Building History

Partners John M. Johnston and Joseph Schoder (d. 02/07/1913 in Los Angeles, CA) established this wholesale hardware, steel and iron business in Los Angeles in 1882. The building boom in Los Angeles during this decade fueled the company's rapid growth. Johnston served as its president, with Schoder working in the vice-presidential capacity. The firm had changed its name to the "Union Hardware and Metal Company" by 1892.

A writer for the Los Angeles Daily Herald described the company's growth and current store in 1888: "At numbers 114 and 116 Los Angeles street, in this city, is the great wholesale and jobbing hardware concern known as Schoder, Johnston & Co., incorporated in 1882 with a capital of $200,000. The store reaches back and abuts on Wilmington street, taking in numbers 25 to 30 on that thoroughfare. A few days ago a Herald reporter was passing along Los Angeles street, and at the door of the store he encountered Mr. Schoder, a member of the corporation. As he knows all the members well, he stopped to chat for a moment, and this led him to enter the establishment where Mr. Johnston was found up to his eves with business. These gentlemen always were hard workers, and the reporter readily recalls the days of small things, when the establishment was first set up, seeing both of them with coats off and sleeves rolled up, tugging away at the hardest and dirtiest work about the store. Things have greatly changed since then, and now the concern is one of mammoth proportions. It is such an excellent index of the growth of Los Angeles, and its story is so well calculated to act as an incentive to others to start some line of enterprise here, that it seems as if something ought to be said about the house. ...The store is seventy-six feet on Wilmington street, with 25 feet of spare room alongside. It is about 330 feet long to Los Angeles street where it fronts on that magnificent thoroughfare 40 feet. The area covered is 42,500 feet,or almost an acre of ground. The building is two stories high, and the walls two feet thick below, and 18 inches above stairs. In the rear part of the building is kept the heavy bar, sheet and boiler iron and steel. There are two doors, and teams pass in at one, go around the inside of the building, and pass out of the other. The Los Angeles street end of the premises is devoted to shelf and other light goods." (See "Schoder, Johnston and Co., A Great Commercial House Which Has Ouietly Grown up During the Boom," Los Angeles Daily Herald, 07/08/1888, p. 2.)

PCAD id: 22992