Happy New Year Los Angeles 1911!!

An option for celebrating the New Year in 1911 would have been dinner at Casa Verdugo. Hop on the Pacific Electric Railway and be dropped practically at their door. Ads of the day described Casa Verdugo with the words: convenient, appetizing, service, attractive, vintage, elegance, refined, dainty, ultra, gratifying and original. The first letter of each of these words spells out your destination: Casa Verdugo. For an excellent and informative lecture please check out Charles Perry's Culinary Historians of Southern California lecture on the history of Casa Verdugo.



Other New Year's ideas that year prove timeless - an ad asks that "When you dine tonight ask for California wine. Remember that a dollar spent for California wine means a dollar left in California, while a dollar spent for foreign wine goes out of the country."

When the dawn broke on the first day of the new year it was noted that 'Police Surgeons and Police Sergeants were disappointed in the numbers, respectively, of injured and intoxicated.' The celebrating crowds were larger than ever before, thousands of people thronged Spring, Broadway and Main Streets, but there were only twelve arrests made the whole night and all were for drunkenness. The population in Los Angeles proper was approximately 320,000 in 1910 and apparently the police were hoping for a little more excitement!!