Z.L. PARMELEE HOUSEWARES STORE ACCOUNTS. "DAY BOOK NO. 10," OCT. 21, 1897 - MARCH 31, 1898, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA.
[Los Angeles, CA: 1897-98]. Tall narrow folio, 38 cm. 498 pp. Cloth boards (worn), front and rear hinges cracked, front hinge just holding by cloth binding tape; wear to spine ends and corners. A daily record, in ink, of purchases from the Z.L. Parmelee Company, a glassware and crockery store. There are several customers and their purchases listed per page, with accounts rubbed stamped in the margins "charged" or "Z.L. Parmelee, paid." [A later stamp, on the front pastedown, is for "Hal E. Roach Studios." Presumably this was added later since Hal Roach did not begin to make movies in California until 1914. The Parmelee Company in its later years did apparently provide props for movie studios on occasion.]
Items purchased include everything from glass pitchers to glass lamps, to feather dusters and waffle irons, to dishes and plates, to electrical fixtures. Occasonally items were rented for events- dishes, glassware, vases, etc. Customers included many individual names along with local hotels and businesses: Pas & Pac Ry.; F.W. Phelps Grant Trust Ry.; Western Union; Miss L.S. Frissell- Redlands; T.E. Prindergart- Redlands; H.F. Vollmer & Co.; Cal. Sewer Pipe Co.; Westminster Hotel; Perry Elect. Works; Peoples Store; Whittier State School; YWCA; Sunset Fruit Co.- Cordova; J.R. Newberry & Co.; Chaffee College- Ontario; Pacific Cycle Co.; Bradbury Estate; Van Nuys Hotel; Sunshine Sanatorium; Sunset Tel. Co.; Los Ceritos Co.- Bixby; Guanajuato River Gold Recovery Co.- Marfit, Mexico; Isaac Hosier Hotel; and many more.
In December, Gardner & Zellman purchased electrical fixtures, pipe, sockets, straps, etc., and contracted for 3 hours of time for cutting & fitting old fixtures, rehanging, rewiring & putting switches in windows. The Silver Republican Club rented dishes on Dec. 27. Edward Trinkkeller, a well-known decorative wrought ironworker, bought several items, including rings, sockets, and canopies, in early 1898. On Feb. 12, the Hollenbeck Hotel purchased a long list of goods, and also contracted for work "refinishing & remodeling," and "changing fixtures." Laid in loose is a Z.L. Parmelee invoice, dated February 25, 1898, to the L.A. City Engineer for a shade, a lamp, and a couple other items totalling $1.50. The last entry in this day book, on March 31, 1898, is a long list of goods for Seymour R. Church, cups and saucers, plates, and the like. Item #70876
Zelotes Larkin Parmelee came west with his family from Illinois to California in the 1860s. By 1886, he and his wife and children had settled in Los Angeles where he founded the Z.L. Parmelee Company, offering household goods, crockery, and gas fixtures in his store on North Main Street, considered the "Broadway" of Los Angeles at the time. Business was brisk, and his brother C.A. Parmelee joined him in 1892. By August 1898, shortly after the last entry in this day book, Z.L. decided to "retire" and turn the business over to his brother and F.W. Dohrmann. Perhaps some of the entries in this day book related to electrical work indicate the direction in which Z.L. Parmelee was going. Not completely retired, he retained the stock the company had had in gas and electrical fixtures, moving into premises at 334 South Spring Street. There he operated as a manufacturer and dealer in those items, along with doing electro plating and artistic wrought metal work, according to an article in the L.A. Times on Sept. 3, 1905: "[U]p to the present day the company has been one of the large contributors of artistic materials to the splendors which have characterized the vast extent of building in Los Angeles and other cities in Southern California.... In their various works of manufacturing, selling, delivering and executing contracts for putting in fixtures and installing their various wares the company employs a force of fifty men."
C.A. Parmelee and his partner Dohrmann moved operations of the original company to 436-444 Broadway in 1906, expanding to take over the entire six-floor building by 1922, "each floor filled with the finest hardware, hotel and restaurant supplies." The building was a downtown Los Angeles landmark for many years. [L.A. Times, 11/13/1922].
Price: $850.00