Morgan’s Hollywood Tract was a Hollywood subdivision started in 1905 by Jeremiah J. Morgan. It consisted of 10 acres of ranch and orchard land on the north side of Hollywood Boulevard (then Prospect Avenue) between Wilton Place and Garfield Place and Hollywood Boulevard and Franklin Avenue.

Front and center of the development was Morgan Place, a new street between Garfield and Wilton Place, running from the North side of Hollywood Boulevard to the South side of Franklin Avenue. Subdivided into 97 lots, Morgan Place was improved with cement sidewalks and shade trees. Ornamental gates market the north and south entrances to Morgan Place from Hollywood and Franklin.

J. J. “Jerry” Morgan was born in Illinois in 1841. After serving in the Civil War, he settled in Iowa, where he raised cattle and later got into real estate and finance. He visited Los Angeles during the boom of 1886 and in 1887 began buying property there.

In February 1902, Morgan settled permanently in Los Angeles and dealt in real estate, setting up offices at 244 1/2 S. Broadway.

The office for Morgan’s Hollywood tract was at the northwest corner of Hollywood and Morgan Place, later addressed as 5627 Hollywood Boulevard. It sat on a large parcel that also contained a residence., originally 955 E. Prospect Avenue, later 5535 Hollywood Boulevard. Morgan lived in the residence for a few years. He later moved to 1836 Taft Avenue.

 

Morgan acquired additional holdings in Hollywood and with son Alfonso F. Morgan, and as the Morgan Investment Company, created another 10-acre subdivision in the Hollywood foothills north of Franklin between Morgan Hill Dr./Taft Avenue and Wilson Place.

In addition, J.J. Morgan bought property on the southwest corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Western Avenue. He later constructed a hotel on the Western Avenue side of the parcel and stores on the Hollywood frontage, except for the prime corner, where he planned to build a height limit building.

J.J. Morgan divorced his longtime wife, Alice Jane Lewis Morgan, c. 1908. She died in Los Angeles in 1911.

On July 10, 1909, Morgan, 65,  married a local girl, Joeanna F. (Annie/Anna) Wagner, age 20. Like Estelle Doheney- wife of the oil multimillionaire Edward Doheney- Anna had been a telephone operator. (The Doheney age difference was only 20 years, fairly average by Hollywood standards- not 45 years) The couple registered to wed in Los Angeles but ultimately tied the knot in Colorado Springs. After a 3-month honeymoon, they returned to Hollywood and lived in the house on Hollywood Boulevard.

Morgan was canny enough to make his bride sign an Edwardian version of the prenup, barring her from any claim on his estate in exchange for $5000 cash.  The couple had a son, James George Morgan, born in Los Angeles March 31, 1912. But the May-December union was not a happy one. While on a business trip in Council Bluffs, Iowa, Morgan filed for divorce, which was granted on September 21, 1914. In March 1915, Anna sued, asserting that she’d never been served the divorce papers and that the action was not legal in any case because Jerry had not been a resident of Iowa at the time. Morgan prevailed and generously agreed to pay $5 a week for the support of his most recent son.

Morgan was making plans to develop his corner parcel at Hollywood and Western when he died in Los Angeles on May 31, 1925 at age 84.

He left an estate valued at a reported $1,250,000. There were numerous bequests to relatives, with the condition that they had to “become Christians.”

In May 1926, the City Planning Commission proposed changing the name of the street Morgan Place to Gramercy Place. A group calling itself the “Hollywood Boulevard, Western to Cahuenga, Improvement Association” protested, arguing that the name ought to stay out of memory to old Hollywood pioneer “Jeremiah P. Morgan” [sic] [LOL]. It’s Gramercy Place today, so we know how that went for them.

In January 1927, the Morgan estate sold the Hollywood and Western parcel to Louis B. Mayer of MGM, who built the Hollywood-Western Building on it the following year.

As late as 1936, the corner of Gramercy Place and Hollywood Boulevard remained undeveloped. In January, a William A. Smith bought the property from the Morgan estate. He planned to demolish the old residence and lease the corner to a drive-in market organization. Whether that happened or not, in June 1940 a new A&P market opened at 5633 Hollywood Boulevard where the residence had stood. The Morgan’s Hollywood Tract real estate office at 5627 was moved to 4826 Van Nuys that year and the prime corner space may have been used for parking. In December 1950, a permit was obtained by I. Feldman and P. Rosenberg to build a 2-story retail complex, addressed as 55625-5627-5629-5631 and 5633 Hollywood Boulevard and 1707-1909-1711 and 1713 Gramcery Place. That structure is extant today.

Notes

Anna Wagner remarried in 1917. She died in 1965. Morgan and Anna’s son died in 1988.

In November 1927, a woman named Eleanor McIntyre, residing with Morgan in the 1920 US Census and listed as his niece along with her daughter Viola, then 13, sued the Morgan estate, asserting that she had looked after him for years and was engaged to be married to him shortly before his death. Her sister, Eva Helander, also sued, claiming that Morgan owed her money for a train ticket to Arizona, that she’d purchased the tickets and took “a young girl” named Jean to Arizona with her where the girl, Jean, waited to marry the 82-year old. When he didn’t show up, they returned to Los Angeles.