Isaias Hellman, a Jewish immigrant, arrived in California in 1859 with very little money in his pocket and his brother Herman by his side. By the time he died, he had effectively transformed Los Angeles into the modern metropolis we see today. In Frances Dinkelspiel's groundbreaking history, the early days of California are seen through the life of a man who started out as a simple store owner only to become California's premier money-man of the late 19th and early 20th century. Growing up as a young immigrant, Hellman quickly learned the use to which "capital" could be put, founding LA's Farmers and Merchants Bank, that city's first successful bank, and transforming Wells Fargo into one of the West's biggest financial institutions. He invested money with Henry Huntington to build trolley lines, lent Edward Doheney the funds that led him to discover California's huge oil reserves, and assisted Harrison Gary Otis in acquiring full ownership of the Los Angeles Times. Hellman led the building of Los Angeles' first synagogue, the Wilshire Boulevard Temple, helped start the University of Southern California and served as Regent of the University of California. His influence, however, was not limited to Los Angeles. He controlled the California wine industry for almost twenty years and, after San Francisco's devastating 1906 earthquake and fire, calmed the financial markets there in order to help that great city rise from the ashes. With all of these accomplishments, Isaias Hellman almost single-handedly brought California into modernity. Ripe with great historical events that filled the early days of California such as the Gold Rush and the San Francisco earthquake, Towers of Gold brings to life the transformation of California from a frontier society whose economy was driven by the barter of hides and exchange of gold dust into a vibrant state with the strongest economy in the nation.
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"Visionary financier Isaias Hellman was the Warren Buffett and Alan Greenspan of early California rolled into one. He arrived in L.A. as a practically penniless, 16-year-old German Jew when there were only 300 other Europeans in town. Three decades later, he controlled much of the booming city’s capital, land, and public works—then he acquired Wells Fargo Bank in San Francisco through a merger, earning headlines as the West’s richest man. Hellman starred in so many aspects of the state’s phoenixlike rise between the Civil War and the Depression that he became our Zelig, only with a really thick portfolio. The banker’s bonds with the financial elite—fellow Jews like Meyer Lehman (his brotherin- law), gentiles like Collis Huntington—made skittish pioneer depositors in both cities less prone to panic. Still, this giant figure had been lost to history until local journalist Frances Dinkelspiel, Hellman’s great-great-granddaughter (and the sister of this magazine’s president), stumbled onto his papers at the California Historical Society. Eureka! Many underappreciated developments in California’s astonishing adolescence—the emergence of SoCal, the UC system, post-1906 San Francisco, Hiram Johnson, Lake Tahoe, Southern Pacific Railroad, Hetch Hetchy, U.S. Zionism, you name it—are recovered here in elegantly restrained prose. A-"--San Francisco Magazine
"Impressively researched and engagingly told...Dinkelspiel does an excellent job of tracing Hellman's career as a financier, and sketches in a crisp portrait into the glittering San Francisco Jewish community into which he and his family ultimately settled. [A] compelling account of Hellman the giant of finance."--The Los Angeles Times
"Carefully researched and superbly written memoir...Dinkelspiel's biography not only brings to life the transformation of California into the state with the strongest economy in the nation, and the outside personalities that forged it, but rescues from the proverbial dustbin of history the remarkable life and achievements of a man whose energy, creativity, resourcefulness and love for his adopted country had been all but forgotten. A marvelous resource, a dramatic slice of Western history and a splendid read."--The San Francisco Chronicle
"Journalist Dinkelspiel has filled a notable gap in California's history by writing a much-needed biography of her remarkable great-great grandfather Isaias Wolf Hellman (1842-1920). As one of California's pioneer financiers and an advocate of modern banking methods, Hellman became founder, president, or director of 17 banks, including Wells Fargo Bank, Nevada Bank of San Francisco, and the Farmers and Merchants Bank. He is attributed with stabilizing the financial panic of 1893 in Los Angeles by stacking $500,000 worth of gold coins on the counter of the Farmers and Merchants Bank in plain public view, hence the title of this book. The author personalizes Hellman's life by recounting his emigration from Bavaria to California in 1859 and comparing the vastly different social acceptance of Jews in those places. Many details of his family history are provided, along with insights into his relations with a broad swath of other early legendary California business families. Recommended for public and academic libraries with interests in early California financial and Judaic history."--Library Journal
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Isaias Hellman came to Los Angeles from Germany in 1859 and started the region's first successful bank, the Farmers and Merchants Bank. Los Angeles was just a small settlement back then. The streets were unpaved, the only way to get there from San Francisco was by steamer, and a murder a day was common. By starting a bank, Hellman brought much-needed credit to the region and helped start its transformation into one of American's biggest cities.
He goes on to do many important things, like donating the land to start the University of California, lending funds to Harrison Gray Otis to gain complete control of the Los Angeles Times, and spinning deals with the railroad tycoons Collis Huntington, Henry Huntington, and Edward Harriman. In fact, his friends read like a "Who's Who" of the 19th century and include Levi Strauss, Mayer Lehman, and Jacob Schiff.
In 1905, Hellman took over the Wells Fargo Bank in San Francisco. That was just one of the banks he controlled. According to Dinkelspiel, he headed up or served on the board of dozens of other institutions, including the Nevada Bank, and controlled more than $100 million in capital. This guy clearly had a brain for business.
Dinkelspiel does a wonderful job of bringing history to life. There are lots of great scenes in Towers of Gold. There are earthquakes, fires, droughts, assassination attempts, betrayals and love affairs. It has all the elements of a great modern movie.
The title refers to a time when Hellman single-handedly stopped a bank run in Los Angeles in 1893 by piling his own money into towers of gold on the counters of one of his banks. The sight of all that glistening gold calmed panicking depositors, who then return their money to the vault. If only we had someone like Hellman around today.
This is not about banking, it's about a German-Jewish immigrant that ended up in Los Angeles who worked, saved, and started businesses, of which banking was his specialty. Isaias Hellman's struggles and triumphs in business shows how far someone with intelligence and determination, in the right circumstances, can achieve.
"Towers of Gold" also chronicles the rise of Los Angeles from a town on a marshland to a major city and a bit of business history through two depressions, one before 1900 and the one after.
Dinkelspiel also writes fascinating glimpses of the founding and founding figures of Stanford University, University of California, Levi and Strauss, Southern Pacific Rail, Nob Hill, Bank of America, Lehman Brothers, San Francisco cable cars, Los Angeles, and Mount Zion Hospital.
I enjoyed reading the Towers. It is fast-paced and detailed. Events and people are shown in their background, which allows the reader to see there are very few black and white issues. The "Towers of Gold" puts the current banking crises in perspective. Frances Dinkelspiel's saga about her great-great-grandfather shows his place in California history.
I loved it!
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