Whiting Woods’ First Residents Were Prostitutes

I’ve written before about the lurid origins of Whiting Woods. For such a beautiful and placid neighborhood, it has a very dark history. The wealthy LA businessman Perry Whiting first bought the canyon known today as Whiting Woods around 1918 after it was seized by the County of Los Angeles in a prostitution bust. There had been a roadhouse/whorehouse on the property. Not long after Whiting bought it, the roadhouse had apparently reopened as a speakeasy. It was the scene of an alcohol-fueled racially-charged killing that nearly resulted in the lynching of a black man, right here in La Crescenta. It was only after the speakeasy burned down and Perry Whiting built his mansion that what is today known as Whiting Woods settled down.

But let’s backtrack to the early teens when the canyon was the site of the Mountain Inn, sometimes called the Pasadena Mountain Club. It was a low-brow “country club” of sorts where “members” could buy drinks at the resort’s bar and use the facilities for trysts with prostitutes. I found a landscape photo from 1915 where the Mountain Inn can be seen clearly in the background. A large house (the roadhouse) with a wide porch can be seen and behind it are about eight tents where the prostitutes would work. (In the old Doors song “Roadhouse Blues,” Jim Morrison sings “In back of the roadhouse they’ve got some bungalows.”)

But recently I found a detailed newspaper account of the prostitution bust at the Mountain Inn in La Crescenta. The old LA Herald featured sensational stories, and its pages were full of murders, divorces and sex crimes. The front page in March 1916 had the headline “Bare Dancing Revels in Country Club Probe” with the smaller headlines “Wine, Women and Song to Feature Battle to Close Mountain Resort” and “Names of Pretty Girl Patrons Kept Secret by Detectives.” The story details the raid, saying the detectives had watched from hiding places near the resort while gathering evidence. According to the newspaper, officers testified, “Automobiles filled with men and girls singing and laughing wound their way up to the club door. Dozens of pretty young girls, dressed in chic costumes, were partners for well-known Los Angeles men. The revel continued until early morning and the parties did not leave the place until the next day.” The names of the men and girls were kept secret by the court.

The district attorney was asking the judge to have the establishment closed and the whole thing be sold to cover the cost of prosecution. Seizure of property was possible under the terms of the Red-Light Abatement Act passed in 1914. That law was designed to close established brothels by making the property owners liable. (Like most morality laws, it backfired and simply pushed prostitution onto the streets.) The state won its case; the property was seized and Perry Whiting bought the property at auction. And that was the end of the pre-history of Whiting Woods’ time as “The Best Little Whorehouse In La Crescenta.”

However, there was one final footnote to this lurid tale of sex and alcohol. A couple of months after the big bust at the Mountain Inn, the newspaper printed the story of a divorce that resulted from a wild party at CV’s den of iniquity. “Charges Chorus Girl Wife In Gay Party” was the headline. Guy Ball, a race car driver, was suing for divorce from his wife Christine, who was a chorus girl in a downtown theater. Mr. Ball charged that his wife, described by the paper as an “auburn-haired beauty,” had been seen with another man at the Mountain Inn, presumably while Mr. Ball was out driving race cars.

Unfortunately for Christine, the divorce trial was already in progress when she decided suddenly to fight the charges. The judge ruled it was too late, and refused to hear her case.

Guy Ball went on to fame a couple years later as one of the designers of the standard rip cord-style parachute. Perhaps it was based on his experience of “bailing out” of his disastrous marriage to his chorus girl wife!

  mike lawler