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Los Angeles Plaza 1865
SCRAPBOOK:
The History of our Bel Air-Beverly Crest
Neighborhood Council Communities
THE UNDERTAKER OF THE MURDER CAPITAL
OF THE UNITED STATES
Our beloved city of the angels, Los Angeles, once had the distinction of being the murder capital of the United States. According to Horace Bell, who was there and wrote a memoir of the time: "Reminiscences of a Ranger.” The year of 1853 showed an average mortality rate from fights and assassinations over one per day.
The first question people asked in the morning was “Who got killed last night” and then the next question was “Who Killed Him?”
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A few years later, into this murderous environment came a French speaking Belgian émigré named Victor Ponet. He had trained as a cabinetmaker but was endowed with entrepreneurial skills. When he found that his cabinet shop had more demand for caskets than furniture, Ponet became the principal casket maker of Los Angleles. He also became an undertaker, providing citizens with full service.
Eventually, Mr. Ponet became wealthy and, like many families of this era, invested heavily in land. According to the Los Angeles Herald, Mr. Ponet became one of the six heaviest taxpayers in Los Angeles. “Among his holdings are several blocks of Spring and Main Streets. He owns the entire block between Pico and Grand Avenue and Hope Street. This block incudes Fiesta Park and the Ponet Square apartments hotel."
Victor married an Irish immigrant named Ellen Manning who shared her husband's business acuity and sold French millinery. They had two children: a son who became a Catholic priest; and a daughter, Gertrude Mary Ponet
The couple led a successful life, with Victor founding the German-American Savings Bank, which became Security Pacific, was President of Evergreen Cemetery. King Leopold of Belgium bestowed on Victor the title of Chevalier de L’Ordre de Leopold – essentially knighthood for Victor's service to Belgium.
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Harper Ranch, next door neighbor to Victor and Ellen Ponet
Victor and Ellen retired to an estate on the Southern slope of the Santa Monica Mountains next to the town of Sherman (today West Hollywood) where avocado groves, casaba melons and poinsettia fields filled their 240 acre estate. All of this was inherited by their descendants, their daughter and her husband Francis Montgomery after Ponet passed away in 1914 and his wife passed away in 1919.
In 1904, Moses Sherman developed a new residential neighborhood called Hacienda Park and obtained permission to build a road across their property to the new development.
The road was named Sunset Boulevard and the descendants of Ponet, his daughter and son in law, found themselves with property on both sides of Sunset. They decided to create a commercial development they named “Sunset Plaza” which is still a vital commercial development and is owned and managed by the descendants of Victor and Ellen Ponet to this day.
Andre Stojka
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Ponet Drive, named after Victor Ponet
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ABOUT THE LOS ANGELES NEIGHBORHOOD COUNCIL SYSTEM
Because of the size of Los Angeles, each Los Angeles City Council member represents around 260,000 people. To keep City officials in closer touch with the neighborhoods of the City, in 1999 Los Angeles adopted a Neighborhood Council system to advise the City Council members of local issues.
There are 99 separate Neighborhood Councils in the City of Los Angeles. Members of the Neighborhood Council are considered City employees without compensation of any kind. They are formally elected by the public or communities and must live, work or own property in the area they represent.
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The Bel Air Beverly Crest Neighborhood Council represents approximately 28,000 people in a mountain and canyon area of the City of Los Angeles bounded on the west by Sepulveda Boulevard, on the North, Mulholland Drive, on the South by Sunset Boulevard and the East by Laurel Canyon.
This newsletter is for residents, stakeholders and friends of the Bel Air-Beverly Crest Neighborhood Council,
Please forward this newsletter to neighbors who you feel will be interested and might be interested in subscribing to our mailing list.
The Bel Air-Beverly Crest Neighborhood Council Community News is produced by the Bel Air-Beverly Crest Neighborhood Council Outreach Committee: Robin Greenberg, Chair, Andre Stojka, Editor, with committee members Nickie Miner, Robert Schlesinger, Mindy Rothstein Mann, Heather Roy, Maureen Smith and Travis Longcore.
Photo Credits: Wikipedia, Shutterstock, Oregon
Your comments are solicited and appreciated. Please contact us at: outreach@babcnc.org
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