Harry Chandler

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Harry Chandler
Chandler in 1936
Born(1864-05-17)May 17, 1864
Landaff, New Hampshire, U.S.
DiedSeptember 23, 1944(1944-09-23) (aged 80)
Alma materDartmouth College
Occupation(s)Newspaper publisher, investor, real estate owner
Political partyRepublican
Spouse(s)Magdalena Schlador Chandler (m. 1888–1892, her death)
Marian Otis Chandler (m. 1894–1944, his death)
Children8, including Norman Chandler
RelativesMike Chandler (great-grandson)
Dorothy Buffum Chandler (daughter-in-law)
Otis Chandler (grandson)
Harrison Gray Otis (father-in-law)

Harry Chandler (May 17, 1864 – September 23, 1944) was an American newspaper publisher and investor who became owner of the largest real estate empire in the United States.[citation needed]

Early life

Harry Chandler was born in Landaff, New Hampshire, the eldest of four siblings[1] born to Emma Jane (née Little) and Moses Knight Chandler.[2][3][4] He attended Dartmouth College, and on a dare, he jumped into a vat of starch that had frozen over during winter, which led to severe pneumonia.[3] He withdrew from Dartmouth and moved to Los Angeles for his health.[3]

Career

Chandler greeting from Olvera Street children, 1938.

In Los Angeles, while working in the fruit fields, he started a small delivery company that soon became responsible for also delivering many of the city's morning newspapers, which put him in contact with the publisher of the Los Angeles Times, Harrison Gray Otis, who liked the entrepreneurial young man and hired him as the Times’ general manager. Harry married Otis's daughter, Marian Otis, in 1894, two years after the death of his first wife. The couple had six children together and also raised two daughters from Harry's first marriage. Upon Otis's death in 1917, Harry took over the reins as publisher of the Times and transformed it into the leading newspaper in the West and at times the most successful. For three straight years in the 1920s, under his leadership, the Times led all other American newspapers in advertising space and in number of classified advertisements.

As a community builder and large-scale real estate speculator, he became arguably the leading citizen of Los Angeles in the first half of the 20th century. Chandler was directly involved with helping to found the following: the

San Pedro Harbor, the Los Angeles Athletic Club, the California Club, The Pacific Electric Cars, the Los Angeles Art Association, the Santa Anita Park racetrack, the Los Angeles Steamship Company, the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite National Park, and the restoration of downtown's Olvera Street.[5]

As a real estate investor, he was a partner in syndicates that owned and developed much of the

Dana Point, the Tejon Ranch (281,000 acres (1,140 km2) in Southern California), the Vermejo Park Ranch (340,000 acres (1,400 km2) in New Mexico), and the C&M ranch (832,000 acres (3,370 km2) in northern Baja, Mexico). At one point, those investments made him the largest private landowner in the United States
, and he was meanwhile an officer or director in 35 corporations, including oil, shipping, and banking, or other California corporations.

Chandler was a notable supporter of

Ezra Gosney.[6]

A proclamation prepared for a Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce Dinner - Honoring Harry Chandler (1931) included this excerpt:

At six feet two, Chandler was a big man, and many stories were told of his prowess in delivering papers, tussling with trade unionists, or pitching hay on one of his many ranches. A

United States Supreme Court. For their role in the decision, Chandler and the Times won their first Pulitzer Prize.[7]

Personal life

On February 6, 1888, Harry married Magdalena Schlador, whose brother worked at the Los Angeles Times. They had a daughter, Francesca, born April 7, 1890, and a second daughter, Alice May, born July 24, 1892. Magdalena, whom Harry called "May," died at age 29 of puerperal fever two weeks after Alice May's birth on August 4, 1892.[citation needed]

Chandler went on to marry Marian Otis in 1894.[3] Francesca and Alice May were soon joined by Constance (born March 19, 1896), Ruth (October 15, 1897), Norman (September 14, 1899), Harrison Gray Otis (February 12, 1904) and the twins Helen and Philip (born February 17, 1907).

His mansion in Los Feliz was owned many years later by Father Yod, and used by Yod's The Source Family.

Death and legacy

Grave at Hollywood Forever Cemetery

Chandler died on September 23, 1944, from a

heart attack.[2][3] He and Marian are buried at Hollywood Forever Cemetery on Santa Monica Boulevard. Harrison Gray Otis's memorial is nearby. Harry's oldest son, Norman Chandler
, took charge of the Los Angeles Times after Harry's death.

Chandler Boulevard, a major street in the San Fernando Valley, is named after Harry Chandler.

A dining hall was named in his honor at the California Institute of Technology in 1960. Sixty-one years later, the Caltech Board of Trustees voted in 2021 to have Chandler's name removed from the building for his involvement with the Human Betterment Foundation.[8] The dining hall was officially renamed in November 2021 to honor the educator Lee F. Browne.[9]

References

  1. ^ Profile, babcockancestry.com. Accessed December 23, 2022.
  2. ^
    Newspapers.com
    .
  3. ^
    Newspapers.com
    .
  4. ^ George Chandler (1883). The Chandler Family. pp. 1215–6.
  5. ^ "Olvera Street celebration with Harry Chandler". Huntington Library.
  6. ^ Gosney, E.S. (1929). Twenty-eight Years of Sterilization in California. Pasadena, California: The Human Betterment Foundation. p. 38.
  7. ^ Gwendolyn Garland Babcock, The Ancestry of Harry Chandler, babcockancestry.com. Accessed December 23, 2022.
  8. ^ Hiltzik, Michael (January 15, 2021). "Confronting a racist past, Caltech will excise names of eugenics backers from campus". Los Angeles Times.
  9. ^ "Caltech Approves New Names for Campus Assets and Honors". California Institute of Technology. November 8, 2021.

Further reading

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