Finding Comfort Among the Ghosts of L.A.

The lofts of Los Angeles have a lot going for them: an abundance of light, plenty of elbow room, views that are frequently breathtaking and, in many cases, the capacity to stimulate the inner artist in those who reside there.

But what makes a loft truly special, in my mind, is its ghosts.

They are the “seamstresses or printers who hunched over long tables, toiling 14 hours a day,” as Barbara Thornburg describes in her incisive piece (“You Call This a Loft?” page 16). It is their presence, she points out, that gives these spaces soul.

My family and I don’t live in a loft. But Thornburg’s essay inspired me to do some checking, and, as it turns out, our 1928 Spanish-style house in Hancock Park-adjacent (as the Realtors like to say) has a wonderful spirit knocking about. His name is Moses Hamburger.

He arrived here from Sacramento in 1881, just before Los Angeles first boomed, and with his father and brothers established what would become the largest department store in town. By the time the house was built, A. Hamburger & Sons had been sold to May Co., and L.A. was at the tail end of its second boom, spurred by the local oil industry and Hollywood.

“Hamburger would have been the commercial beneficiary of that with his department store,” notes historian William Deverell, co-editor of “Metropolis in the Making: Los Angeles in the 1920s.”

The decade was marked by heady population growth--the fastest of any major city in the country, according to Deverell--and a decidedly mercantile mentality. “The Chamber of Commerce was probably more important than the City Council in terms of clout and reach,” says Deverell, director of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West.

Besides helping to mold L.A., Deverell figures, Hamburger would have seen its ugliness. Though Jewish entrepreneurs such as the Hamburgers and banker I.W. Hellman were instrumental in fueling the city’s rise, anti-Semitism flared here in the ‘teens and ‘20s.

In October 1930, Hamburger suffered a heart attack. The news made the front page of The Times: “Pioneer Merchant Fighting for Life.” The picture that ran that day shows a man with a big oval face, pursed lips and wide eyes that are both sweet and a little sad.

He died shortly thereafter at age 70, kicking off a nasty fight among relatives over his $3 million estate--a pot worth more than $32 million in today’s terms. Despite the tussle, I like to think that Hamburger is resting peacefully.

“Lord,” the rabbi said at his funeral, “thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.”

It is my dwelling place now, and it’s somehow comforting to know that it’s filled with so much history, belying the image of a city often accused of having none.