President’s word does the deed
May 20, 1960: The city of Los Angeles was forced to buy back a 60-foot-wide strip of land on South Vermont Avenue after a man named Joseph P. Connolly produced a letter from President Ulysses S. Grant bequeathing the land to one of his ancestors.
The city agreed to pay Connolly and his family $305,600, The Times reported. The city attorney had declared the Grant letter “valid and binding.”
Years earlier, the city had paid a token $1 to acquire the land, between Florence Avenue and 83rd Street, from Los Angeles Transit Lines. “Then it developed that neither the city nor LATL held title to any portion of the strip,” The Times said.
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