“You can hardly see the glass,” says Long Beach-based historian Stan Poe pointing at a section of sidewalk in front of the Psychic Temple. “But those were prisms that would increase the light and illuminate the basement. We don’t know what it was used for…”

At the turn of the century when electricity wasn’t common, daylight was treasured, and could be used and extended in basements via a grid of circular glass lenses in concrete reinforced by cold-twisted steel rods. A Chicago-based company’s description of the process can be read at glassian.org.

Examples of vault lights (many of which are broken and filled) can still be spotted in Downtown Los Angeles, around New York City, and a strip of Victoria, British Columbia. Poe says, “When I was a kid, I was always afraid to walk on them because they’d open!”

After the Psychic Temple had been demoed and before reconstruction began, I took a walk around the building with local author, expert, and member of many preservation committees Stan Poe. He gave me the building’s history (link) and pointed out some architectural details, as well as some hints as to what architect Jan Van Dijs might have in store for the restoration.

“The Broadway façade was slightly out of style when it was built. Long Beach was that way even then! But the front is what is designated as historic, which give Jan room to work.

“We discovered a big parapet. At the top of the building is a big cornice, and above that the parapet, which was a short wall of chimneys coming off the top. They probably fell off or were taken off during the earthquake, but we found a picture of them that Jan’s going to copy.”

“This was an arched opening. We think that when the Temple of the Holy Kiss was opened in 1905, the first floor may have been one great big open area with stairs in back. The stairs on the far end were added in the 1920s.

“Permits were real loosy goosy, and when the earthquake happened a lot of stuff was thrown of city hall as trash. I think the architect’s name was Henry Starbuck. He also built the Masonic temple down the street. “

“These iron pieces are interesting. They’re interesting because they have an Eastlake design from the 1890s. They must have been sitting around the foundry and brought in for the building. Until Jan got in there, we didn’t know they existed. The front was all black reflective tile. They were added at some point.”

“There was another hotel here that was built in the teens. It came smack up next to the wall and they connected. You can see the fill-in.”

“The staircase isn’t grand but it’s nice enough to cut it. Over the stairs is a skylight that was painted out but once lit up the whole thing.”

“The little rooms had just enough space for a single bed. There’s been a lot of speculation about what went on in them, but people would check in to have their souls cleaned overnight.”

After I pick up Southern California historian, educator, and resident Stan Poe from his Long Beach home, he seems to have a story for every old building that we pass on the drive between the historic Naples area (which is actually patterned after Venice, down to the canals) and our decidedly grittier Downtown destination. But the site of the old American Hotel still turns out to provide one of the city’s most colorful stories. We walk around the boarded-up structure so Poe can point out details of architectural interest (viewable here) and then sit down at the café across the street so he can tell me about its past.

With old newspaper articles, some personal notes, and a photocopied graduate school essay at one hand and a Diet Coke at the other, the member and veteran of numerous preservation committees reels off names, dates, and events that I can only hope to make sense of.

The American Hotel originally was built in 1905, with the intention of being a “Psychic Temple” for the Society of New or Practical Psychology by its founder Dr. William C. Price. The mesmerist, hypnotist, and self-described psychologist was born in Tennessee in 1863 and became a lecturer and demonstrator who traveled all over the South. His five kids were born in five different states. Poe adds, “I don’t know if he was run out of each town or if he left on his own.”

To escape legal problems in Atlanta, Price came out west. He made a stop in San Francisco and gave a series of lectures and classes in Los Angeles before creating the headquarters for what was sometimes called the Holy Kiss Society. In a newspaper article, follower Rosella Bates explained, “Dr. Price says he can take a woman in his arms with the purest thoughts and can kiss a girl without a thought of evil—so strong is his self control.”

Price also practiced a sort of acupressure in which he healed people by strategically touching certain nerves, and preached male continence as a form of contraception and a spiritual practice. Noting that another one of his favorite subjects was derived from a series of 1852 lectures on “Electrical Psychology,” linking electricity to the virgin birth among other things. Poe offers, “I wonder if there was something in those corner rooms that involved electricity? It would be the same time that Tesla was working…”

Price showed interest in many things but charity wasn’t one of them. To rent a nice house in the neighborhood cost about $20 a month. He charged $10 for a lesson. And ultimately it was business and not religion that led to Price’s downfall. He advised followers to mortgage their homes to invest in his efforts. His students were free to invest freely; others had to pay $10 for a lecture beforehand. But in 1908, he filed suit against investors for unpaid stock payments. In turn, stockholders claimed that they were under the spell of his hypnotism and telepathic influence.

The sides deadlocked, and the building was ultimately sold to Price’s legal opponents to pay off a settlement. Dr. Price’s name was removed from the plate glass with acid and taken off the cornerstone with a chisel. Anna Sewell purchased the building in 1911 for $2,910.09, renaming it as American Hotel and beginning its short descent into being a longtime flophouse with modest businesses on the ground floor and eventually vacant husk of a building in the center of Downtown Long Beach.

As for Price, Poe says, in 1919 he left Long Beach for Los Angeles, where he started the New School for Applied Christian Psychology. Things continued to unravel for him in 1923, when Price was arrested for fraud and divorced for adultery. He died in 1925.