Schwartz, Louis
Louis Schwartz (1834-1893), a native of Prussia, came to Santa Cruz in the 1855 (according to the Sentinel article reporting his 1893 death). He was an early downtown Santa Cruz merchant, first with members of the Brownstone family as Schwartz & Brownstone. Newspapers as far away as Sacramento and Salt Lake City noted the destruction of the Schwartz & Brownstone Santa Cruz store and warehouse in an 1857 fire (precise location not included). The Brownstone partnership apparently ended with the fire, and Schwartz returned to business with other partners (S. Barnet and J. Steen are named in the 1893 article).
- There are Barnets buried at Home of Peace cemetery, but none with first initial J. Based on dates, Samuel Barnet (unknown-1902) is a possibility.
- Fourteen-year-old Amelia Steen is described in Find-a-Grave as the first burial at Home of Peace (in 1877), so the Schwartz partner may have belonged to that family.
In 1866-67, Schwartz had three adjacent houses built on Mission Street. He was listed as a property owner in Block 2 of the 1866 Santa Cruz map. Also in the 1860s, Schwartz established a branch store in San Luis Obispo, and moved there for a time. He later returned to Santa Cruz, helping his son Joseph (who has a separate biography in Harrison) start his own Pacific Avenue "dry goods" store, called The Arcade", in the 1870s.
- History Pages: 12 - Pioneer German-Speakers of Santa Cruz County
- The Sidewalk Companion to Santa Cruz Architecture (4th ed. 2023), Chapter Four, entries (16) and (17), pages 90, 91 (image).
- "Louis Schwartz", Santa Cruz Sentinel, 24 May, 1893, 3:3 (death notice and biography]
