1900-1910 Carr 1935

Harry Carr Los Angeles City of Dreams (Illustrated by E.H. Suydam), D. Appleton-Century Co.: NY, 1935, 402 pp., 1935

     [ p. 153] "Very few of the old-timers have made money out of real estate in Los Angeles. It is the new-comers who always gather in the ore. When Hollywood was first opened, Paul de Longpre, the French flower-painter, put up a beautiful house in the middle of a hay-field. We all laughed . . . some thought it was a shame to bilk an innocent foreigner. The general opinion was that if one didn't get his money another would, so why interfere with the foreordinations of Providence. He started the Hollywood vogue and saw his investment multiply many times in value.

     " . . .

Chapter XV Underneath the Surface

    [p. 184] "Tennis was brought to California by English people at Santa Monica. A Britisher named Bob Carter was perennial champion and his sister May Carter mowed down all the women. When they retired Lewis R. Freeman, now a well-known author, took the cups-with Alfonso Bell, who owned a dairy ranch near Santa Fe Springs. The discovery of oil near his cow barns made him rich beyond the dreams of avarice. I well remember the day when a little girl named Violet Sutton stepped onto the tournament courts for the first time and swept off all the honors. The next year her younger sister, May Sutton, started and became the champion of the world.

     " . . .

Chapter XV Underneath the Surface

     "[p. 182] With the coming of the new century, automobiles came in . . .     

     "In no other part of the world did motor cars make a more sweeping change in the customs, the thought or the manner of life of the people. For one thing, they scattered the pueblo all over the map. People went to the outlying sections where they could have room and the bucolic atmosphere. They brought the desert, the mountains and the sea into the daily life of the pueblo. A great many people of moderate means have a city home, a beach cottage and a mountain or desert cabin. Most of all, the automobile brought to the pueblo the consciousness of its traditions. It was not until we were able to motor to the old missions that the architecture of Los Angeles "went Spanish"-or that we remembered the flavor and speech of the conquistadores.

     " . . .

[p. 233] Chapter XIX So This is Los Angeles

     " . . .

     [p. 238] [In 1935] "There isn't much left of Chinatown. You can still see the scarlet news bulletins on the side of the brick building where Sun Yat Sen, the George Washington of China, sat with Homer Lea-that strange military genius confined in a crippled body-and planned the revolution that was to end the Imperial sway of the Manchus in the Forbidden City of Pekin.

     " . . .

(Back to Sources)

 Kelyn Roberts 2017