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Overview

The Sausal Redondo Rancho covered 22,460 acres which now encompasses the cities of El Segundo, Gardena, Hawthorne, Hermosa Beach, Inglewood, Lawndale, Manhattan Beach, Playa del Rey, Redondo Beach, and Torrance, CA.

Building History

Juan Alvarado (1809-1842), Governor of Alta California, conferred a grant of 22,458 acres to Antonio Ygnacio Avila (1781-1858) in 1837, a tract that spread from Playa del Rey in the north, Inglewood on the east and Redondo Beach on the south. A nearby claim of Ignacio Machado was called the Rancho Aguaje de la Centinela, an estate that the Avila Family would reabsorb by 1845. Like many large CA landowners of the period, Avila raised wheat, cattle and sheep on the property. With the coming of Anglo settlers en masse after 1848, portions of the estate were sold off incrementally to meet tax requirements and other governmental fees. After Avila's death, the family was forced to sell the remaining property to cover probate debts.

In 1868, Scotsman Sir Robert Burnett began the process of reassmbling the estate, when he combined this probate acreage with his earlier acquisition of Rancho Aguaje de la Centinela. He called his property the "Centinela Ranch." Burnett rented his estate to Catherine Grace Christie Freeman (d. 1874), wife of the Canadian-born lawyer Daniel Freeman (1837-1918), who continued to reacquire most of the acreage of the Avila land grant by the mid-1880s. Freeman had the goal of sub-dividing the land to the swarms of new settlers that came to Southern California in the 1880s.

He and his associates founded the Centinela-Inglewood Land Company in 1887, which sought to develop Inglewood, CA, where Freeman built a large house in 1888. Freeman was quick to start developing land in proximity to the newly completed Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad and the Redondo Railway lines that connected Redondo Beach to Los Angeles by 04/05/1888. He also sought to provide building materials for new residents when he founded the Continuous Brick Kiln Company. Freeman prospered in his development efforts and would own real estate in Downtown Los Angeles, as well. (He controlled the Freeman Building, an office block at 6th Street and Spring Street, and other land holdings on South Main Street.) Active in the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, he possessed many business connections, and became a patron of the new University of Southern California (USC). Freeman sold the last of his rancho acreage by 1912, one year before the imposition of the Federal Income Tax in 1913.

PCAD id: 15985