Water and Power Associates Informing the Public about Critical Water and Energy Issues facing Los Angeles and California

Historical Notes

Elevated booths were used by the Los Angeles Railway and the Yellow Cars as a switchman’s tower to control the flow and path of streetcars through the intersection. 

Historical Notes

The junction of Main, Spring, and 9th streets became one of the most photographed intersections because of its configuration. Click HERE to see more.

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The Los Angeles Railway (also Yellow Cars, LARy, latterly Los Angeles Transit Lines) was a system of streetcars that operated in central Los Angeles and the immediate surrounding neighborhoods between 1901 and 1963. The company carried many more passengers than the Pacific Electric Railway's 'Red Cars' which served a larger area of Los Angeles.

Historical Notes

The original address for the site was 648 South Central Avenue, but was later changed to 1130 East Sixth Street. Today the division operates hundreds of natural gas powered Metro buses for the Gateway Cities Service Sector.

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The Arcade Station was the second station built by Southern Pacific in Los Angeles (and first one built primarily for passenger service). Built in 1889 and used until 1914 when it was replaced by larger SP Central Station. It was demolished shortly thereafter.

Amazingly, the original Arcade Depot Palm is still alive. It was replanted at a location in front of the Los Angeles Coliseum where it stands today. It along with the Longstreet Palms are considered to be the oldest trees in the City of Los Angeles.

Click HERE to see more on the Arcade Depot and the old Arcade Depot Palm.

Historical Notes

Opened on September 24, 1905, Court Flight was built by Attorney R. E. Blackburn of the McCarthy real estate firm and Samuel G Vandegrift. It along with Angels Flight (built in 1901) were constructed to serve the wealthy residents of Bunker Hill.

Historical Notes

Unlike Angels Flight, Court Flight was entirely double tracked, using a pair of thirty-inch gauge counterbalanced cars, and ran for a distance of 180 feet up a 42 per cent grade between Broadway and Court Streets, in the middle of the block between Temple and First Streets.

Historical Notes

The funicular operated for 39 years, but World War II spelled its doom. Low ridership depressed profits, and the railway struggled to find engineers and conductors in the wartime labor market. In 1943, unable to keep the line profitable, owner Annie Vandegrift closed Court Flight. It would never reopen.

Click HERE to see more Early Views of Court Flight (1930+)

Historical Notes

Click HERE to see more Early Views of the Hill Street Tunnels.

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In the above photo, the new Hall of Records (1910), the newer Hall of Justice (nearing completion here) and the old (1888) County Courthouse are seen in the center as is the Hancock Banning house on Fort Moore Hill, the Prudent Beaudry house on New High Street and the Court Flight funicular up Court Hill. Future city hall site is to the right.

Historical Notes

The 12-story Law Building was built in 1926 just before the new City Hall went in.  The Building was razed around 1970 to make room for Grand Park.

Historical Notes

The City leased most of the offices in the Law Buildings for decades. In the basement was the Lombardi's Restaurant, which was there throughout the '60's. The Building was razed around 1970 to make room for Grand Park.

Historical Notes

Court Flight was located at far right. It was shut down in 1943.

Click HERE to see more Early Views of Court Flight (1930+)

Historical Notes

Law Building (1926 - 1970)

California State Building (1931 - 1976)

Hall of Records Building (1911 - 1976)

Historical Notes

Law Building (1926 - 1970)

California State Building (1931 - 1976)

Hall of Records Building (1911 - 1976)

Historical Notes

Established in 1908 by ""nineteen substantial citizens" as an "exclusive residential enclave", the Victoria Park neighborhood is one of only two neighborhoods in the entire city of Los Angeles where the homes are arranged on a circular street. This design is based on the ideas of Frederick Law Olmstead, who felt that circular shapes would break up the usual linear look of urban areas. The area was intended to be upscale, e.g. the streetlights were custom-designed and registered with the city as the "Victoria Park Fixture."

Click HERE to see the "Victoria Park Fixture" in Early Los Angeles Street Lights.

Historical Notes

Many of the homes in the Victoria Park neighborhood were built between 1910 and 1915 and serve as fine architectural examples of The American Arts and Crafts Movement. The area was intended to be all single-family homes, but was rezoned in the 1920s and some duplexes were built.

Historical Notes

Sometime between 1900 and 1910 a prominent financier named George A.J. Howard envisioned a beautiful tranquil park as a setting for family homes such as one sees in the English countryside in what was then an undeveloped and rural area about halfway between the city center (now Downtown LA) and the coast. Howard pushed the early city fathers to make his vision come true, and in 1911, Mr. Robert A. Rowan was able to initiate a unique residential development and called it Windsor Square.

The development was constituted as a private square. Both the homes and the streets would be privately owned. At that time there were dense groves of bamboo in the area that needed to be destroyed before trees and gardens could be cultivated. Intervening walls or fences were discouraged so that one garden ran into another, creating a park-like setting.

Windsor Square was the first area in the city to have the power lines below grade--an extraordinary innovation for 1911.

Historical Notes

Windsor Square was later expanded to the north, east, and west. Today, Windsor Square runs from Wilshire to Beverly Boulevards, and from Arden Boulevard to Van Ness Avenue. This is inclusive of the one-block strip of Larchmont Village, between First Street and Beverly Boulevard. Windsor Square is often mistakenly called "Hancock Park," even by long-time residents. But in fact, Hancock Park is the neighborhood immediately to the west. Windsor Square's homes have the same historic value as in Hancock Park, but most of the homes are built on bigger lots.

Many of the city's elite moved west to Windsor Square, including George Howard (his daughter still lives in his home on Windsor Blvd) and Norman Chandler, who took up lifelong residence with his wife Buffy on Lorraine Blvd. Oil magnate John Paul Getty bought a property on Irving Blvd. that is now Los Angeles's official mayor's residence.

Historical Notes

Hancock Park was developed in the 1920s by the Hancock family with profits earned from oil drilling in the former Rancho La Brea. The area owes its name to developer-philanthropist George Allan Hancock, who subdivided the property in the 1920s.  Hancock, born and raised in a home at what is now the La Brea tar pits, inherited 4,400 acres, which his father, Major Henry Hancock had acquired from the Rancho La Brea property owned by the family of Jose Jorge Rocha.*^

Marlborough School is a private, all-girls, college-preparatory secondary school for grades 7th through 12th located at 250 South Rossmore Avenue in the Hancock Park neighborhood of Los Angeles.  Marlborough was founded in 1889 by Mary Caswell and is the oldest independent girls' school in Southern California.

Historical Notes

The large square of undeveloped land showing two mounds (right of oil field) is El Arroyo del Jardin de los Flores, The Stream of the Garden of Flowers. The stream flowed from the location of today's Wilshire Country Club through Hancock Park, joining another creek that eventually drained to Ballona Creek near La Brea and St. Elmo Drive. The majority of this creek was piped and filled; a portion of it remains above ground at the Wilshire Country Club, and a creek running through Brookside Estates also shares this name.

Historical Notes

Hollywood High School with a student body of 2500 was three blocks from Charlie Chaplin's studio and six blocks from Mary Pickford's and Douglas Fairbanks' studios. The homes bordering the upper side of the campus were just condemned by the city to make room for additional buildings. The original 1905 building is on the bottom right, the Household & Fine Arts building is in the middle of the quadrangle, and the gymnasium is top, center.^

Historical Notes

The Beverly Hills Speedway (also called the Los Angeles Speedway) was a 1.25-mile wooden board track for automobile and motorcycle racing in Beverly Hills. It was built in 1919 on 275 acres of land that includes the site of today's Beverly Wilshire Hotel, just outside of the "Golden Triangle". The site was bounded by Wilshire Boulevard, South Beverly Drive, Olympic Boulevard and Lasky Drive.*^

Historical Notes

The new Speedway was built by Jack Prince and Art Pillsbury and was financed by a group of racers and businessmen that called itself the Beverly Hills Speedway Association. The track was the first in the United States to be designed with banked turns incorporating an engineering solution known as a spiral easement.*^

Historical Notes

At the time, the wooden racetrack was ranked second in race quality only to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.^*^*

Historical Notes

Many race cars had paint jobs that read Durant Racing on the sides. Durant was an American race car driver, the son of William C. Durant, a founder of General Motors who was also the co-owner and president of the Beverly Hills Speedway.

Durant Drive in the City of Beverly HIlls was named after these Durants.^*^*

Historical Notes

The Speedway was a great success, not only for racing but also for events. In fact, sometimes the space was so well attended, the parking lots overflowed with cars.

Historical Notes

The Speedway operated for four years and attracted many historically significant competitors including Ralph DePalma, Jimmy Murphy, and Tommy Milton. It was also the site of a racing accident that killed National Champion and Indianapolis 500 winner Gaston Chevrolet in 1920.

Gaston Chevrolet was the younger brother of Louis Chevrolet, who in 1911 co-founded the Chevrolet Motor Company.

Historical Notes

The gigantic eucalyptus trees in the distance ran the length of what today would be Charleville Blvd., a street named for developer Walter G. McCarty's Irish roots. The trees created a natural wind and sound barrier for residential neighborhood north of Wilshire Boulevard, which within five years, would start to become the city's commercial triangle.

Historical Notes

Motorcycle board track racing took place at the short lived Beverly Hills Speedway between 1920 and 1924.

Historical Notes

There is no doubt that board track racing was an incredibly exciting event to witness.  The motorcycles were capable of speeds over 100 mph and represented all the marques of the day.  Manufacturers such as Harley-Davidson, Indian and Excelsior all had factory racing teams with custom built factory race bikes.

Historical Notes

Because the turns were severely banked, it allowed riders to reach speeds of more than 100 miles an hour. Crashes were frequent and horrific—riders who went down faced being impaled by splinters—and often fatal.

Historical Notes

By the mid-‘20s, the sport began to lose its appeal. Perhaps the novelty wore off; certainly the carnage was appalling. Newspapers began referring to motordromes as “murderdromes,” and local governments closed some tracks. Race officials and the motorcycle manufacturers that sponsored racing teams tried to implement measures to slow down the bikes, but that went nowhere. By the early 1930s, board-track motorcycle racing had become a footnote in motorsport history. *#*

Historical Notes

It would soon become apparent that the racetrack wasn't as valuable as the land it was on.  By the mid-twenties the track was dismantled to make way for new developments.

Historical Notes

The above photo was taken by G. Haven Bishop for Southern California Edison.  They were the tenants of the building housing the Million Dollar Theatre – then known as the Edison Building.

Historical Notes

The California State Normal School was a teaching college that was founded on May 2, 1862 in San Jose. In March 1881, after heavy lobbying by Los Angeles residents, the California State Legislature authorized the creation of a southern branch of the school to be built in downtown Los Angeles, which would train teachers for the growing population of Southern California.

On August 29, 1882, the State Normal School at Los Angeles opened its doors, and in 1919 it became part of the "UC system" after moving to a larger campus on Vermont Ave., in Hollywood (the present site of L.A. City College). The University of California, Southern Branch would eventually come to be known as the University of California, Los Angeles.

The L.A. Public Library would take the old Normal School site, which was located on 5th Street between Grand and Flower streets. Designed by architects Bertram G. Goodhue and Carlton M. Winslow, it would eventually be constructed between 1922-1926.^

Historical Notes

World War I, also known as the First World War or the Great War, was a global war centered in Europe that began on July 28, 1914 and lasted until November 11, 1918. More than 9 million combatants and 7 million civilians died as a result of the war, a casualty rate exacerbated by the belligerents' technological and industrial sophistication, and tactical stalemate. It was one of the deadliest conflicts in history, paving the way for major political changes, including revolutions in many of the nations involved.*^

Historical Notes

Armistice Day (which coincides with Remembrance Day and Veterans Day, public holidays) is commemorated every year on 11 November to mark the armistice signed between the Allies of World War I and Germany at Compiègne, France, for the cessation of hostilities on the Western Front of World War I, which took effect at eleven o'clock in the morning—the "eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month" of 1918.

The date was declared a national holiday in many allied nations, to commemorate those members of the armed forces who were killed during war. An exception is Italy, where the end of the war is commemorated on 4 November, the day of the Armistice of Villa Giusti. In the Netherlands, Denmark and Norway World War I is not commemorated as the three countries all remained neutral.*^

Historical Notes

In 1921 the Department of Water and Power purchased the seven-story Merchants Trust Company Building at 207 South Broadway, which was to remain its main headquarters building for forty-four years. It is one of the 11 buildings the new DWP General Office Building (now known as John Ferraro Building) replaced in 1965.

Historical Notes

In 1924 the Alhambra Hotel was moved north up Broadway 122 feet towards the face of the Broadway Tunnel to make room for the Hall of Justice.  The Kress House Moving Company was awarded a $63,770 contract to move the massive Alhambra Hotel.  Dozens of parallel train tracks were positioned to move the hotel closer to the tunnel.

Historical Notes

In 1906, the seven-story Equitable Savings Bank replaced the Los Angeles National Bank building on the northeast corner of First and Spring streets.  The building didn't last too long, being demolished in the late 1920s. The site today is the corner of the park next to City Hall.^

Historical Notes

On the left is the first floor detail of the Bryson-Bonebrake Block, (northwest corner). The block was commissioned by John Bryson, Sr., Los Angeles mayor, and George H. Bonebrake, banker. The building was six stories plus a basement and contained a lodgeroom on the sixth floor. There was a court in the center of the building. The architects were Joseph Carter Newsom and Samuel Newsom and the building was completed ca. 1888.^

Historical Notes

Opened in 1888 as the Los Angeles Theatre. The theatre was built by William Hayes Perry and the building containing it was known as the Perry Building.

In 1903 this interesting Richardsonian Romanesque building became the Orpheum - the second home of Orpheum Circuit vaudeville in Los Angeles. Previously they'd been at the Grand Opera House.

The Orpheum moved on in June, 1911 to their new home at 630 S. Broadway (now the Palace Theatre).

In 1912 this building became known as Fischer's Lyceum, operated by the Mr. Fischer of Fischer's Theatre on 1st St. Later it was just known as the Lyceum Theatre. It was listed as the Lyceum in the 1916 city directory and onward.*#*

Historical Notes

By the early 30s the Lyceum Theatre was exclusively a movie theatre. In 1941, the building was demolished to make way for a parking lot.*#*

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The Alexandria Hotel at 501 South Spring Street became Los Angeles’s first five-star luxury hotel when it opened on February 12, 1906.  It also served as the city’s main social center from 1906 to the end of 1920.

Historical Notes

The Superba theatre was opened on July 30, 1914 by pioneer theatreman John A. Quinn.  Earlier (1909 or 1910) Quinn had moved from Arizona and leased the Ideal Theatre (134 S. Spring St.). This was followed by a partnership with G.H. McLain that acquired the Bijou (553 S. Main St.) and the Banner (456 S. Main St.). 

By the end of 1910 the partners had split with Quinn retaining the Banner.  In 1911 Quinn took over the Garrick Theatre (former Hyman Theatre) at 8th & Broadway.

In 1912 Quinn was running Tally's (833 S. Broadway) and was later involved on Broadway in the Rialto Theatre (1917).*#*

Historical Notes

Quinn’s Superba Theatre was located on the site where the Roxie Theatre is today on Broadway in Downtown Los Angeles. It was next to the Cameo and the Pantages.^^^*

Historical Notes

The Superba Theater was later sold and converted to a coffee house before being razed in 1931 to make way for the Roxie, which was the last theater built on Broadway.*#*

Historical Notes

Over the years there have been several bridges connecting Macy Street with Brooklyn Avenue (previously Pleasant Avenue) in East Los Angeles.  In fact, the first span over the Los Angeles River was a covered bridge, lit with kerosene lamps, built on this spot in 1870.  Click HERE to see more on the 1st Macy Street Bridge.

By 1923, you would cross the L.A. River at Macy on the metal truss bridge. While crossing, cars would have to contend with trains of both the Santa Fe (on the eastern side) and the Union Pacific (on the western), as the tracks for each were at the same grade as the bridge’s.*

Historical Notes

On April 5, 1923, the City's electorate voted for a $2 million bond issue to be put toward a new bridge initiative.  The construction of the new Macy Street Viaduct eventually started in mid-1925.*

Historical Notes

The Macy Street Viaduct (Bridge) is the second bridge built during large bridge-building program in Los Angeles during the 1920s. The program started in 1923 with lobbyists pushing for the replacement of several of the city's outdated bridges and viaducts. The Macy Street truss bridge was problematic for motorists due to its narrow width and two railroad mainlines (the Santa Fe and Union Pacific) located on either side of the span.

The new bridge formally opened on April 17, 1926. The bridge's Spanish Colonial elements are a nod to El Camino Real, the route of which Macy Street/Cesar Chavez Avenue follow. It is also why the bridge is dedicated to Father Junipero Serra.

In 1995, Macy Street, which was named after Los Angeles pioneer Dr. Obed Macy, was changed to Cesar E. Chavez Avenue in honor of the former labor leader. So, too, was the name of the bridge changed.*^

Click HERE to see more Early Views of the Macy Street Bridge.

Historical Notes

The First Street Viaduct opened in 1929, and is one of the series of classic Los Angeles River bridges designed by Merrill Butler.

Special ornamentation was common on bridges constructed between 1900 - 1929.  These poles serve two purposes:   1) to hold the decorative streetlight lantern and  2) to support the overhead for the Los Angeles Railway (LARy) streetcars that used this viaduct.^^

Click HERE to see more in Early Los Angeles Streetlights.

Historical Notes

The Santa Fe was a pioneer in intermodal freight service, an enterprise that (at one time or another) included a tugboat fleet and an airline (the short-lived Santa Fe Skyway). Its bus line extended passenger transportation to areas not accessible by rail, and ferryboats on the San Francisco Bay allowed travelers to complete their westward journeys to the Pacific Ocean. The ATSF was the subject of a popular song, Harry Warren & Johnny Mercer's "On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe", written for the film, The Harvey Girls (1946).

The railroad officially ceased operations on December 31, 1996, when it merged with the Burlington Northern Railroad to form the Burlington Northern & Santa Fe Railway (later renamed BNSF Railway).*^

Historical Notes

The bridge was declared a historic-cultural monument in 2008, and the Gold Line extension, which runs down the middle of the bridge, opened the following year.

Historical Notes

In the early 1900s, a group of property owners in present-day Lincoln Heights organized as the East Side Improvement Association called for a bridge over the river at Buena Vista Street (now North Broadway). The association secured half the funding for the bridge from private sources, and, when the city refused to supply the other half, elected their own president to the city council. The Los Angeles Times threw its support behind the plan in 1908, urging the city to become the "Pontifex Maximus of the day" (a reference to the officer of the Roman Republic responsible for bridge building). The city soon agreed, and the concrete-arch bridge -- complete with miniature Roman temples and other neoclassical flourishes -- opened to traffic in 1911.**#

Historical Notes

The Buena Vista-Broadway Bridge is one of the oldest of the bridges crossing the Los Angeles River. Strategically, the bridge connects Lincoln Heights with Chinatown and gets heavy use as an alternative to the Pasadena Freeway. Culturally and historically, the over 100-year-old bridge has served as an important symbolic link connecting the Latino and Chinese communities as well as being a favorite passage to Elysian Park for generations of Eastside families.*##

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1938 saw unusually heavy rainfall with widespread flooding. Notice the river is still 'unimproved'.  Click HERE to see more in Los Angeles River – The Unpredictable.

Historical Notes

The Buena Vista-Broadway Bridge underwent an 18 month, $20-million dollar renovation and seismic retrofitting that was completed in 2000.*##

Historical Notes

The white building at center-left of the photo was once the Library building of the Occidental College Highland Park Campus in the early 1900s.

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After the College moved to its present campus in Eagle Rock in 1914 the Library building was used for a short time as a Los Angeles City Branch Library. The building has since been demolished.^^

Historical Notes

The Sunbeam Theatre was a 1296 seat theater built in 1914. It was purchased by the owners of the Highland Park Theater and closed to remove competition. After that it was re-purposed for a variety of businesses. In the late 1980s, part of it was utilized by the theater group Outback Theater. The space is still occasionally used for events.*^^^

Historical Notes

Constructed in 1835, the Bella Union Hotel has a long, rich history. It served as the County Courthouse until October 1851, and in 1860 was the location of a champagne fete celebrating the connection of San Francisco and Los Angeles by telegraph.^

Historical Notes

The Bella Union Hotel is considered to be the first hotel in Los Angeles. The building no longer exist, however the site it stood on was designated California Historical Landmark No. 656 (Click HERE to see more in Califronia Historical Landmarks in LA).

Below is what the hotel looked like in the 1860s.

Historical Notes

Note the elevated kiosk on the edge of the plaza to the left ot the photo. Elevated booths like these were used by the Los Angeles Railway and the Yellow Cars as a switchman’s tower to control the flow and path of streetcars through the intersection.  Many of these were still standing well into the 1920s.

Historical Notes

In 1880, Pio Pico lost the hotel by foreclosure. From 1892-1920 the building was called the National Hotel.^#^^

Historical Notes

Sanchez Street juts south from the plaza, opposite its more famous twin, Olvera Street, on the north side. It's just a block long, but it's seen a lot of history.

In the 1880s and '90s, it was the scene of several crimes reported in The Times. Most involved the local saloons and Chinese gangs of the day, including the 1889 shooting death of the "Peruvian Princess," a woman whose tortured life took her from Lima to China to San Francisco and finally to her death in a Sanchez Street boarding house.

In 1914 police fought protesters on Sanchez Street during the Christmas Riot. A member of the International Workers of the World, or Wobblies, was shot and killed.*^##

Historical Notes

The Avila Adobe was built ca. 1818 by Don Francisco Avila, alcalde (mayor) of Los Angeles in 1810. Used as Commodore Robert Stockton's headquarters in 1847, it was repaired by private subscription in 1929-30 when Olvera Street was opened as a Mexican marketplace. It is the oldest existing house in Los Angeles.

The Sepulveda House is a 22-room Victorian house built in 1887 in the East lake style. The original structure included two commercial businesses and three residences and fronts both Main and Olvera streets.*^

Historical Notes

In 1913 the Los Angeles Aqueduct was completed and the City had a new source of water. L.A. proceeded to annex outlying communities attracted by the promise of an abundant water supply. The flurry of annexations began even before the aqueduct was complete.  

Between 1910 - 1930, The area of Los Angeles increases from 115 sq. miles to 442 sq. miles through annexations of surrounding areas (i.e. Hollywood is annexed in 1910, the San Fernando Valley is annexed in 1915). The City's population increased from 533,535 (1915) to 1,300,000 (1930).*^

Historical Notes

Traffic jams in downtown Los Angeles started early in this century. This picture was taken sometime in the 1900's to 1920's, and already the trolleys, cars and horses and carriages are going every which way they can in the middle on the street. On the far (northwest) corner of Broadway is the Bullock's Dept. store.^

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Los Angeles' population continued to grow. By 1920 it was 576,700, an 81% increase over what it was 10 years earlier (319,200).*^

Historical Notes

In 1911, film director Thomas Ince created his Western film factory, "Inceville," which at its peak employed nearly 600 people.*^

Historical Notes

Ince leased 18,000 acres of land extending from the seashore up Santa Ynez Canyon and into the mountains for 7-1/2 miles. While he was building the frame-structured studio buildings, situated where Gladstone’s Restaurant is today, he also hired Miller’s 101 Ranch Wildwest Show, including many cowboys, animals and a Sioux Indian tribe, who set up their teepees on the property.^#^

Historical Notes

Most of the cowboys, Indians and assorted workmen lived at Inceville, while the actors came from Los Angeles and other communities as needed, taking the red trolley cars to the Long Wharf at Potrero Canyon, where buckboards conveyed them to the set. Ince lived in a house that overlooked Inceville, the location of Marquez Knolls today.^#^

Historical Notes

By 1916, Ince was supervising eight directors and releasing one five-reel picture (about 50-minute films) each week at an average cost of $40,000. His film ‘Civilization,’ which employed over 25,000 extras, was by far his most ambitious endeavor. The set for the mythical city stood alone on the barren hills, where Marquez Elementary School is today. It was built by 60 carpenters over a period of three months at a cost of $80,000 and was used for only 100 feet of film.^#^

Historical Notes

Incville's cost continued to rise as moviegoers enjoyed the more expensive feature films, which used five reels or more.  Ince, through his alliance with Triangle, a production company founded by D. W. Griffith and Mark Sennett, built a new studio in Culver City to use for indoor movies, while retaining Inceville for outdoor locations and Westerns.

Historical Notes

When the Southern Pacific Railroad arrived at Los Angeles, a controversy erupted over where to locate the city's main seaport. The SPRR preferred Santa Monica, while others advocated for San Pedro Bay. The Long Wharf was built in 1893 at the north end of Santa Monica to accommodate large ships and was dubbed Port Los Angeles. At the time it was constructed, it was the longest pier in the world at 4700 feet, and accommodated a train.*^

However, just a short four years after the Long Wharf's construction, San Pedro Bay was chosen over Santa Monica to be the main seaport of Los Angeles. The Long Wharf was demolished in 1920.

Historical Notes

The Pacific Palisades lighthouse was built as a bathhouse with a working light in 1927. In the early 1930s the structure along with the beach was sold to Will Rogers and later the beach was given to the state of California and renamed the Will Rogers State Beach.^

Historical Notes

In 1922, the Rev. Charles H. Scott and the Southern California Methodist Episcopal Church bought the land where Incville Studios was located. That same year Scott founded Pacific Palisades, envisioning an elaborate religious-intellectual commune. Believers snapped up choice lots and lived in tents during construction. By 1925, the Palisades had 100 homes. In one subdivision, streets were named for Methodist missionaries. The tents eventually were replaced by cabins, then by bungalows, and ultimately by multimillion-dollar homes.*^

Historical Notes

In the 1920s, William Randolph Hearst commissioned William Edward Flannery to construct a grand beach house for his longtime companion, actress Marion Davies. In 1926, architect Julia Morgan was hired to complete the design and oversee construction of the estate, which featured an ornate swimming pool, several houses, gardens and an opulent 110-room mansion. The beach house served as Davies’ primary residence from 1929 to 1942.

In 1947, Davies sold the estate and it was converted into the Oceanhouse Hotel and Sand & Sea Beach Club. The main mansion was demolished in 1956, and the property was sold to the State of California in 1959. The Sand & Sea Club remained popular with regulars all the way through until the 1990s.*^*#

Historical Notes

The Venice, Ocean Park and Santa Monica amusement piers were within a mile and one half of each other and they competed directly with each other for the tourist's entertainment dollars. Fourteen coasters were built there from 1904 to 1925.^*^*^

Click HERE to see more in Early Views of Southern California Amusement Parks

Historical Notes

The Spanish and French Renaissance style La Monica Ballroom was designed by T.H. Eslick; it opened in 1924 and was demolished in 1963.^

More than 50,000 people attended the July 23, 1924 grand opening of the La Monica Ballroom, enough to cause the first traffic jam recorded in Santa Monica history. Its 15,000 square-foot hard maple floor and exquisite “submarine garden” interior made the La Monica the hottest ticket in town.*^*^*

Historical Notes

The La Monica Ballroom was located at the end of the 1,600-foot long Santa Monica Pier. It was especially popular during the Big Band Era of the 1920s & 30s, up to 2,500 couples could kick up their heels in this grand ballroom located at the end of the Pier.*^*#

It’s success was short-lived as the Great Depression effectively ended the dance hall days. By the mid-1930’s it became a convention center, lifeguard headquarters and, for a short interim period, the City Jail.*^*^*

Historical Notes

The Playa del Rey area, located about two miles south of Kinney's Venice of America resort, was once, centuries ago, the mouth of the Los Angeles River. But after the river shifted course to begin emptying in Los Alamitos Bay in Long Beach, it left behind a sleepy lagoon more than two miles wide and one fifth of a mile wide with a trickle of fresh water flowing to sea along La Ballona Creek.

Historical Notes

Playa del Rey, “The King’s Beach,” had rustic beginnings.

In 1871, a man named Will Tell built a lodge at the unnamed area near a lagoon that existed where Ballona Creek emptied into the Pacific Ocean. It became a popular spot for hunters and fishermen until an 1884 storm wiped out the small resort.*

Historical Notes

With the late 19th and early 20th Ballona hosted a slew of new businesses that, thanks to calamitous weather, endured a short though fruitful run. A German named Will Tell built a business at the mouth of Ballona where sportsmen could hunt from his small boats.  His business soon washed away, but interest in the area continued to mount.  In the 1880’s Moy Wix envisioned “Port Ballona” a plan that would link the ocean to a new two-mile Harbor.  The Santa Fe Railway planned to follow; and while a passenger train was successful in transporting Angelinos to Port Ballona in 1887.  Strong tides and winter rains inevitably washed away the wharf, putting an end to the grand project.

Historical Notes

Henry Barbour of the Beach Land Company bought 1,000 acres of land in the area in 1902, and renamed it Playa del Rey.

He announced plans to build a full-fledged resort there, based around the impending arrival of the Pacific Electric Railway “red car” system that eventually would link all the beach cities from Venice to Manhattan Beach.

Construction on the various structures was well under way when the new Playa del Rey had its coming out party on July 16, 1902. Hundreds of potential buyers arrived on Santa Fe trains (the Pacific Electric had yet to be completed) to inspect Barbour’s work and potentially invest in housing lots in the area.

About 100 lots were sold on the first day, for an approximate total of $150,000.*

Historical Notes

The Hotel Playa was on Speedway Boulevard, (today called Culver Boulevard), at more or less the location of the modern Tanner’s Coffee Co.

Historical Notes

With the completion of the Sherman and Clark owned Los Angeles Pacific electric trolley line, the 'Short Line,' to Los Angeles on October 19, 1902, hundreds began visiting the new resort. A pavilion and small hotel were eventually built in Oriental craftsman rather than Venetian style, around the lagoon in 1904.

Historical Notes

The pavilion building opened with much fanfare on Thanksgiving Day in 1904, the same year that the resort got its own post office.

Wooden boardwalks were constructed surrounded the lagoon, and a concrete bridge built across the lagoon was described as the longest one of its type at the time. Boat racing became extremely popular; a boathouse built near the ocean did a brisk business.*

Historical Notes

The company built an impressive three-story, $100,000 pavilion with restaurant and dining rooms, bowling alleys and dance floor. Sherman and Clark's Los Angeles Pacific Railway Company built the $200,000 Hotel Del Rey with fifty guests rooms. A boat-racing course was laid out and a grandstand and boathouse erected on shore. A bridge spanned the lagoon's ocean entrance and a 1200-foot long fishing pier was built nearby."^^

Historical Notes

While Playa del Rey was considered a modest success in attracting day tourists, it proved to be Abbot Kinney's inspiration and served as an example of a resort that wasn't large enough in scope to attract investors or excite the public.

Playa Del Rey flourished as a resort from 1902-1913.

In 1905, a furnicular railway was built from the Playa del Rey beach to the top of the steep bluffs that surrounded it. Its two cars were nicknamed “Alphonse” and “Gaston.”

In 1910, the Playa del Rey Motordrome, a wooden banked raceway track built for automobile and motorcycle racing, opened for business at the present-day intersection of Culver and Jefferson boulevards.. Many of the great auto racers of the day, including Barney Oldfield, raced at the Motordrome until its wooden structure caught fire and burned to the ground in 1913.

In 1913, a fire destroyed the Playa del Rey Pavilion and the Del Rey Hotel, and the resort’s promise faded. However, the area’s appeal as a housing location continued. In 1921, the Palisades Del Rey development on the bluffs above the beach became a desirable location for homeowners. The Minneapolis real estate firm of Dickinson & Gillespie built houses there, and also developed the Surfridge tract just south of of Playa del Rey.

Celebrities such as film director Cecil B. DeMille and actor Charles Bickford were among the area’s homeowners.*

Historical Notes

In 1921 the Minneapolis-based firm of Dickinson & Gillespie billed this stretch of coastline as "The Last of the Beaches". Situated between Venice and Hermosa beaches, it is now part of Playa del Rey.^

A southern portion of Playa del Rey became known as "Surfridge". Today, this area is bounded on the East by Los Angeles International Airport, on the north by Waterview and Napoleon streets, on the South by Imperial Highway, and on the West by Vista del Mar. The beach to the west of the area is Dockweiler State Beach.*^

Historical Notes

Surfridge was developed in the 1920s and 1930s as "an isolated playground for the wealthy." In 1925 the developer held a contest to name the neighborhood and awarded the $1,000 prize to an Angeleno who submitted the winning name. The Los Angeles Times wrote that Surfridge was chosen "due to its brevity, euphony, ease of pronunciation ... but above all because it tells the story of this new wonder city."*^

Historical Notes

Salesmen pitched tents on the sand dunes and sold lots for $50 down and 36 monthly payments of $20. House exteriors could only be stucco, brick or stone; frame structures were prohibited. Development was slowed by the onset of the Great Depression, but in the early 1930s the wealthy began to buy lots to build large homes.*^

Palisades del Rey later becaome known as Playa del Rey.

Historical Notes

The Dickinson & Gillespie Co. real estate building was originally the Hotel Playa, built in 1902.  It was on Speedway Boulevard, (today called Culver Boulevard), at more or less the location of the modern Tanner’s Coffee Co. ##*^

Historical Notes

A small airfield opened to the east of Surfridge in 1928. It became a popular location for residents to see air shows.

The growing number of commercial flights into Los Angeles following World War II meant a higher number of planes flying low over Surfridge. Many residents learned to co-exist with the noise from propeller planes, but jet engines were impossible to ignore.*^

Historical Notes

Ever since the beginning of the jet-age the area started to vanish due to the expansion of LAX by eminent domain. People who lived there were complaining about the jet noise and the jet engine soot that was landing on their properties.*^

Historical Notes

In the 1960s and 1970s, the Sufridge area was condemned and acquired by the City of Los Angeles in a series of eminent domain purchases to facilitate airport expansion and to address concerns about noise from jet airplanes. Homeowners were forced to sell their property to the City. Several homeowners sued the City and remained in their houses for several years after the majority of houses were vacated. Eventually all the houses were either moved or demolished.*^

Historical Notes

Today one can see only barbed-wire fences protecting vacant land and old streets where houses once sat. Recent LAX rejuvenation plans call for the city to finally remove the old streets that still line the empty neighborhood. The condemned areas of the community are now a protected habitat of the endangered El Segundo blue butterfly.*^

Historical Notes

Dockweiler State Beach has 3.75 miles of shoreline. The 91-acre property was established in 1948. Originally part of Venice-Hyperion Beach State Park, it was renamed in honor of prominent early Angeleno Isidore B. Dockweiler in 1955.  Although a unit of the California state park system, it is managed by the Los Angeles County Department of Beaches and Harbors. Part of the park is located directly under the flight path of the adjacent Los Angeles International Airport (LAX).

Historical Notes

The Dockweiler State Beach bicycle path is maintained by the Los Angeles Department of Transportation. It runs from Ballona Creek to the El Segundo city limit. This bicycle path connects to the Ballona Creek bicycle path at its northernmost point and is part of the 22-mile coastal Marvin Braude Bike Trail system.*

Historical Notes

Jetliners leave Los Angeles International Airport, passing a few hundred feet above the beach.

Historical Notes

Chrysler was the first of the major American car companies to use black models in their advertising, starting with a 1957 ad campaign for the Plymouth convertible that appeared in Ebony Magazine. GM and Ford had also been advertising in Ebony at that time, but with the same ads they'd been using in every other magazine, usually featuring photos of white families. The simple shift in representation led to such a big increase in Chrysler-Plymouth sales that Studebaker started producing inclusive ads in 1959, with Ford and General Motors making similar changes in the early 1960s.  Source: California State University, Northridge

Historical Notes

Prior to its development as a small craft harbor, the land occupied by Marina del Rey was a salt-marsh fed by fresh water from Ballona Creek, frequented by duck hunters and few others. Burton W. Chace, a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, referred to the area as mud flats, though today the area would more properly be referred to as wetlands.*^

Historical Notes

Ever since the legendary oil tycoon Edward L. Doheny and his partner, Charles A. Canfield, struck oil northwest of downtown Los Angeles in 1892, extracting petroleum from the land beneath Southern California has been a major part of the Southern California economy and its landscape. That included the beach areas as well.**#

Historical Notes

At the time of Spanish settlement, the Los Angeles River turned to the west just south of present-day Bunker Hill, joining Ballona Creek just to the west of its current channel. However, during a major flood in 1825, the Los Angeles River's course changed to its present channel, and Ballona Creek became a completely distinct waterway.

Much of the above-ground section of the creek was lined with concrete as part of the flood-control project undertaken by the United States Army Corps of Engineers following the Los Angeles Flood of 1938.^

Historical Notes

The concrete walls of Ballona Creek were part of a flood-control project following the Los Angeles Flood of February 1938.

Historical Notes

In 1953, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors authorized a $2 million loan to fund construction of the marina. Since the loan only covered about half the cost, the U.S. Congress passed and President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed Public Law 780 making construction possible. Ground breaking began shortly after.*^

Historical Notes

With construction almost complete, the marina was put in danger in 1962–1963 due to a winter storm. The storm caused millions of dollars in damage to both the marina and the few small boats anchored there. A plan was put into effect to build a breakwater at the mouth of the marina, and the L.A. County Board of Supervisors appropriated $2.1 million to build it.*^

Historical Notes

On April 10, 1965 Marina del Rey was formally dedicated. The total cost of the marina was $36.25 million for land, construction, and initial operation.*^

Historical Notes

Until 1925, raw sewage from the city of Los Angeles was discharged untreated directly into Santa Monica Bay in the region of today's Hyperion Treatment Plant.

With the population increase, the amount of sewage became a major problem to the beaches, so in 1925 the city of Los Angeles built a simple screening plant (seen above) in the 200 acres the city had acquired in 1892.*^

Historical Notes

HThe North Outfall conveyed sewage to the early (primary) Hyperion Treatment Plant and ocean outfall.

Historical Notes

Despite a $7 million grant from the federal government, only an experimental plant to handle a small amount of sewage was started and apparently was never actually placed in operation.

Historical Notes

Even with the screening plant, the quality of the water in the Santa Monica Bay was unacceptable, and in 1950 the city of Los Angeles opened the Hyperion Treatment Plant with full secondary treatment processes. In addition, the new plant included capture of biogas from anaerobic digesters to produce heat dried fertilizer.

In order to keep up with the increase of influent wastewater produced by the ever growing city of Los Angeles, by 1957 the plant engineers had cut back treatment levels and increased the discharge of a blend of primary and secondary effluent through a five-mile pipe into the ocean. They also opted to halt the production of fertilizers and started discharging digested sludge into the Santa Monica Bay through a seven-mile pipe.

Marine life in Santa Monica Bay suffered from the continuous discharge of 25 million pounds of wastewater solids (sludge) per month. Samples of the ocean floor where sludge had been discharged for 30 years demonstrated that the only living creatures were worms and a hardy species of clam. Additionally, coastal monitoring revealed that bay waters often did not meet quality standards as the result of Hyperion's effluent. These issues resulted in the City entering into a consent decree with the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the State of California to build major facility upgrades at Hyperion. In 1980, Los Angeles launched a massive sludge-out to full secondary program to capture all biosolids and keep them from entering the Bay. The sludge-out portion of the program was completed in 1987.*^

Historical Notes

Hermosa Beach was originally part of the 1884 Rancho San Pedro Spanish land grant that later became the ten-mile Ocean frontage of Rancho Sausal Redondo. In 1900 a tract of 1,500 acres was purchased for $35 per acre from A. E. Pomroy, then owner of the greater part of Rancho Sausal Redondo. Messrs. Burbank and Baker, agents, bought this land for Sherman and Clark who organized and retained the controlling interest in the Hermosa Beach Land and Water Company.

The first city election for city officers was held December 24, 1906. On January 14, 1907, Hermosa Beach became the nineteenth incorporated city of Los Angeles County.*^

The name Hermosa comes from Spanish and means "beautiful."

Historical Notes

The first Hermosa Beach Pier was built in 1904, two years before the city officially incorporated. Constructed out of wood, the 500-foot-long pier broke up and much of it floated out to sea during a violent storm in 1913. The strength of such winter storms along the west-facing South Bay beaches was the undoing of many such structures over the years, including various incarnations of the Redondo Beach pier, and had much to do with San Pedro’s victory in winning the battle to become Los Angeles’ official port in 1907.

Historical Notes

Hermosa Beach’s second pier was built in 1914.  Constructed of concrete, the pier was 1,000 feet long and paved with asphalt its entire length.  Small tiled pavilions were erected at intervals along the sides to afford shade for fishing and picnic parties. A bait stand was built eventually out on the end.*^

Historical Notes

Soon after the concrete pier was built in 1914, an auditorium building was constructed; it has housed various enterprises and at present the public rest rooms, the Los Angeles Life Guard Service, and the local branch of the Los Angeles County Public Library occupy rooms in the building. This pier is municipally owned.

Historical Notes

The Los Angeles Pacific Railway, a "trolley" system, was the first railway in Hermosa Beach, running the entire length of Hermosa Avenue on its way from L.A. to Redondo Beach. A few years later it was merged with most all other "trolley" companies in the region to form the new Pacific Electric Railway Company, informally called the Red Cars.*^

Historical Notes

The Los Angeles Pacific Railway, a "trolley" system, was the first railway in Hermosa Beach, running the entire length of Hermosa Avenue on its way from L.A. to Redondo Beach. A few years later it was merged with most all other "trolley" companies in the region to form the new Pacific Electric Railway Company, informally called the Red Cars. The Santa Fe Railway was next through Hermosa Beach. It was seven blocks from the beach. The street that led to the tracks was called Santa Fe Avenue, but was later renamed Pier Avenue. There was no Santa Fe railway station for Hermosa, but Burbank and Baker built a railway platform on the west side of the tracks near Santa Fe Avenue, and later the Railroad Company donated an old boxcar to be used as a storage place for freight. In 1926, the Santa Fe Company built a modern stucco depot and installed Western Union telegraph service in it.*^

Historical Notes

One of the most ambitious projects attempted in the city came in the mid-1920's with the opening of the above building, which later became the Hermosa Biltmore Hotel. The Hotel was located between 14th and 15th Streets on the Strand. In those days it was the headquarters for the Surf and Sand Club, and was run on a private club basis. A number of wealthy persons backed the project and for several years the building, a notable achievement in those days, was the showplace and social center of Hermosa. The private club idea proved to be a losing proposition, however, and a few years later the founders and owners sold out to the Los Angeles Athletic Club. This group, with better financing, attempted to run the property on more or less the same basis but finally sold out to hotel interests about 1930.

During World War II, for a short time the building was taken over by the federal government and used as a youth training center. This property was torn down in the late 1960's for development, and is now the site of a public park.*#^

Historical Notes

This Pacific Light and Power Company power plant was built in 1902 to provide electricity for the Pacific Electric Red Car system in Los Angeles and the surrounding Redondo Beach area. In 1917, Southern California Edison Co. (SCE) purchased Pacific Light and Power Company.

In 1946, SCE constructed another power plant at the same site. Today a modified version of this new plant is owned and operated by AES.^

Click HERE to see more in Early Power Generation.

Historical Notes

The transformation of Redondo Beach into a resort and port city began in the late 19th century. In 1889, the Redondo Beach Improvement Company purchased 433 acres of land from the Dominguez family. This land purchase laid the groundwork for the development of the city.

In 1890, the Hotel Redondo opened, marking the beginning of Redondo Beach as a tourist destination. The hotel featured luxurious accommodations, an 18-hole golf course, and tennis courts. The city's location and the presence of a deep offshore canyon made it an ideal site for a port, which further boosted its economy.

Historical Notes

The hotel played a crucial role in establishing Redondo Beach as a premier tourist destination. It was part of a broader effort by developers to promote the area, which included building rail connections and developing the port facilities. The hotel attracted thousands of visitors, contributing significantly to the local economy.

Despite its initial success, the hotel's fortunes declined as San Pedro Harbor developed and became the primary port for Los Angeles. The hotel closed in 1925, partly due to the economic impacts of Prohibition, and was sold for scrap lumber.

Historical Notes

In the early development phase from 1889 to the 1920s, three successive piers played crucial roles in facilitating industry and tourism. Wharf No. 1, constructed in 1889, served as a key point for transferring timber from ships to trains but was eventually destroyed by a storm. In 1895, Wharf No. 2 was built south of the original pier, featuring a Y-shaped design with railroad tracks on one prong. This pier supported fishing and tourism but was severely damaged by a storm in 1919 and later demolished for safety. Wharf No. 3, constructed in 1903 further south, continued to support the lumber industry until 1923. Following the expiration of Pacific Electric’s lease and the decline of the lumber industry, Wharf No. 3 was also demolished.

Historical Notes

In the 1910s, Redondo Beach was a bustling hub of activity, known for its vibrant recreational and commercial scene, making it a prominent destination in Southern California. The area’s economy was heavily supported by its multiple wharves, particularly Wharf No. 3, which was constructed in 1903. This pier played a crucial role in the lumber industry and remained operational until 1926, underscoring the importance of the waterfront to the region's economic development.

Historical Notes

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Redondo Beach had significant potential to become a major port, with efforts including the construction of multiple wharves to compete with the San Pedro harbor for freight activity. The presence of the Santa Fe railroad, which provided rail service to the piers, bolstered this ambition. However, several factors hindered Redondo Beach's development into a major port. Natural challenges, such as severe storms, frequently damaged the piers, undermining their reliability for commercial use. Additionally, economic shifts, including the decline of the lumber industry and changes in freight delivery patterns, diminished the commercial viability of the piers. Over time, the focus shifted from commercial to recreational uses, with the development of pleasure piers drawing tourists rather than freight.

Historical Notes

The Pacific Light and Power Corporation (PLPC), established by Henry Huntington in 1906, built a concrete-and-metal steam plant in Redondo Beach, strategically located for its access to clean water and local oil for fuel. This plant was crucial in powering Huntington's electric railway cars and by 1911, had doubled in size, becoming the fourth largest in the United States. However, by 1913, its output was replaced by other plants, and it was relegated to backup status. After Southern California Edison (SCE) acquired PLPC in 1917, the plant fell into disuse and was abandoned during the Great Depression. In response to post-World War II growth, SCE constructed a new generating facility on the site in 1948, which operated until 1987. In 1997, AES Southland Energy acquired the plant, modernizing it to meet contemporary energy needs. However, the facility has faced opposition from residents concerned about pollution, leading to plans to downsize and repurpose the land for non-industrial uses. Throughout its history, the Redondo Beach Steam Plant has evolved from a vital power provider to a facility grappling with environmental and community challenges.

Historical Notes

Pacific Avenue in Redondo Beach played a central role in the early development of the city, serving as a bustling commercial thoroughfare during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Redondo Beach, founded in 1887, quickly grew into a popular seaside resort destination. Pacific Avenue was a key part of the waterfront area, featuring a mix of businesses, hotels, saloons, and recreational facilities catering to visitors and residents alike.

In the early 1900s, the street was lined with attractions like The Columbia Hotel, bowling alleys, saloons, and dining establishments. The Redondo Beach streetcar line ran along Pacific Avenue, making it easily accessible for tourists coming from Los Angeles and surrounding areas. The street was also home to the Redondo Beach Pavilion and the Santa Fe Railway Depot, both important for the city’s connection to regional transportation and its development as a tourist hub.

Historical Notes

In the early 1900s, Pacific Drive in Redondo Beach played a crucial role in the city's development as a transportation and commercial hub. The street was a key artery, featuring a streetcar line that was part of the extensive Pacific Electric Railway system, known as the "Red Cars," connecting various parts of Los Angeles County. By 1915, these streetcars brought both residents and visitors to the beach, making Pacific Drive an important gateway to the area. Alongside its transportation significance, Pacific Drive also saw commercial growth, exemplified by the presence of the Garland Hotel, a prominent landmark in 1915. The hotel's location on Pacific Drive underscored the street's appeal for tourists, due to its proximity to both the beach and efficient transportation links.

The building on the N.E corner of Pacific and Emerald, on the left, was called the "English Block," built in 1893 and torn down for condos in the early 1970s.

Historical Notes

By the 1910s and 1920s, Redondo Beach experienced continued growth, but with the development of nearby cities like Manhattan Beach and Hermosa Beach, its role as the dominant coastal resort began to shift. During this time, the original charm of Pacific Avenue persisted as an important local artery, with many businesses remaining in operation.

Historical Notes

Between 1916 and 1928, Redondo Beach saw a shift from industrial wharves to pleasure piers, beginning with the Endless/Pleasure Pier, a V-shaped reinforced concrete structure built by George W. Harding for fishing and strolling. Despite its initial popularity, it was condemned for safety reasons in 1928. Captain Hans C. Monstad constructed the Monstad Pier in 1925, originally 300 feet long, which served as a hub for fishing and pleasure boat landings and remains in use today. The Horseshoe Pier, built in 1929 after the Endless/Pleasure Pier was demolished, became a central community feature until it was destroyed by fire in 1988. Following the fire, the pier's southern remnant remained open until a new concrete pier was constructed and opened in 1995, though only a new restaurant was added among the planned attractions.

Historical Notes

The pier started out as a disjointed group of wharves near the end of the 19th century, but evolved into an interconnected structure after a series of storms and demolitions throughout the 20th century.

Historical Notes

The Hollywood Riviera Beach Club (1931-1958), designed by Mark Daniels, was located at what is now Miramar Park in Torrance Beach. It was designed as a private club for the original Riviera home owners. The beach club was destroyed by fire and the site was recognized as a Historic Landmark with a plaque by the Torrance Historical Society in conjunction with the Redondo Beach Historical Society.

Historical Notes

Ground had been broken for the private Hollywood Riviera Beach Club on March 4, 1930. Clifford Reid, the developer who envisioned the Hollywood Riviera section of Torrance as a potential playground for the Hollywood elite when he began selling lots there for about $3500 each in 1928, saw the club as a central attraction whose glamorous image would lure homebuyers in to buy lots.

It opened on June 27, 1931. Residents of the Hollywood Riviera development automatically became members of the club, though dues were required to use the pool and to attend special events held there.

Reid’s plan to attract movie stars foundered on two shoals: the advent of the Depression, and the development’s anti-Semitic policies, which prohibited Hollywood elites such as Louis B. Mayer and Sam Goldwyn from owning property there.

But the development’s spectacular location still attracted visits from the rich and famous, though only the late actress Rosemary DeCamp actually became a long-term resident there.*

Historical Notes

Not long after Pearl Harbor, the military installed anti-aircraft guns in the hills by Torrance beach. The pounding of the ensuing target practice structurally damaged the club, which closed in 1942.

It reopened after the war after Reid sold it, and its new owners made it a public club open to all. It had a successful run during the 1950s, though its image became decidedly less elegant and took on more of the atmosphere of a roadhouse than a swanky club.

Since the club straddled the city limit between Torrance and Redondo Beach, the story has been told that imbibers would have to cross from one side of the tavern to the other to stay in compliance with each city’s liquor laws.*

Historical Notes

On the night September 25, 1958 a spectacular fire consumed the seaside resort.  The club was a total loss.  For years afterward, plans were made to re-develop the site. Even before the fire, Torrance and Redondo were trying to formulate plans to buy the club and convert it into a teen recreation center, but they had been unable to sort out the site’s tangled ownership situation.

As early as 1964, the Sovereign Development Co. had proposed a plan to build a 16-story apartment complex on the site. That proposal was defeated in Aug. 1964, but similar attempts and proposals would be made throughout the rest of the 1960s, all of them opposed by Hollywood Riviera residents.

In 1972 a Superior Court ruled that the property had been “dedicated by implication” to the public, and the property’s then-owner, Oscar Berk, could not build upon the property that he had purchased for $600,000.  That ruling eventually led to the development of Miramar Park on the site. The small, beautiful park was dedicated by the City of Torrance on January 11, 1984.

Surfers still refer to the section of Torrance beach below where the Hollywood Riviera Beach Club once stood as “Burnout Beach.” *

Historical Notes

During the 1920s, the Los Angeles Port passed San Francisco as the west coast's busiest seaport. In the early 1930s a massive expansion of the port was taken with the construction of a massive breakwater three miles out that was over 2 miles in length. In addition to the construction of this outer breakwater an inner breakwater was built off of Terminal Island with docks for sea going ships and smaller docks built at Long Beach.*^

Historical Notes

The City of Long Beach was officially incorporated in 1897. The town grew as a seaside resort with light agricultural uses. Gradually the oil industry, Navy shipyard and facilities and port became the mainstays of the city. In the 1950s it was referred to as "Iowa by the sea", due to a large influx of people from that and other Midwestern states. Huge picnics for migrants from each state were a popular annual event in Long Beach until the 1960s.*

Historical Notes

The tall building topped by a cupola on the beach side of Ocean Boulevard is the Breakers Hotel. In front of and between the auditorium and the Breakers is the Capitol Theatre. The sign for the West Coast Theatre at 333 East Ocean Boulevard is visible on the facade of the large building, right. A sign for the theater is also on the water tower at the back. Several cars are parked at the front of the theater. The Robinson Hotel Apartments with its circular driveway is opposite the West Coast Theatre.^

Historical Notes

Designed by Edwardes Sproat, the Victory Fountain stood 45-ft. high and was equipped with electric lights that flashed in time to the water’s spray. At the top was a mirrored ball that reflected the lights at night.

Historical Notes

Designed by Edwardes Sproat and built by cement contractor S. W. Black, the fountain was dedicated to the American Legion in memory of those who fought in World War I. Financed by homeowners from West Long Beach, the 45 foot high memorial includes flasher lights of many colors and various sprays and cascades for water. A basement directly beneath the fountain included a 600 gallon storage tank and pumps.

Historical Notes

The Pike was the most famous beachside amusement zone on the West Coast from 1902 until 1969; it offered bathers food, games and rides, such at the Sky Wheel dual Ferris wheel and Cyclone Racer roller coaster.

Historical Notes

The Pike was most noted for the Cyclone Racer, a large wooden dual-track roller coaster, built out on pilings over the water. It was the largest and fastest coaster in the U.S. at the time.  They called it 'racer' because there were two trains on two separate tracks that raced one another from start to finish.^

Historical Notes

The U. S. Post Office is seen on the left. The Ducommun Building is on the northeast corner of Main and Commercial Streets. In the extreme upper right is the first of many buildings erected by Isaias W. Hellman, on the northwest corner of Los Angeles and Commercial Streets. On the southeast corner of Main and Commercial, being renovated, is the Hellman Building.^

Historical Notes

The Farmers and Merchants Bank was the oldest bank in Southern California from 1871 until 1956 when it was merged into the Security First National Bank of Los Angeles. Later, the Security First National Bank of Los Angeles became the Security Pacific National Bank and is now Bank of America.

Historical Notes

Early Los Angeles streetcars, including the Los Angeles Railway "Yellow Cars" and Pacific Electric "Red Cars," featured distinctive interior layouts that prioritized efficiency and passenger capacity. The Yellow Cars, which operated from 1895 to 1963, typically had forward-facing double seats arranged in rows on both sides of a central aisle, with hand grips on seat backs for standing passengers. The Red Cars, running from 1901 to 1961, offered a mix of forward-facing and side-facing bench seats, also with double seats along the center aisle in many models. Both systems shared common elements such as large windows for natural light, wooden or rattan-covered seats, overhead hand grips, and advertising displays above the windows. As streetcar technology evolved, newer models incorporated improved lighting, ventilation, and seating arrangements to enhance passenger comfort. These early streetcar interiors were designed to accommodate the growing transportation needs of Los Angeles during the first half of the 20th century, balancing practicality with the comfort of riders.

Historical Notes

The Los Angeles Railway (also Yellow Cars, LARy, latterly Los Angeles Transit Lines) was a system of streetcars that operated in central Los Angeles and the immediate surrounding neighborhoods between 1901 and 1963. The company carried many more passengers than the Pacific Electric Railway's 'Red Cars' which served a larger area of Los Angeles.

Historical Notes

Long before the Grove, Third Street, or Universal CityWalk, Angelenos flocked to another open-air shopping promenade: Mercantile Place. This tiny, private street, which stretched between Spring and Broadway from 1904 to 1923, measured just 22 feet wide and was flanked by identical, two-story brick buildings, creating an intimate contrast to bustling downtown Los Angeles.

Though it resembled a public street with its concrete sidewalks and paved road, Mercantile Place cut through privately owned land leased by developer C. Wesley Roberts in 1904. Roberts ingeniously solved the problem of how to make the central parcel useful—by cutting a street through it, he more than doubled the available storefront frontage from 240 to nearly 600 feet.

Historical Notes

Mercantile Place was planned to be "something entirely new in Los Angeles development"—a private shopping street under the aegis of C. Westley Roberts, who secured a ten-year lease from the Los Angeles School Board and bought the material of the old brick school building, which was to be demolished.

Historical Notes

This walkway between two sets of buildings was razed in 1923, and the Mercantile Arcade Building was built in its place. The Arcade Building has entrances from Spring Street and from Broadway, and retains the feel of a passageway.

Historical Notes

The area around Broadway and 6th Street was a bustling commercial district in the 1910s, with many retail stores, theaters, and other businesses.

Historical Notes

H. Jevne & Company, founded by Hans Jevne in 1882, was a prominent grocer in early Los Angeles. In 1906-1907, the company constructed its flagship store at the southwest corner of 6th Street and Broadway, a building that still stands today next to the Los Angeles Theatre. This store, occupying all six floors of the building, was widely regarded as one of the finest grocery stores in the country, with some even calling it "the finest retail grocery store in the world" due to its equipment and high-end clientele. The store offered a wide selection of groceries, including imported delicacies and products from Jevne's native Norway, as well as liquors and cigars. It represented the pinnacle of H. Jevne & Co.'s success after decades of growth in Los Angeles and was a prominent fixture in downtown Los Angeles during the early 20th century. The store opened at this location in 1907 and operated until 1920, when H. Jevne & Co. closed the retail store to focus on its wholesale business. Today, the H. Jevne & Co. Building remains an important part of Los Angeles' architectural heritage.

Historical Notes

Click HERE to see more Early Views of Hill and 5th Streets.

Historical Notes

Click HERE to see more Early Views of Hill and 4th Streets.

Historical Notes

The building on the right is the 'New' Hotel Broadway and on the left is the Broadway Christian Church. The 'New' Hotel Broadway survived many, many years, the 'New' becoming ever more ironic. The church is about to be replaced by the Owl Drug Company which would, in its turn, survive until the CRA bulldozers and the coming of the Hollywood Parkway. The 1888 County Courthouse would be doomed in the Long Beach earthquake of 1933.

Historical Notes

The LA County Courthouse was built in 1888-1891 at the old site of Los Angeles High School. The building was demolished in 1933.

The Hall of Records was built in 1906 and demolished in 1973.

Historical Notes

This tunnel was the second of twin bores through the northeastern section of Bunker Hill. The hill was also referred to as Court Hill. The tunnel connected Temple St. with 1st Street.

Historical Notes

The first of the two Hill Street Tunnels was bored through a part of Bunker Hill in 1909 by Los Angeles Pacific (a predecessor of Pacific Electric). It connects Hill Street from First to Temple. In 1913, the second tunnel (on the left) was bored for streetcar traffic.

Historical Notes

Click HERE to see more Early Views of the Court Flight.

Historical Notes

The Hill Street tunnels ran through a hill called Court Hill. Both Hill Street and Broadway had tunnels through Court Hill. In the photo above we're looking southwest towards First and Hill. First Street comes in behind the streetcar. At this point First Street is in a valley between Bunker Hill and Court Hill. The apartment houses in the center are on Bunker Hill. The hill at right is Court Hill.

Historical Notes

Within two months of the above photo, construction work to remove the tunnels and enlarge the Los Angeles Civic Center began.

Historical Notes

The Hill Street tunnels and the hill above them were completely removed by June 1955 to make way for the current Los Angeles Civic Center.

Historical Notes

Click HERE to see the Construction and Opening of the First Hill Street Tunnel

Historical Notes

Exposition Park was originally created in 1872 as an agricultural park, and 160 acres were set aside for the Southern District Agricultural Society. In 1913, it was renamed Exposition Park according to the “City Beautiful” movement with 4 anchor tenants: California Museum of Science and Industry (Exposition Building), National Armory, Domed National History Museum and the Sunken Garden (which in 1928 was later renamed the Rose Garden).

Historical Notes

Originally, this piece of land served as an agricultural fairground from 1871 to 1911. Farmers sold their harvests on the grounds, while horses, dogs, camels, and later automobiles, competed along the racetrack (seen). In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the city's most influential families moved into the neighborhood but did not appreciate the racing and gambling that came with it. As a result, this racetrack was transformed into the now-famous Exposition Park Rose Garden.

Historical Notes

In 1909, plans were nearly complete for the building of the Natural History Museum (only then it was the Museum of History, Science, and Art) and a state armory. Bids were solicited. The next year, the site changed its name from Agricultural to Exposition park.

Historical Notes

November 6, 1913, marked the beginning of a two-week, city-wide celebration that opened Exposition Park and its facilities (also the LA Aqueduct). Click HERE to see the Commemorative of the Official Opening of the LA Aqueduct and Exposition Park.

Historical Notes

The old Agricultural Park had a racetrack for cars that was moved during the construction so that the sunken rose garden with a central fountain could be planted between the two buildings--the museum and armory. Long range plans, even in 1909, called for a memorial statue at the fountain to celebrate the bringing of water to Los Angeles from the Owens River.

Historical Notes

On November 6, 1913, Exposition Park was formally dedicated, and became the home to a state Exposition Building and the county Museum of History, Science and Art. Senator John Works dedicated the fountain as a commemoration of the Owens River/Los Angeles Aqueduct whose grand opening coincided with the opening of Exposition Park. As the Senator left the platform, a jet of water shot up 30 feet.*

Click HERE to see the Opening Ceremonies of the LA Aqueduct.

Click HERE to see the Commemorative of the Official Opening of the LA Aqueduct and Exposition Park.

Historical Notes

The Coliseum was commissioned in 1921 as a memorial to veterans of World War 1 (rededicated to veterans of all wars in 1968). The official ground breaking ceremony took place on December 21, 1921 with work being completed in just over 16 months, on May 1, 1923. Designed by John and Donald Parkinson, the original bowl's initial construction costs were $954,873.

Historical Notes

When the Coliseum opened in 1923, it was the largest stadium in Los Angeles with a capacity of 75,144. In 1930, however, with the Olympics due in two years, the stadium was extended upward to seventy-nine rows with two tiers of tunnels, expanding the seating to 101,574. The now-signature torch was added. For a time it was known as Olympic Stadium. The Olympic cauldron torch which burned through both Games remains above the peristyle at the east end of the stadium as a reminder of this, as do the Olympic rings symbols over one of the main entrances.

Historical Notes

Click HERE to see more Early Views showing the Construction of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum

Historical Notes

In 1932, Los Angeles hosted the Olympic Games at the Coliseum. Click HERE to see more Early Views of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum during the Olympics.

Historical Notes

Cick HERE to see more in Early Views of U.S.C.

Historical Notes

The 2nd Street Tunnel was built to relieve congestion on the earlier 3rd Street Tunnel. Construction actually began in 1916 but was stalled for five years by litigation. Steam shovels didn't begin tearing into the hillside until April 11, 1921.

Historical Notes

For a time, it seemed the tunnel would never open; it became the laughingstock of the city. But by July 25, 1924, workers had finally bored 1,502 feet through Bunker Hill’s shale and sandstone.*

Historical Notes

Construction of the 2nd Street Tunnel began in 1916, and wasn't completed until 1924, with its formal opening on July 25 of that year. The distinctive white tiles, which give the tunnel its glow, came from Germany, which caused controversy at the time due to the legacy of World War I and protectionist feelings.^

Historical Notes

The last days of Bunker Hill: this view from the Second Street tunnel clearly shows the deterioration of the neighborhood’s boarding houses and residential hotels. The Hill would soon be scraped clean to make way for “redevelopment”.

Historical Notes

The above photo was published in the Aug. 22, 1921, Los Angeles Times with story claiming the tunnel would be finished in less than a year. The tunnel did not open for nearly three years.

Historical Notes

The tunnel's two entrances are very different in character – "the grittier east entrance and the glowing aperture of the west side, with flaring buttresses reminiscent of the shell of the Hollywood Bowl." The tunnel creates interesting light textures especially at night.  It’s been frequently used as a backdrop in movies and even more frequently in car advertisements.^

Historical Notes

The 2nd Street Tunnel in Los Angeles is probably the most recognizable city landmark most Americans have never heard of. The tunnel — a 1,500-foot-long bore lined with white tile, like a bathroom that never ends — has been used as an exterior in dozens of films and TV shows, most famously in the sci-fi masterpiece “Blade Runner.”

Historical Notes

Tropico was the name of the southern portion of Glendale, south of Windsor Road, between the late 1800s and 1918. The name "Glendale"  had originated in the 1880s and was utilized north of Windsor Road. Political factions had divided the town in two.   By the turn of the century, the commercial center of Tropico was at Central and San Fernando Road and its population was 700.^##^

Historical Notes

The Palace Grand Theatre was originally built and owned by Henry C. Jensen, who would later build the more palatial Raymond Theatre in Pasadena. The neo-classical building was designed by architect Robert G. Kitts. Construction on the Palace Grand began in August, 1914.^

Historical Notes

The Cahuenga Pass connects the Los Angeles Basin to the San Fernando Valley and is the lowest pass through the mountains. It was the site of two major battles, the Battle of Cahuenga Pass in 1831 (a fight between local settlers and the Mexican-appointed governor and his men, two deaths), and the Battle of Providencia or Second Battle of Cahuenga Pass in 1845 (between locals over whether to secede from Mexico. One horse and one mule killed) both on the San Fernando Valley side near present-day Studio City, and cannonballs are still occasionally found during excavations in the area.

Along the route of the historic El Camino Real, the historic significance of the pass is also marked by a marker along Cahuenga Blvd. which names the area as Paseo de Cahuenga.^

Historical Notes

The site of the Hollywood Bowl was chosen in 1919 by William Reed and his son H. Ellis Reed, members of the newly formed Theatre Arts Alliance who were dispatched to find a suitable location for outdoor performances.*^

Historical Notes

At first, the Bowl was very close to its natural state, with only makeshift wooden benches for the audience, and eventually a simple awning over the stage. Not until 1926 did the Hollywood Bowl get permanent seating when a group known as the Allied Architects was contracted to regrade the surrounding, provide permanent seating and to construct a shell.*^

Historical Notes

On July 11, 1922, with the audience seated on simple wooden benches placed on the natural hillsides of Bolton Canyon, conductor Alfred Hertz and the Los Angeles Philharmonic inaugurated the first season of music under the stars at the Hollywood Bowl. The Bowl was very close to its natural state, with only makeshift wooden benches for the audience, and eventually a simple awning over the stage.

The Hollywood Bowl has been the summer home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, since its official opening in 1922.*^

The price of admission was only 25 cents in 1922.

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