464 HISTORY OF PASADENA. 



the building at bankrupt price, and made it headquarters for all his gas 

 patents, gas works, and mountain railroad and hotel enterprises. It is a 

 typical specimen of Moorish architecture. Its theater or opera house part is 

 still continued (1894-95) with Thaddeus Lowe, jr., as manager. 



Southern Oil Company. — This enterprise was projected and worked 

 up by Geo. H. Coffin, to prospect for oil, sink wells, manufacture or refine 

 petroleum products, etc., and was organized at Pasadena on March i, 1895. 

 Incorporated March 29th, with the following as its first board of directors 

 and officers : Geo. H. Coffin, president and general manager ; A. H. 

 Palmer, vice-president ; Edwin Stearns, treasurer ; Chas. E. Getchell, sec- 

 retary ; Arthur H. Palmer, S. I. Stearns. Capital stock, $100,000. The 

 company by purchase and lease secured about 1,200 acres of land on the 

 hills south of South Pasadena and Lincoln Park, and have engine, derrick, 

 pumps, and other machinery there, prosecuting their business. But up to 

 time of this chapter going to press, oil had not yet been reached. July 8 

 their first prospect well was down and cased 400 feet. 



poultry works. 

 The Oak Lawn Poultry Farm. — This was commenced in September 

 1885, by F. W. Machin, and was the largest and most heroic venture of the 

 kind ever attempted in South California. The farm was a 20-acre tract on 

 Allen Avenue south from Colorado street, and was a $12,000 enterprise, 

 based on the theory that the high price of poultry and eggs here would 

 make the home production of them a profitable business, in competition with 

 their shipment to Los Angeles from Kansas City, St. Louis, and all that 

 region. I had tried the same business myself in 1884 and failed of success — 

 hence made visits of observation occasionally to this larger and later venture. 

 This farm had or was planned for 100 houses for egg-layers — 50 hens to 

 each house with its own yard. Also 1,000 breeders, with yards 25x100 feet, 

 and 50 fowls to each yard. Four incubators, with total capacity of 2,000 

 eggs. Forty-eight artificial brooder yards for the baby chicks. Hospital 

 yards and coops for sick or injured fowls. The owner was F. W. Machin, 

 a business man of means, from Chicago ; and its manager was C. VonCulin, 

 a life-long worker and expert in this industry ; hence the experiment had 

 all that human interest and skill could furnish to make it a practical success. 

 Yet, at the outset, Ed. C. Clapp, Pasadena's pioneer poultryman, said to me 

 in his droll way, "I'll give them just four months to bust up and go to 

 smash with their whole business." Well, nature abhors a monopoly, as 

 well as a vacuum, and would not tolerate so much chicken life in so small a 

 space — at any rate not in Pasadenaland. In spite of all care, disease got 

 among the fowls ; young chicks by the hundred would be found dead in the 

 morning ; and, to shorten the story, in about six months this thicken 

 " boom " bursted, went out entirely, and left no .sign. 



