Frank Lounsb etry An Appreciation

In the passing of Frank Lounsberry this month, I lost a friend of thirty years' standing whom I will always remember for his outstanding personality and ability.

Few of those in the lumber business here, retail and wholesale, a generation ago when he was in his prime, still survive. He rvas one of the last of the pioneers.

Those were the days when Hollywood was just a residence district with not a single store on Hollywood Boulevard, the greater part of the residential building being between Vermont and Western Avenues. Wilshire Boulevard was just another dirt street. All lumber deliveries were made with wagons and teams-even as far as Hollywood, which was an all-day round trip.

"Dad" Lounsberry, as he was called by everyone, was a major factor in the industry. He was a great believer in remanufacturing and always had the necessary machinery in any yard he owned to work up any buys he made.

Born in Galena, Ohio, in 1857, he went West as a young man and for a number of years operated a retail yard at Boulder, Colorado. Walter Harris started to work for him when he was 18 vears old.

He moved to Los Angeles in lX)2. At that time, Carpenter & Biles had a small planing mill at Jefferson and Main Streets, Los Angeles, (that later became the Pacific Door and Sash Company, then the Pacific Sash and Door Company, and now the Pacific Wood Products Corporation) and a retail yard adjoining formerly operated by Rosell Bros. lfe invested in this yard and was manag'er for about a year.

In 1903 he decided that his son, George had better learn the lumber business, and on finding out that "Curt" Teagarden's father felt the same way about "Curt," they set them up in a yard of their own on Shorb Avenue in West Alhambra. This yard later was sold to Schacht Lumber Company and is now the Patten-Blinn yard. Alhambra, which they 66u"6 to West Main Street.

As he was never one to be idle, he looked around for a location for another yard, and as George and Curt got in too much lumber at o.ne time, he unloaded it in a vacant lot at Dth and San Pedro Streets, and that was the start of Lounsberry and Harris' present headquarters at that point. When he started the yard there in 1903, San Pedro Street was a foot deep with mud in the winter time, and about equally deep rvith dust in the summer. The street ended there and the street car did not cross the "Air Line" tracks of what is now the P. E. West of the yard rvas a big peach orchard and South and East rvas all a grape vineyard, rvith a big winery belonging to Herman Boettcher. (The one story brick building still standing on the southeast corner of 32nd and San Pedro was part of the winery.)

Walter Harris came out from Boulder, Colorado, in 1904 on a vacation and when he saw how rushed they were, decided that he could never be satisfred in Boulder, went back, sold his yard and moved to Los Angeles. In June, 1905, George and Walter formed the partnership of Lounsberry and Harris and took over the Dth and San Pedro Street Yard.

About 1906-7, he established the Magnet Lumber Company at what is now 24th Street and Long Beach Boulevard, and took Curt Teagarden and Fred Lyons with him. lle soon branched out, put in another yard at Slauson and Alameda, selling this in 1910 to Fred Coleman (later of the West Adams Lumber Company), Bob Tait later owned this yard. About 1909, together with J. P. McCleery and Frank \Malworth, he started the Boyle Heights Lumber Company and sometime later opened the Laguna Lumber Company on Stephenson Avenue (now Whittier Boulevard).

About 1917, when the Pacific Lumber Company closed out their immense Redwood distributing yard at Wilmington (just west of the Consolidated Lumber Company), he bought the plant, consisting of the overhead monorail system and what was, probably at that time, the largest shed in Southern California, and wrecked the entire plant.

To handle this lumber, he put in the Handy Lumber Company at Wilmington which occupied him for a number of years. Later when this was wound up, he put in a yard on Tweedy Boulevard, South Gate, and was active there until a few years ago when declining health forced him to retire.

He saw Los Angeles grow from 150,000 population to a million and a half, and had no small part in the housing of all this increase.

A real lumberman, a loyal friend, an honest man, an outstanding personality, who will be remembered as long as there are lumbermen in Los Angeles.

Ye Olde Tymer.