at Sycamore Street and Civic Center Drive. Tours of the renovated home are offered the third Saturday of every month.

When Santa Ana residents wanted a taste of the good life, they strolled downtown from 3rd to 5th Street--the shopping mecca of Orange County. The Santora Building on Broadway and 2nd Street--a grand Spanish-style building--was the centerpiece.

The Santora was big and bold with plaster gargoyles glaring from the building’s upmost facade. On the bottom floor was Daniger’s Tea Room, where guests lingered over Earl Grey Tea, or descended the building’s basement to listen to local jazz bands. The Tea Room was listed in Westways magazine as among the top places in which to eat in 1938.

Among Hollywood’s celebrated who signed owner Irene Daniger’s guest book were Rita Hayworth, Alan Ladd, Rosalind Russell and John Garfield. Stargazers shopped in the nearby stores and kept a close eye on the tea room’s front door.

Santa Ana could boast a resident celebrity as well. The ruler of Indore, India, wanted to escape the civil unrest in his country, so he moved to peaceful Orange County in 1937. The rich maharajah married a nurse from Santa Ana who took care of him during an illness, and he built a home--known as the Maharajah’s House--on the 2200 block of Heliotrope Drive for their 4-year-old daughter, Marsh said. The house was built without windows on the first floor and a gate was on the indoor stairway because he feared his child might be kidnaped like the Lindbergh baby.

Before the house was completed, Santa Anans hoped he would create a local version of the Taj Mahal. They were disappointed when the prince chose a modern-looking house, with giant walls that hid the building from outsiders. Curious neighbors did see second-floor windows covered with exotic animal skins, Marsh said.

His daughter, who later became a princess in Bombay, attended Hoover Elementary School because the maharajah wanted her to grow up with her peers.

As Santa Ana established itself as the county seat, other transplants gradually settled in the city after the turn of the century, Marsh said.

The up-and-coming people moved into the city’s French Park neighborhood, where residents tried for years to nickname the area after San Francisco’s Nob Hill.

Through the late 1920s, Santa Ana residents favored small bungalows with huge porches rather than massive Victorians. The homes were full of the arts-and-crafts movement detail such as built-in cabinets and carved tulips in the columns.

Two houses, the Alexander and the Thee homes on the 1200 block of French Street, represent the era with large porches that were ideal for those who wanted to be near their trees and gardens and have a cool place in which to sleep during the summer heat waves.

“It was fashionable to be attuned to nature, so residents built all these homes that were laid back. It was very Southern California, very Santa Ana,” Marsh said.

In a way, “this era has never ended.”