Tarts and Misdemeanors

As the $14.6-million rehabilitation of Los Angeles’ Hall of Justice progresses, August seems a fiitting month to recall a long-lost chapter in the building’s colorful past.

I’m not talking about the trial of legendary 1930s “Trunk Murdress” Winnie Ruth Judd, or the proceedings involving mobster Bugsy Siegel, or even the autopsy of Marilyn Monroe, all of which took place within these hallowed walls. No, I’m referring to the even more wild and tawdry escapades that rocked the site years before the cornerstone was even laid.

The story goes that when the City of Angels finally outlawed prostitution in 1874, the law still went mostly unenforced for decades. In fact, during the 1890s, the infamous madam Cora Phillips and cross-town rival Pearl Morton took the world’s oldest profession to dazzling new heights, stirring sensations among the Angeleno elite with their opulent, openly advertised brothels.

As successful as Madam Phillips was with her upscale Golden Lion parlor on Alameda St., however, she was no match for Morton, who clearly understood that the first three rules of business are “location, location, location.” In August 1891 Morton topped her competitor by opening what would become the city’s grandest bordello at Temple and Broadway Streets, a spot conveniently adjacent to the old City Hall and Courthouse. (A brazen move, indeed, but contemporary accounts suggest that municipal leaders welcomed her to the neighborhood with open arms.)

Eventually, however, moral crusaders got their “poetic justice.” By the turn of the century, Angelenos were tiring of the town’s reputation for crime and decadence. Temperance and purity movements swept the city, forcing a massive crackdown on vice by 1913. Facing an increasingly hostile business climate, Morton did what any shrewd, self-respecting madam would do: She packed up and relocated to San Francisco.

In what might be called a final gesture of “goodbye and good riddance” to Morton, Los Angeles erected its towering new Hall of Justice — complete with law-enforcement offices, courts and a jail — on the site of her former cat house in 1925.

210 W. Temple St.,
Downtown Los Angeles