Moses Sherman
Moses Hazeltine Sherman was an American land developer who built the Phoenix Street Railway in Phoenix, Arizona, and streetcar systems that would become the core of the Los Angeles Railway and part of the Pacific Electric Railway in Los Angeles, California, and owned and developed property in areas such as the westside of Los Angeles, the San Fernando Valley and Hollywood, Los Angeles. He also served on the Los Angeles Water Board. He was also known as M. H. Sherman and General M. H. Sherman.
Early life
Moses Sherman was born in West Rupert, Vermont, on December 3, 1853. He obtained a teaching certificate at the Oswego Normal School in Oswego, New York. He began as a teacher in Salem, New York and Wisconsin. He was then appointed principal of the Hamilton, New York Grade School for the 1873–74 term. Because of ill health, in 1874 he departed for the west and the Arizona Territory.Arizona – Early Accomplishments
In 1873, territorial governor Anson P.K. Safford offered Sherman a teaching post at the public school in Prescott. Here, Sherman initiated the first graded school in Arizona, teaching there from 1874 to 1876. In 1876, a new two-story school opened with Sherman as principal.He was selected to represent Arizona at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, and returned to Arizona with his sister Lucy, who was also a teacher, and who met and married Eli P. Clark, then serving at the Arizona territorial auditor. Clark would become one of Sherman's closest business associates.
John C. Frémont, then governor of the Arizona Territory, appointed Sherman State Superintendent of Public Instruction in 1879, where, as superintendent, he created the territorial school laws. In 1882, after Congress had appropriated land to support public education, Sherman selected the lands which helped to provide for the future University of Arizona.
He earned the title "General" after his 1883 appointment as Adjutant-General of the Territory of Arizona, in which position he served two terms. He would use the honorific "General" for the rest of his life.
During these years, he was also involved in business affairs. Over time, he invested in property in Prescott and built a hotel, The Sherman House. He also acquired shares in mines, grazing lands and cattle and, as Prescott and Arizona grew rapidly, he made a good deal of money from his enterprises.
Arizona – Phoenix
By the early 1880s he had refocused his efforts in the agricultural Salt River Valley area and Phoenix. He invested in and was involved with the building of the Arizona Canal, which, started in early 1883, would become the main irrigation canal for the valley.In 1884, he co-founded and became president of the Valley Bank of Phoenix. He was a major stockholder and vice president of the Phoenix Water Company. He bought large quantities of real estate around Phoenix and became the largest taxpayer in Phoenix and one of the largest in the territory.
In 1887, he constructed a street railway, and, after merging it with several other lines, electrified the lines in 1893 and created the Phoenix Railway Company of Arizona, which he controlled until 1925, when the lines were sold to the city. In 1910 he built a line from Phoenix to Glendale to connect with the Santa Fe Railroad.
He was involved with moving the territorial capitol to Phoenix, and with his business associate, attorney M.E. Collins, he donated 10 acres of property for the new territorial capitol building in 1889.
Developing Electric Rail Transportation in Los Angeles
Prior to Sherman's arrival in Los Angeles, the Santa Fe Railroad had built a line to Los Angeles in 1886, which caused a rate war with the Southern Pacific. While a short-lived real estate boom followed, the excitement created by the boom drew attention to the area. During his time in Arizona, Sherman had made many trips to Los Angeles and had become convinced that it had a great future.Shortly after moving to Los Angeles in 1890, Sherman became a founding stockholder and director of the Los Angeles-based National Bank of California. He and brother-in-law Clark immediately became involved in the local transportation business.
The Los Angeles Consolidated Electric Railway - Prior to Sherman's arrival in Los Angeles, various individual entrepreneurs had built several horse car lines, cable car lines and an initial electric line. Sherman, seeing promise in the new Sprague trolley technology, gained control of several street railway franchises, and immediately began to create a system based on this technology.
Sherman and Clark incorporated the Los Angeles Consolidated Electric Railway Company in November, 1890. Clark was made Vice President and General Manager.
They intended to acquire and construct a large number of electric railway lines connecting important parts of Los Angeles. They built lines west of the city on Pico Boulevard, to Westlake Park, and to Rosedale Cemetery; south on Central and Maple Avenues and to the University of Southern California and University Park; north and east to Highland Park and East Los Angeles, to the Evergreen Cemetery, and to the Southern Pacific and Santa Fe depots.
In the beginning, LACE competed with an existing cable railway, the Pacific Railway. When the cable company became bankrupt in 1892 because it was not profitable, LACE purchased it. By 1893 LACE operated 35 miles of electric lines, 14 miles of horse-drawn lines, and 21 miles of cable lines.
In 1895, after the company missed bond payments, Sherman lost control of the Los Angeles Consolidated Electric, though he continued as a director and held a large stock interest in the company. The new company, now controlled by the bondholders, was renamed the Los Angeles Railway, and was sold to Henry Huntington and his associates in September, 1898, ultimately becoming the "Yellow Car" system.
The First Interurban Lines - While LACE was growing, Sherman and Clark began the first steps of what would become an interurban network. In April, 1894, after acquiring horsecar lines in Pasadena, they incorporated the Pasadena and Los Angeles Electric Railway Company, Southern California's first interurban electric railway, which in May, 1895 connected their newly electrified lines in Pasadena to the LACE system serving Los Angeles.
In November, 1894, they incorporated another new interurban company, the Pasadena and Pacific Electric Railway Company, designed to connect Los Angeles to Santa Monica. After acquiring five existing railroads, they reconstructed an older steam line to reach from downtown Los Angeles to Santa Monica via Colegrove.
In 1896, at the junction of his Pasadena and Pacific streetcar line and what would become San Vicente Boulevard, just west of Hollywood, Sherman acquired 5.6 acres of land and built storage yards and car barns, naming the area Sherman. A town grew up around the facility which would evolve to become the city of West Hollywood.
The Los Angeles Pacific Railroad - After losing control of LACE, the pair focused their attention on expanding their lines between Los Angeles and the beaches. After losing control of the Los Angeles & Pacific in 1897, in June, 1898 they reorganized their remaining lines into a new company, The Los Angeles-Pacific Railroad. Later, the Los Angeles and Pacific Railway was acquired by Henry Huntington and Isaias W. Hellman’s group of investors and become part of the Pacific Electric system.
Controversy arose over some of Sherman's methods. The San Francisco Call ran a series of vitriolic articles during November and December 1898, which claimed Sherman’s efforts to secure financing for his electric railways led to the failure of two San Francisco banks. Sherman was soon vindicated, as the failures were actually the result of poor bank investments during the boom of the late 1880s, and of possible losses associated with the bonds of Los Angeles’ cable railway system.
Sherman and Clark now built lines covering the west side of the Los Angeles basin, and down the coast, from Los Angeles to Hollywood, Sawtelle, Westgate, Santa Monica, Ocean Park and Venice, and to Playa del Rey, Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach and Redondo Beach.
In some cases rights of way were donated and in other cases bonuses were paid by property owners so the lines would pass through their property. For example, Hobart J. Whitley and other investors paid $15,000 to add a line through Hollywood. Santa Monica property owners Senator John P. Jones and Robert Symington Baker provided 225 acres of land near what would become Sawtelle. Sherman and Clark sold this property to Jones and R.C. Gillis to raise funds for the new railway.
At its peak the Los Angeles Pacific had 180 miles of track in the western portions of Los Angeles County, from Los Angeles to the beaches along Santa Monica bay, then running down the coast to Redondo Beach.
In March, 1906, Sherman and Clark sold a controlling interest in the railway to E. H. Harriman, of the Southern Pacific for a reported $6 million. A new Los Angeles Pacific Railroad Company was incorporated on April 4, 1907, with ambitious plans to standard gauge the system, add new lines, create a subway from downtown to Vineyard and more.
In 1910, Sherman and Clark sold the remaining interest in their Los Angeles Pacific Railroad to the Southern Pacific, which, in September, 1911, combined their lines with Huntington's original Pacific Electric Railway and several other companies into a new Pacific Electric Railway. Sherman remained on the board of the Pacific Electric Railway.
Early Real Estate Development Activities in Los Angeles
Sherman was adept as using the electric railway to promote real estate investments. Through the creation of the Los Angeles Pacific lines, Sherman and Clark were key to the development of communities between Los Angeles and the coast, and of the area of the coast from Santa Monica to Redondo Beach. Their LAP Railroad featured the famous Balloon Route, an excursion that left Los Angeles and took a balloon-shaped rail trip involving stops at popular locations between Los Angeles and the ocean and then back to Los Angeles. The Balloon Route was popular with tourists and was instrumental in introducing potential homebuyers to the area. Sherman's work with the LAP was intimately tied to land acquisition, both as part of the construction of the rail lines, and as a means to promote the various real estate investments in which Sherman and Clark were involved.In 1900, along with developers Baker and Burbank, they purchased 1,500 acres in Hermosa Beach. Their Hermosa Beach Land and Water Company provided water; the developers built the first boardwalk and pier in 1901 and 1904. Initially served by the Santa Fe Railway, in mid-1904, the community would be served by LAP's new Redondo Division car line.
In addition, in 1903 Sherman and Clark purchased 200 acres north of Hermosa Beach and named it Shakespeare Beach, intending that it be a writer's colony, but was unable to attract many writers. Several streets, such as Homer Street and Longfellow Avenue, remain from this original subdivision.
Sherman became associated with several prominent businessmen over the years in ever-larger projects. This list of men included Harrison Gray Otis, Harry Chandler, Otto F. Brant, Hobart J. Whitley, Robert C. Gillis and others. The first such project concerned the development of Hollywood.
In 1900, the LAP had built a line north of its Santa Monica Boulevard line in Colegrove which ran along Prospect Boulevard, assisted by a $25,000 bonus paid by Hobart J. Whitley, Col. Griffith J. Griffith, and P.J. Beveridge. In 1901 Whitley and Sherman created the Los Angeles-Pacific Boulevard Development Company, which organized a syndicate that bought and subdivided a 480-acre area in Hollywood, a development which Whitley called the Hollywood Ocean Vista Tract. The company built curbs and sidewalks, planted shrubbery, and donated land for a bank and for the future Hollywood Hotel.
In 1902, Sherman and a syndicate of fifteen men purchased 1,000 acres of land around the Ballona lagoon and Port Ballona under the name the Beach Land Company, renaming the area Playa del Rey. The syndicate included partners such as local landowners Robert C. Gillis, Frederick H. Rindge, and others. They built a $100,000 pavilion, the Hotel Del Rey, and a boathouse and grandstands around the lagoon. Sherman and Clark's Los Angeles, Redondo Beach and Hermosa Railway Company built a line to the area by, which was later merged into the LAP. The line opened December 1902, extending from downtown at 4th & Broadway to the new resort, and was soon added to the famous “Balloon Route” excursion. Many visitors bought lots and built homes along the beach front.
In 1905, Sherman and Clark extended a line in the center of San Vicente Boulevard, past Robert C. Gillis’ Westgate tract (now the Brentwood area, where Sherman had investments, then on to Santa Monica.