Street Corner’s Colorful, Even Lurid, History
In its three generations in downtown Santa Ana, Woolworth’s has graced two locations a block apart on 4th Street.
Originally, the store was at 105 W. 4th St. In 1952, Woolworth’s moved a block west to its current spot at the northwest corner of Sycamore Street. Long before Woolworth’s occupied it, that corner had a colorful past.
Before 1885, J.C. Hickey operated a livery stable there. In 1887, the elegant Brunswick Hotel, then the largest building in town besides the courthouse, was built there.
The parlor of the sumptuous hotel was the site of the county’s first marriage, in 1889. Myrtle B. Walls, 18, of Tustin and L.F. Benedict, 27, of Santa Monica became man and wife. On the same day, the Brunswick hosted a party celebrating Orange County’s secession from Los Angeles.
In perhaps the site’s most lurid brush with history, the county’s only lynching--and California’s last--took place in 1892 across the street from what is now Woolworth’s. Historian Jim Sleeper as well as newspaper accounts at the time tell of the fate of Francisco Torres, a ranch hand who murdered the foreman of Madame Helena Modjeska’s Santiago Canyon ranch in a wage dispute. Weeks later, Torres was captured in San Diego and returned by train to Santa Ana by Sheriff Theodore Lacy.
Guards were posted outside the jail, but a mob of 30 hooded men broke in, dragged Torres to the street and hanged him from a lamppost. His attorney had been seeking to have Torres’ trial moved elsewhere, perhaps because of Modjeska’s prominence as an actress, and around the hanged man’s neck was a sign that read “change of venue.”
On March 10, 1933, the Long Beach earthquake caused major damage to downtown Santa Ana, and two people were killed on the sidewalk outside what was then the Rossmoor Hotel and Cafeteria, at the corner of 4th and Sycamore. Those were tough times because of the Depression, although Orange County fared better than other parts of the country because of its self-sufficient agricultural heritage.
