Joseph Widney - Real Estate

Real Estate

Widney had been impressed with the potential of Los Angeles since his first visit there in January 1867 when posted to Drum Barracks. He apparently said to himself then: "There will be a harbor made here, and a great city will be built about it. I will put some money here when I come back from the front". Widney was the brother of lawyer (and later Judge) Robert Maclay Widney (1838–1929), the city's first real estate agent and publisher of The Real Estate Advertiser, the city's first real estate paper, who had settled in Los Angeles earlier in 1868. Widney made many lucrative investments in real estate in Los Angeles and surrounding areas (often in collaboration with Judge Widney), which were to make him financially independent, allowing him to retire from the practise of medicine at the age of 55, and allowing him to devote the following 42 years to his business, literary, and religious pursuits. By 1900, the Los Angeles Times described him as "an extensive property owner in this city". At one time he owned the Widney Block on First Street (near the corner of Temple and Spring Streets), another Widney Block located at Sixth and Broadway, and a property at the corner of Ninth and Santee streets, where he erected the Nazarene Methodist Episcopal Church. Additionally, he owned a building at 445–447 Aliso Street, where the first college of medicine for the University of Southern California was located from 1885 to 1896.

Widney's speculation in land started early. Between April 29, 1869 and August 28, 1871, he purchased thirty-four lots in Wilmington near the San Pedro harbor area and another 60 acres (240,000 m2) near the San Gabriel Mission (Rand 28). He owned the parcel of land where the Los Angeles City Hall now stands, as well as most of Mt. Washington, Los Angeles, California, on which his last home (a Victorian mansion at 3901 Marmion Way) stood.

During the Los Angeles real estate boom in 1885, Dr Widney purchased 35,000 acres (142 km2) of land (located 75 miles (121 km) northeast of Los Angeles) comprising the relatively undeveloped township of Hesperia, California. Widney formed the Hesperia Land and Water Company to create a town. Hesperia was advertised as either the "New York, Chicago" and Denver of the West". This was one of the more controversial real estate ventures associated with Widney. Major Horace Bell, in his On the Old West Coast, a personal reflection on that period, critiqued the boomers, as a "speculative conspiracy against all that was honest." No houses were built in "Widneyville."

Widney's subdivision crews laid out what was known as the Old Townsite. In 1887, Widney began construction of the Hesperia Hotel, a three-story brick building consisting of 48 rooms and hot and cold running water, baths, and a water closet on each floor. The hotel, which took 2½ years to build, even had communication tubes between floors, thus enabling room service.

The Los Angeles Times of June 2, 1887 reported that Widney had purchased a hotel and several bath houses in the town of Iron-Sulphur Springs (formerly known as Fulton Wells, and known today as Santa Fe Springs), fifteen miles (24 km) east of downtown Los Angeles. In 1886 the springs were purchased by the Santa Fe Railroad, which renamed the town after itself.