Mrs. Doheny's Lost Library

There is a mansion in the West Adams neighborhood in Los Angeles that haunts me every time I enter it for various college events and celebrations.  It is part of one of the first gated communities in L.A., but now belongs to Mount Saint Mary’s University and houses the institution’s graduate, weekend/evening college, and associate degree programs as well as many faculty and staff offices.  The campus is also a popular movie set, most recently for an episode in the final season of the Julia Louis-Dreyfus series, Veep.

There is the Pompeiian Room with its Tiffany-glass dome and marble expanses, various dining areas, a music room, and all of them furnished with antiques and paintings.  What haunts me, however, in addition to the ghosts that are present, is the lady of the house, Carrie Estelle Betzold Doheny who passed in 1958, and her library of 15,000 books and manuscripts, including her Gutenberg Bible and autographed documents from all 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence.  When she died, she also had in her collection a first edition of Huckleberry Finn signed by Samuel Clemens to his wife.  All of these items, according to The New York Times, were auctioned in eight sessions in New York, London, and Los Angeles beginning in 1987.  Total take for the auction was $38 million, according to several sources.  The beneficiary of these funds?  The Los Angeles Archdiocese under the Archbishop at the time, Roger Mahony.

According to the foundation that bears her name, Carrie Estelle Doheny was “a woman of strong faith, intellectual curiosity and deep compassion for the underserved in her community.”  She came to Los Angeles with her German immigrant parents in 1890 at the age of 15.  She had humble beginnings and met her future husband while working as a telephone operator.  During their marriage, they would fund the construction of St. Vincent’s Church on the corner of Adams Boulevard and Figueroa Street in what is now the center of L.A. just blocks from L.A. Live and the Staples Center. 

In 1901, they moved into the Chester Place mansion.  The house and surrounding homes and property have an interesting history.  The fifteen acres of land was originally acquired by a retired Arizona Supreme Court Judge named Charles Silent and named Los Pimentos because of the pepper trees on the property.  The street running into the gated campus today, Chester Place, was named for Silent’s son who was killed in a hunting accident.  According to an April, 1983 article in the Mount Saint Mary’s College Magazine by alumna Margaret Antczak (’75), thirteen prominent people owned homes in the park space by 1904.  They included Rufus von Klein Smid, Chancellor of the University of Southern California; Jaro von Schmidt, a German count; and the Dohenys, Edward and Carrie who made their fortune in oil.  Mrs. Doheny was not enamored with the mansion at first.  Antczak writes that she grew to love the place and relished running the house and gardens.  “Mrs. Doheny knew all the workers by name,” she said.  “She would stop to greet them as she walked through the grounds.”

Mrs. Doheny was an avid collector of books and manuscripts starting in the 1920s.  She was interested in “fine bindings, illuminated manuscripts, incunabula, and Western Americana,” according to Emi Hastings on his website, Librarian of Babel.  Her collection became so extensive that in 1931 she hired a private librarian to organize the influx of volumes, the cost of which now amounted to $1000 a day.  In her 60^th year, Mrs. Doheny lost her husband.  Shortly thereafter, she suffered a stroke that left her partially blind.  At that time, she decided to start disposing of some of her properties and holdings, leading her to donate her library to the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo, California.

Edward Doheny did not lead a life free from controversy.  His first wife, with whom he had a son, died by suicide.  Carrie Estelle Doheny assumed the maternal role with her ready-made son.  The couple never had children of their own.  Mr. Doheny was also implicated in the Teapot Dome Scandal in the 1920s and charged with bribing the Secretary of the Interior, Albert Fall.  Doheny’s son, Ned, and his friend Hugh Plunkett, were also accused of wrongdoing.  In 1929, after an argument, Ned shot Plunkett and then himself, although there is some confusion regarding the case that was never resolved.  Although he was acquitted, the scandal and its consequences weighed heavily on the elder Doheny and he never recovered.  Mrs. Doheny tried to shield her husband from further scrutiny and tragedy, and he died a recluse of natural causes in 1935.  His wife allegedly destroyed hundreds of documents to avoid further damage to her husband’s legacy.

After Mrs. Doheny died, she willed her estate and all its furnishings and belongings to the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.  The cardinal at the time, James Francis McIntyre, entrusted the Doheny Mansion and estate to the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, the founders of Mount Saint Mary’s University.  The gated property and mansions opened shortly thereafter as the Doheny campus of the college.

But what happened to the library of near priceless manuscripts and books?  Mrs. Doheny left everything to the Archdiocese and the seminary north of Los Angeles with the stipulation that nothing be done with the collection until 25 years after her death.  At that time, the gift would be unrestricted and its disposition would be up to the Archdiocese.  Roger Mahony, the Archbishop in 1983, decided to liquidate the collection to fund “religious and educational purposes,” according to The New York Times.  “A full 90 percent of the library is secular items and not religious or religious-historical works,” Mahoney said.  As for the Gutenberg Bible, “The number of scholars who see it averages 50 to 60 a year.  The book has to be inside the vault, the gate has to be locked and we have to have two armed guards present.  Insurance restrictions are now so severe that we can no longer obtain insurance coverage on the full value of the collections.”  Mahoney went on to complain about the high cost of educating seminarians at St. John’s, but the diocese netted over $30 million dollars to fund that institution, according to most experts.

The books and manuscripts were sold off to collectors all over the world, many of whom sold the materials to Mrs. Doheny in the first place.  I dream of one day walking into a book shop somewhere in the world and opening a volume to find Carrie Estelle Doheny’s simple green leather book plate:  “Ex libris:  Estelle Doheny.  For now, I am left to wander around the mansion in West Adams and wonder which rooms were graced with her shelves of precious books.  Where did she sit and read?  When I have been on the Doheny campus at night, I’ve often wondered if somebody, in those long ago early days of the 20^th century, walked down Chester Place and saw a lamp on in the mansion and a woman poring over a lost tome, both ghosts of another era, relics of another age.