The Bella Union Hotel in Los Angeles, California, constructed in 1835, is California Historical Landmark No. 656. It was effectively the last capitol building of Mexican California under Governor Pio Pico, in 1845–47, and was a center of social and political life for decades. The hotel was located at N. Main Street, on the east side, a few doors north of Commercial Street, a which then ran east-west between Arcadia and Temple. The hotel was later known as the Clarendon and then as the St. Charles.
The one-story adobe structure was built in 1835 by "three American trappers" — William Wolfskill, Joseph Paulding and Richard Laughlin — as a home for Isaac Williams, a New England merchant who had arrived in Los Angeles in 1832.
In 1851, when Horace Bell, the author of the seminal historical work Reminiscences of a Ranger, first came to Los Angeles, the hotel was owned by James Brown Winston, a medical doctor, and Alpheus P. Hodges, the city's mayor. Bell's book, published in 1881, recounted how the hotel looked when he had stayed there thirty years before:
Louis Roeder, later a member of the Los Angeles Common Council, who stayed at the Bella Union in 1856, recalled in 1903 that the Bella Union had been
A second floor was added to the hotel in 1851, and a third in 1869.
In 1873 the hotel was renamed the Clarendon Hotel. What had previously been the Shepard cigar and fancy store and had also served as Western Union headquarters in the city, was refitted to serve as a lounge, with reading and chess tables, and a dozen antique Elizabethan chairs from the California Theater in San Francisco. A separate stairway was built to connect the upper floors to the dining room, for ladies' use only. The new dining room accommodated 100 guests. Charles Rosseau, formerly of the Union Club in San Francisco, served as chef. The bar room was carpeted with Brussels tapestry. A building at the back with 16 rooms was connected to the main hotel of 62 rooms, and the hotel thus stretched the entire length of Commercial Street from Main to Los Angeles streets. The rooms, halls, and other facilities were newly outfitted. In early 1875, the hotel started advertising as the St. Charles.
California Historical Landmark Marker No. 656 at the site reads:
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