Two weeks ago, Major League Soccer had it's championship game - The MLS Cup. As a beat reporter for the LA Galaxy, one of the teams in the Cup, I got to go a bunch of MLS sponsored events, including a rooftop party in Downtown LA. The Standard is a luxury hotel with a rooftop bar and beer garden, a part of a chain of similar hotels.
The architect was Claud Beelman, who also designed the Eastern Columbia Building and the Garfield Building downtown. He has several buildings listed on the National Register of Historical Places. However, this isn't going to be a post about architecture.
I happened to catch There Will Be Blood a few days after, and was intrigued by Southern California's oil history. Superior Oil seems to be a latecomer if they built their headquarters in '55, but Union Oil and Standard Oil were here since the turn of the century. In the movie an oil field under Signal Hill is referenced, and the Huntington family made their money on oil. Anyhow, it seems a subject ripe for digging into, so let's go ahead and do so.
The Union Oil company was founded in Santa Paula, CA. Their headquarters in Santa Paula is a National Historic Landmark, but they only used it for ten years, between 1890 and 1900. At the turn of the century, they moved to Los Angeles.
When they came in 1900 they only needed one room, in the 312 Tajo Building at first and Broadway. The company had to move three times as they kept expanding. Eventually they moved into their own building.
When they came in 1900 they only needed one room, in the 312 Tajo Building at first and Broadway. The company had to move three times as they kept expanding. Eventually they moved into their own building.
The Union Oil headquarters from 1911 to 1923 was the Bartlett Building in the Spring Street Financial District. At the base of the Bartlett Building were the Rush Drug Co., Hull's Grill, and Lamar's. It's a 14 story building, and when it was completed in 1911 it was the tallest building downtown.
So what happened about 1910 that made Union Oil such a big player? They made a deal with the Independent Producers Agency, a group of small oil producers, to build pipelines from Kern County to Union's oil facilities on the Pacific Coast. This was the historical event fictionalized in There Will Be Blood, and I'm assuming was recounted in Upton Sinclair's book Oil! which the movie was based on and lends its title to this post.
Before that deal, the Independent Producers had to pay high shipping costs to send their oil back east via railroad, and then take low prices per barrel from Standard Oil. Suddenly, so many lines from There Will Be Blood make sense!
"So Standard offered us a million dollars for the Little Boston leases, and I told H. M. Tilford where he could shove that, and we made a deal with Union! On the pipeline! And that whole ocean of oil underneath our fields!"
So what's the union in Union oil? That would be the union of small oil companies owned by Wallace Hardison, Lyman Stewart, and Thomas R. Bard. Hardison was born in Maine, and followed his brother to the oil fields of Western Pennsylvania. That area became the home base of John Rockefeller and Standard Oil. If this was a Pennsylvania history blog, that'd be a segway into the Rockefellers and all their contributions to that part of the country.
But we're about LA history, and the important thing to note is that because Rockefeller controlled the Pennsylvania oil fields, that drove a lot of oil men out to Southern California to prospect. Oil was discovered in Santa Paula in 1883. Hardison came out with Lyman Stewart, and their original company was called Hardison & Steward Oil Co.
Stewart's contribution to society is funding the publication of The Fundamentals, which became the holy book of the Fundamentalist Christian movement.
The third member of their union was Republican Senator Thomas Bard. He assisted in the formation of Ventura County, officially split from Santa Barbara County in 1873. He also helped build the town of Port Hueneme.
So the three of them form Union Oil and they become an alternative to Standard Oil for the California independent oil prospectors after the pipeline is built from Kern County. With regards to that pipeline, the discovery well of the Kern River Oil Field was dug by hand in 1899. It's the fifth largest oil field in America.
Huge discovery wells, Union Oil pipelines, gee this is all sounding familiar. Kern was originally a mining area, which isn't surprising as many of the early oil men used mining techniques and hoped to get lucky. When I saw the Kern oil field was dug by hand, before the pipeline workers really would just dump oil into big holes until it could be barreled and shipped.
Now, Union Oil was established 1890, and then Standard Oil entered California in 1900. At that time Union and six other companies had all been flourishing in California for around a decade or so. Standard was founded in 1870, so it's likely that the Kern field is what got them to come out to California.
Union was Standard's biggest competitor, especially after the 1910 oil pipeline. I keep mentioning that pipeline, and that it went to the Pacific Ocean, but I haven't said where it went. Well any resident of Wilmington or San Pedro should be able to tell you about the oil refineries down by the port. Union Oil built their 200 acre refinery in 1916 in Wilmington, then four years later built a four acre site at the harbor for receiving and shipping oil.
But we're about LA history, and the important thing to note is that because Rockefeller controlled the Pennsylvania oil fields, that drove a lot of oil men out to Southern California to prospect. Oil was discovered in Santa Paula in 1883. Hardison came out with Lyman Stewart, and their original company was called Hardison & Steward Oil Co.
Stewart's contribution to society is funding the publication of The Fundamentals, which became the holy book of the Fundamentalist Christian movement.
The third member of their union was Republican Senator Thomas Bard. He assisted in the formation of Ventura County, officially split from Santa Barbara County in 1873. He also helped build the town of Port Hueneme.
So the three of them form Union Oil and they become an alternative to Standard Oil for the California independent oil prospectors after the pipeline is built from Kern County. With regards to that pipeline, the discovery well of the Kern River Oil Field was dug by hand in 1899. It's the fifth largest oil field in America.
Huge discovery wells, Union Oil pipelines, gee this is all sounding familiar. Kern was originally a mining area, which isn't surprising as many of the early oil men used mining techniques and hoped to get lucky. When I saw the Kern oil field was dug by hand, before the pipeline workers really would just dump oil into big holes until it could be barreled and shipped.
Now, Union Oil was established 1890, and then Standard Oil entered California in 1900. At that time Union and six other companies had all been flourishing in California for around a decade or so. Standard was founded in 1870, so it's likely that the Kern field is what got them to come out to California.
Union was Standard's biggest competitor, especially after the 1910 oil pipeline. I keep mentioning that pipeline, and that it went to the Pacific Ocean, but I haven't said where it went. Well any resident of Wilmington or San Pedro should be able to tell you about the oil refineries down by the port. Union Oil built their 200 acre refinery in 1916 in Wilmington, then four years later built a four acre site at the harbor for receiving and shipping oil.
That birds eye view of the harbor shows the gigantic campus of the Wilmington Refinery in the forefront. While the campus is in Wilmington, most San Pedro residents know of it as the Great Pumpkin. Since 1952, the refinery has painted one of its three million gallon storage tanks as a big Jack-O-Lantern. Local kids can go down on Halloween to see it up close and get candy corn.
Here we've got a couple of workers looking at a model of the refinery. These days, the refinery has been split between three different oil companies. That's how gigantic the campus is!
You can see the new Union Oil Building on the left there in the picture, it's the one with the sign reading Union Oil Bldg. There's also a Bullocks in front of that. This is looking south on Hill Street, as it crosses 7th Street. Or looking North. But that's definitely Hill St.
The 12 story building was necessary for a company for $100,000,000 at the time according to the LA Times. It was designed by, wait for it, Claud Beelman. However, this one didn't make the Historical Register of places. Funny how all of this started with a party, and still all the connections can be made, yeah?
Union's greatest achievement was the discovery of the oil field in Santa Fe Springs in 1919, which really put the company on the map. The biggest oil field in Los Angeles wouldn't be found until 1932 in Wilmington, which is the third largest oil field in America behind Purdhoe Bay, Alaska and the East Texas Oil Fields.
That's enough ink spilt about the oil spilt in Southern California. As always, I've only scratched the surface and I'm sure I'll be inspired for more entries to come. Now I know how a rooftop party, There Will Be Blood, and a oil tank painted like a pumpkin are all connected.
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