Neighborhood Reflects City’s Ethnic Flux

If Los Angeles ever wanted to build a monument to the dynamic role that ethnic change has played in the city’s history, it should probably be in contemporary Little Tokyo, which occupies what was once the pueblo’s first real commercial center.

In the neighborhood, which was originally settled by French immigrants, is a street named for a Japanese American federal judge, at the end of which stands a building named for a Latino congressman.

Judge John Aiso Street honors the highest-ranking nisei--second-generation Japanese American--to serve in the U.S. armed forces during World War II. Aiso, an appellate justice, was also the first nisei appointed to the federal bench.

Where the short street ends stands the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building. It is named for the patriarch of Los Angeles’ Latino politics, California’s first Mexican American congressman in four generations and the first to serve on the modern-day Los Angeles City Council.

Not so obvious are the neighborhood’s associations with the 19th and 20th century French, Irish, Russian, Swiss and African Americans who planted their roots there.

It all came together in the 1830s, when immigrant Jean Louis Vignes--forced to leave France because of his philandering and politics--arrived in Los Angeles from Bordeaux. He brought with him the grapevine cuttings that he used to establish a 100-acre vineyard called El Aliso, just south of what is now Union Station.

Soon other French families--Sainsevain, Viole, Penelon, Bouchet, Nadeau and Taix--followed, building homes and opening businesses in what quickly became a Gallic enclave. Branching out from the winemakers around him, Henri Penelon set up the city’s first photographer’s and artist’s studio; the Viole family opened a pharmacy; Marius Taix baked bread.

In 1849, Charles Ducommun, a one-eyed Swiss watchmaker, set up a watch shop on Commercial Street, then converted it into a general store, catering to the Gold Rush trade. Penelon, who used his skill with the camera and oil paints to depict the city’s history, set up shop nearby.

Vermont native Ozro Childs opened a tin and hardware shop on Commercial Street in 1850, occupying what is now the site of the Roybal building. A decade later, on the eve of Abraham Lincoln’s election, Childs’ shop became the scene of a chaotic treasure hunt that roused Angelenos, much like the Gold Rush up north.

After a fire swept through his store, one of the locals was poking through the ashes and found $5,000 in gold. Word spread quickly, and a large crowd gathered--including some of the 400 French residents nearby--for the hunt.

Childs tried to persuade the man to give back the gold, but the crowd, devoted to the principle of “finders keepers,” swarmed over the smoking rubble to look in vain for more treasure.

Childs rebuilt the store and went on to build an opera house at 1st and Main streets before donating land for the USC campus.

When Marius Taix, a baker from the Hautes Alpes of France, arrived in 1882, he bought a small lot on Commercial Street for $10,000, opened Taix French Bread Bakery and began catering to the 4,000 French who by then lived in the area.

The building survived until 1913, when it was torn down. Taix built the Champ d’Or Hotel on the site, and leased a restaurant on the first floor to a tenant.

In 1927--at the height of Prohibition--federal agents and Taix’s pharmacist son confronted the restaurant’s operator for selling alcohol on the property. The angry restaurateur tossed the young Taix the keys and told him to “do it yourself.”

The Taix French Restaurant was born.

In celebrating its opening, the same federal agents toasted the son’s new profession with wine that he had purchased for “medicinal purposes.”

The restaurant served its last specialite de la maison at that location in 1964, when the city paid $412,000 for the property that eventually became the Metropolitan Detention Center. Ten adjacent buildings also were demolished, two of which dated to the 1880s.

The culinary dynasty carries on at 1911 Sunset Blvd.

In 1988, the $36-million detention center opened on the site, making Los Angeles the fifth major urban area in the country to have a downtown federal prison.

That same year, the 78-year-old Aiso died from injuries suffered when he was the victim of an attempted robbery.

While attending Le Conte Junior High School, Aiso had been elected student body president. But when a small group of parents loudly protested the selection of a Japanese American candidate, the school decided to have no student government.

Aiso went on to graduate from Hollywood High, Brown University and Harvard Law School. During World War II, he rose to lieutenant colonel and, upon discharge, pursued a distinguished career in California as a judge in the municipal, superior and appellate courts.

Like Aiso, Roybal was forced to travel a difficult path. Against significant odds, he was elected to the City Council in 1949. He succeeded by building ethnic coalitions, recognizing that he could not win by appealing just to voters of Mexican heritage. Others, however, lacked his taste for diversity. At his first council meeting, he bristled when he was patronizingly introduced as “our new Mexican-speaking councilman, representing the Mexican people of his district.”

It was one of many such incidents that Roybal would shrug off before going on to serve three decades in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Today, the center named for Roybal and the street named for Aiso sit virtually on the boundary between Little Tokyo--now the Japanese American community’s cultural center--and a burgeoning Latino immigrant district.

Who knows who will be next?