ALBERT C. BILICKE

Los Angeles County

Biographies

ALBERT C. BILICKE

BILICKE, ALBERT C., Capitalist, Los Angeles, California, was born in Coos County, Oregon, June 22, 1861. His father was Carl Gustavus Bilicke and his mother was Caroline Sigismund Bilicke. At Niagara Falls, N.Y., Sept. 10, 1900, he married Gladys Huff, and of this union three children have been born. They are Albert Constant, Nancy Caroline and Carl Archibald.

Mr. Bilicke came to California in 1868, settling in San Francisco, and attended the public schools of that city until 1876, when he entered Heald’s Business College of the same city. At the age of 17 (1878) Mr. Bilicke went to Arizona, where he engaged in the hotel business, being made manager of the Cosmopolitan Hotel at Florence, and after two years went to Tombstone, Arizona, where he managed the Cosmopolitan Hotel of that town and also became interested in mining as superintendent of the Pedro Consolidated Mining Company. Returning to California in 1885, Mr. Bilicke became proprietor of the Ross House, Modesto, and in 1891 became the proprietor of the Pacific Ocean House, Santa Cruz, California, a famous high-class resort in that day.

In 1893 Mr. Bilicke first came to Los Angeles, and shortly after his arrival became the proprietor of one of the most famous hotels of the West of that and the present day, the Hollenbeck Hotel, of which he is still the president and moving spirit.

Although Mr. Bilicke’s interests have grown to great magnitude and are spread far and wide, among which is the magnificent Hotel Alexandria of Los Angeles, he still has a feeling of affectionate regard and pride in the “Hollenbeck” that no other interest, no matter the magnitude, can lessen.

In 1903 Mr. Bilicke turned his attention to building and organized the Bilicke-Rowan Fireproof Building Company, principally for the purpose of improving in the most modern and substantial manner some of the many central business sites which he and his associates had acquired. Notable among the structures erected by this company stands the palatial Hotel Alexandria, erected in 1905, of which he is president and which has added much to the fame and luxurious hotel life of Los Angeles. The success of this undertaking is best told by the fact that the company has just completed an addition or annex containing over 300 rooms. He is president of the Bilicke-Rowan Annex Company, the Century Building Company, organized in 1906, and of the Central Fireproof Building Company organized in the same year. He is also the presiding head of the Chester Fireproof Building Company, which at this time is erecting the Title Insurance Building, a modern office building at Fifth and Spring streets and of which it is proposed to make one of the finest office buildings west of Chicago.

When the business district of Los Angeles started south along Broadway and Spring streets, Mr. Bilicke displayed his confidence in the future of the city by stepping far ahead and buying choice corners on which he could today take a handsome profit; but he is not a speculator, he is an investor, with unbounded confidence in Los Angeles, and is backing his judgment with enormous investments in modern improvements on the properties which he controls. His investments are almost entirely of a character that benefit the community at large and add beauty to the city.

While Mr. Bilicke’s charities are generally known to be large, he sees to it that the details are confined to the knowledge of himself and the recipient.

In addition to the high position Mr. Bilicke occupies in business, financial and social circles, he is a member of the Jonathan Club, the Los Angeles Country Club, Annandale Gold Club and the Valley Hunt Club of Pasadena.

Transcribed 6-25-08 Marilyn R. Pankey.

Source: Press Reference Library, Western Edition Notables of the West, Vol. I, Page 82, International News Service, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, Atlanta. 1913.

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