The forgotten men of L.A. City Hall

Times editors recently returned from a retreat, and I hear that one of the things they decided while discussing the future of the newspaper was that they must keep the names of previous mayors out of news stories. I had not realized that throwing around old mayors’ names was an especially big problem, apart from that whole Cristobal Aguilar situation.

You recall Cristobal Aguilar, of course. He was mayor of Los Angeles for a couple of years in the 1860s and again in the 1870s, and was remembered by pretty much nobody until Antonio Villaraigosa came on the scene. Someone then at The Times -- I’m pretty sure it was Bill Boyarsky -- figured out that if then-Assembly Speaker Villaraigosa were elected mayor, he would be the first Latino mayor of Los Angeles since Cristobal Aguilar in 1872.

It was an interesting observation, mostly for the very reason that no one had ever heard of Cristobal Aguilar. It was a way of stressing that a city founded by Spanish settlers hadn’t had a Latino mayor in modern times. But before long, everybody felt a need to mention Aguilar, to show that they knew how important it was for a Latino to be mayor and to show that they knew something about L.A. history. People in elevators would say, “Did you know that Antonio Villaraigosa would be the first Latino mayor of Los Angeles since Cristobal Aguilar in 1872?” No one knew what Aguilar had done as mayor, but he suddenly became the best-known person to have held that office prior to Tom Bradley.

No magazine, no newspaper, no TV program would mention Villaraigosa without mentioning Aguilar. The names were joined, as if “Antonio Villaraigosa” weren’t already long enough. For a few months in 2001, when he first ran, his name in effect became Antonio-Villaraigosa-who-would-be-the-first-Latino-mayor-of-Los-Angeles-since-Cristobal-Aguilar-in-1872. When he lost, Aguilar nearly returned to historical oblivion, but the phrase had caught on and reporters were loath to let go of it. So City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo became “the first Latino official elected citywide since Mayor Cristobal Aguilar left office in 1872.”

That didn’t really catch on. But in 2005, Villaraigosa ran again, and won. Cristobal Aguilar was back. Reporters and bloggers had to look him up to see if there was anything important about him other than having been the last Latino mayor before Villaraigosa, and it turned out that, yes, he blocked the sale of the city’s water rights and signed over to the public the lot that became Pershing Square.

In that same campaign, by the way, Villaraigosa tried to make Jim Hahn’s name longer by adding the name of another ex-mayor. It was no longer just Jim Hahn. It was Jim-Hahn-who-leads-the-most-investigated-administration-since-Frank-Shaw. But at least some L.A. people had already heard of Shaw, who was recalled amid a corruption scandal in the 1930s. He’s part of L.A.’s proto-noir mystique.

OK, so you know the name Frank Shaw, and you’ve been pummeled with the name Cristobal Aguilar, and you certainly know Antonio Villaraigosa, Jim Hahn, and before Hahn -- think, now -- right, Richard Riordan. And before Riordan, 20 years of Tom Bradley.

But do you know any other Los Angeles mayors? Many L.A. residents would be able to name more mayors of New York (Bloomberg, Giuliani, Koch, Dinkins, Lindsay, LaGuardia -- and no big deal if you forgot Abe Beame) or Chicago (Daley, Washington, uh, Daley) than of their own city.

Maybe that’s because Bradley was mayor for a generation and made us forget the relative short-termers who came before. In 1993, when Bradley opted against a sixth term, Los Angeles voters adopted term limits. But a good argument could be made that they weren’t needed, because before Bradley, voters tossed out one mayor after another. Who was the last pre-Bradley mayor to leave office voluntarily, without being defeated for reelection, recalled or otherwise trying to regain office?

That was the trivia question we put to online readers earlier this month. There were some good guesses, but only Eric Shaw (any relation to Frank, I wonder?) of Lenexa, Kan., named Henry R. Rose, who left office way back in 1915. Even that was wrong, as I’ll explain in a moment. But it was close enough, and we gave it to him.

I’m not sure when the whole Los Angeles Times ban on naming old mayors actually kicks in, so I’d better hurry. Here goes: Before Bradley there was Sam Yorty, L.A’s mayor for most of the ‘60s -- from Sandy Koufax to the Beach Boys to Watts to RFK to Charles Manson. Yorty began his political career as a labor-oriented and communist-supported leftist, but retired as a Republican. His persona was adopted, and his memory kept alive, by the Mayor Sam’s Sister City blog. Bradley beat him in 1973, but Mayor Sam still didn’t go quietly. He tried again, and failed again, in 1981.

Before Yorty it was C. Norris Poulson (1953-1961), a Republican congressman reputedly controlled by the Los Angeles Times (ah, the good old days). Poulson served two terms and wanted a third but was defeated by Yorty, who dumped garbage on the steps of City Hall to illustrate the hardships that Poulson’s administration had caused by requiring residents to separate their wet and dry rubbish for pickup.

Poulson originally got the job by defeating Fletcher Bowron (1938-1953), the four-term urban reformer who led Los Angeles from the recall of Frank Shaw through World War II and into the 1950s. Bowron did much to shape modern Los Angeles, including cleaning up the Los Angeles Police Department with his appointment of Chief William Parker. Still, he has been largely forgotten by history. If you want to know what you’re missing, start with “Los Angeles Transformed” by Tom Sitton, L.A. historian and head of the Museum of Natural History’s (vastly underrated) history department. Bowron’s name is remembered by many Angelenos for the lackluster Fletcher Bowron Square near City Hall.

Bowron, of course, got to City Hall via the Shaw recall. Few remember that Shaw (1933-1938) was also considered a reformer when he came in, defeating John C. Porter (1929-1933), who also was considered a reformer. Lots of reform needed in those days, apparently. So far we can go back to 1933 and still not find a mayor, before term limits and Bradley, who left of his own accord.

Then there was George E. Cryer -- a reformer, by the way -- who was elected in 1921 and left office, voluntarily, in 1929. So we have a winner? Several people answered our quiz with Cryer, and they get kudos for knowing that he, and no one after him until 1993, walked away from the mayor’s office without being given the boot by voters, the courts or the grim reaper. Yes, he walked away -- but he couldn’t stay away. The quiz question mandates that the mayor never again tried to regain office, and Cryer almost immediately regretted giving up his job to Porter. He challenged Porter, and Porter was defeated -- but by Frank Shaw, not by George Cryer, who didn’t even make the runoff.

Cryer first took office in 1921 by defeating Meredith Pinxton “Pinkie” Snyder, who, by the way, was mayor of Los Angeles a lot. Snyder served a term in the 1890s, took a couple years off and came back in 1900 and then, after seven other men had held the mayor’s office, decided the city had never been the same without him and insisted on challenging incumbent Frederick T. Woodman in 1919. Pinkie beat Woodman, but voters soon regretted calling him back and tossed him out after a single comeback term.

Woodman didn’t oust his predecessor, Charles Sebastian, named by one person responding to our quiz named as the last mayor to leave on his own. Close, but not quite. Sebastian resigned mid-term, and he claimed it was because of his health. But he had just faced a recall petition and was about to face another one, so his departure was somewhat less than voluntary.

That leaves us with Henry Rose, who was elected in 1913, served a single two-year term and left. No defeat, no recall, no shooting himself to death in the City Council chamber (that was Damien Marchessault, but after he left office). Rose was only too happy to go.

“I have been very unfortunate in the last year and a half that I have been Mayor,” Rose was quoted as saying in the Feb. 3, 1915, Los Angeles Times. “I have lost money by devoting my entire time to this position and have actually lost, in one way or another, money that I had counted upon to keep me in my old age.”

So Henry Rose is the correct answer. Henry Howard Rose. A mayor so obscure that, as of this writing, you won’t find his real name in Wikipedia. Most places on the Web list him as Henry R. Rose. It’s not clear when the middle initial H. morphed into an R, but by the 1960s it was appearing in the occasional Times story that mentioned old mayors. Except for work by the careful Tom Sitton, most articles, books and online almanacs still get it wrong. Be the first to set Wikipedia straight.

Until term limits, most mayors of Los Angeles eventually got dumped by voters. Including, by the way, Cristobal Aguilar, who was defeated for reelection. Now you know.