Kiosk - The White City (page 4)

The White City
(conclusion)

Aided by the flowery diction and aggrandizing pomp of Thaddeus Lowe’s publicist George Wharton James, the Echo Mountain House proved an immediate success. Indeed, the hotel became a major tourist attraction, bringing in visitors from all over the country. Among the hotel’s most famous sights was its searchlight. At the time, Lowe’s acquisition from the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition was the strongest searchlight ever constructed; its light could reportedly be seen from 150 miles at sea. Though Lowe originally intended the light to beam down weather signals to Los Angeles, it became a spectacle in and of itself, shining its focused light onto the Echo Mountain House and illuminating the White City for everyone in Los Angeles and Pasadena to see. George Wharton James also promoted the hotel by bombarding the local papers with public relations, routinely paying for advertisements in the
Los Angeles Times that extolled the “Health, Pleasure and Scenery” of the hotel. Other advertisements compared the Echo Mountain House to the best that Switzerland and Italy had to offer, albeit in an affordable, nearby locale. James even began his own publication, the Mount Lowe Echo, to fill readers in on the goings-on of the powerbrokers, such as Henry Ford and Chicago Tribune editor and Windy City mayor Joseph Medill, who visited the Echo Mountain House.

Lowe eventually pushed even further into the mountains and his own pockets. The so-called “Alpine Division” of the railroad began construction on the neighboring and eponymous Mount Lowe, where Lowe constructed a second hotel, the Alpine Tavern. Modeled after rustic European lodgings, the Alpine Tavern was subtly elegant when compared to the Echo Mountain House’s overwhelming grandeur. But even with the seeming success of the Alpine Division in the mid-1890s, Lowe and the Mount Lowe Railway began to suffer serious financial hardships. Because of swelling operating costs and his own perpetual desire for bigger and greater additions, Lowe was forced to dispose of his banking, ice manufacturing and gas interests. He also began taxing his own holdings and began taking mortgages on his home and other properties in Pasadena. Eventually, Lowe’s creditors grew weary of his leadership and wrested control of the railway away from the 66-year-old balloonist. The reins of the railway were passed from one person to the next, eventually landing in the hands local railroad magnate
Henry Huntington and his Pacific Electric Railway.

While the enraged Thaddeus Lowe sent out pamphlets claiming that his railway had been stolen, Huntington began performing major upgrades on its infrastructure and buildings. However, this couldn’t prevent the later misfortunes of the Mount Lowe Railway and Echo Mountain House. Throughout the turn of the century, numerous natural disasters plagued the site. Floods and boulders repeatedly washed through Echo Mountain House’s lower floors. Electrical storms struck the pavilion at the base of the incline. But on December 9th, 1905, a severe windstorm whipped up howling gusts, ripping the roof off of the White City’s dance hall and sending it up into the air like a kite. Soon after the wind began flying across the mountaintop, fire somehow erupted in nearly every building on Echo Mountain: the Chalet, the dance hall and Echo Mountain House. The nighttime blaze was probably visible through much of Southern California, the flames leaping from the windows of Echo Mountain House and the rest of the White City. Although there were no casualties, the buildings burned to the ground, their ashes swept up into the air by the currents of the Earth’s upper atmosphere. That was the end of Lowe’s empire.

* * *

Somewhere in Michael Patris’ collection of documents and ephemera is a lock of Thaddeus Lowe’s hair. Michael explains that the lock was cut in 1856 at the time of Lowe’s marriage, signaling a stylistic change from Lowe’s youthful ponytail to a shorter, more formal appearance. Michael sounds giddy as he discusses Lowe’s lock of hair, as if he had been waiting to burst forth with talk of his treasure. He pauses, then boasts that he also has a pair of gloves worn by Thaddeus Lowe during a cordial ceremony with President Lincoln.

Michael’s devotion to Thaddeus Lowe and the railway is at times overwhelming. Though he distances himself from the type of rabid fanatics that he refers to as “foamers,” his enthusiasm is boundless. For this and other reasons, Michael and the Scenic Mount Lowe Railway Historical Committee, a separate preservation group that maintains the physical integrity of the site, have come to various disagreements. Both sides admit that they don’t always see eye-to-eye, despite the fact that they seem to share similar desires and goals.

The difference, however, is that for Michael, the Mount Lowe Railway, the Echo Mountain House and Lowe himself are all part of Michael’s own legacy. With no children, Michael admits that he and his wife have have essentially taken Thaddeus Lowe as their own, maintaining rosebushes at his grave, bringing his extended family into theirs and tracking down and spreading all the knowledge to be had of the forgotten man and his projects.

Routinely poring over his archival collections for lectures and research, Michael must often imagine the railway and the Echo Mountain House built anew. He pictures the hotel’s refurbished exterior: its four-story frame rising tall against the mountaintops, its bright white paint reflecting the heavy California sun. Inside, the building’s rooms are all restored: the decadent sitting room, the lavishly furnished sleeping quarters, even the understated dining hall – all are renewed to their former glory. But this is just a fantasy. Michael knows that the best he can do is reconstruct the Echo Mountain House in a museum and in his collections. And until then, it’s left in his mind: its big, gaping windows, wide verandas and shining metal dome all rebuilt out of yellowing postcards and creased photographs.