Ballin described his murals at the Title Guarantee and Trust Building in a pamphlet published in 1931:
“The first panel depicts a drama typical of the prehistoric past in Los Angeles. The scene is the Brea Pits, now preserved as a public park fronting on Wilshire Boulevard.

For hundreds of thousands of years these crater-like pits of asphaltum were the setting for combats similar to the one portrayed by Ballin. Animals of every type came to drink the brackish water covering the death-traps, only to become mired in the glue-like substance. Struggling to escape, they would sinker deeper and their cries would attract a host of savage creatures to the feast. During the long course of years the victims numbered thousands. Their bodies disintegrated, if they were not devoured, but the bones remained intake in the oil-soaked sand. 

The accumulation of these bones took place in the Pleistocene epoch, which lasted 200,000 to 500,000 years, ending less than 25,000 years ago. 

In 1906 the death-raps were uncovered – to the lasting enrichment of science. Since then thousands of skeletons of extinct animals have been removed – among those of the Imperial Elephant, the Sabre-tooth Tiger burying his teeth in an Imperial Elephant caught in a tar-pool. Another elephant is engaged in the fight. In the middle distance a Giant Sloth rests on his hind legs. The Hollywood Hills form in the background.”

Ballin began his career in New York painting portraits and human figures had been central to his previous works. But surprisingly, he began his account of Los Angeles' history in the Title Guarantee and Trust Building with a scenic portrait with no human figures. Instead, he focused on a saber tooth tiger to relate a story about Los Angeles in its natural state before the arrival of homo sapiens. The tiger's raw strength, muscular form, and ferocious attack suggest that, like his human figures, the cat was meant to be allegorical, perhaps a symbol of the cutthroat competition occurring in Los Angeles' economy, the film industry specifically, at the time. Ballin later included the skull of a saber tooth tiger in his mural at the Griffith Observatory.

Image courtesy of Department of Special Collections, Charles Young Library, University of California Los Angeles.
Appears in the Hugo Ballin Papers, collection number 407, Box 17, Folder 1.

Ballin's quotation appears in his pamphlet, "Murals in the Title Guarantee Building," (Los Angeles: Title Guarantee and Trust Company, 1931).