1920 Carr 1935

Harry Carr Los Angeles City of Dreams (Illustrated by E.H. Suydam), D. Appleton-Century Co.: NY, 1935, 402 pp., 1920

Chapter XXIII Los Angeles Is Somewhere Else

"p. 306 . . .

     "[p. 306] Manhattan Beach, Shakespeare Beach, Hermosa, El Segundo, Playa del Rey (where the movie stars in great excitement spoiled their summer homes by drilling oil-wells in the backyards), Venice.

     "Venice is a millionaire's dream that went sour. Abbott Kinney [1920] was a millionaire who grew rich from manufacturing Sweet Caporal Cigarettes. He came out here with Helen Hunt Jackson on a government commission to investigate the conditions of the California Indians. And stayed on. He planned Venice as a world cultural center-a Bayreuth- where great scientists would meet to exchange their discoveries; where grand opera stars would sing under master batons . . . where to win fame would signify world recognition. He dug a series of canals to make it a Venice and started the idea of going with a Venetian palace. For the town café he had ship architects construct an ancient galleon upoon which at sunset every night a trumpeter in medieval armor would climb to the poop deck to bugle the sun down behind the sea horizon and fire a sunset salute from a brass cannon. Alas for dreams! The canals have been filled up. The wharf where the opera stars were to walk at evening gaining inspiration, is a country fair ballyhoo walk . . . throw a ring over the cane and take home a clock . . . shooting galleries, roller coasters, mirror mazes, "crazy horses," knock-down-the-doll with a baseball . . . hot dog stands . . . There is a movie house which is the acid test for previewing doubtful pictures; if any comedy can keep this audience quiet, [p. 307] with the sound of jazz orchestras pounding in the dance hall next door in their ears, it is a sure winner."

     " . . .

Chapter XXVII "The Athens of America"

     "[p. 357] Some chance orator, soaring into the blue ether . . .

     " . . .

     "Probably the first man who thought of making Los Angeles a world center of science and culture was Abbott Kinney, the cigarette manufacturer who started Venice and saw it become a Coney Island."

Chapter XXVII The Athens of America

     "[p. 362] Everything about our pueblo is either very old or very new. The Huntington Libray is of the past; the California Institute of Technology is so new-so of the future that the calender has to pant to keep up.

     "It was started originally in the nineties as a manual-[p. 363] training school, by an amiable old gentleman named Amos Throop. In 1920, a group of rich pobladores decided to put Southern California on the map as the scientific center of the world. They raided the Univeristy of Chicago for Dr. Robert A. Millikan and he brought to the institution men of world-fame in science like Bateman, Michelson, Morgan and Noyes. They changed the name from Throop to California Institute of Technology.

     " . . .

     "In 1889 Harvard established a branch observatory on the top of a peak near Mt. Wilson, but the professors were nervous about the rattlesnakes and moved out to South America. In 1892 a rising young astronomer named George Ellery Hale, of the new-born University of Chicago, made observations from the top of Mr. Wilson and came down to say, "Previous observations of the sun at Pike's Peak, Mount Etna and Mount Hamilton in no wise prepared me for my experience on Mount Wilson."

     "[p. 366] . . .

     "Hubble has even calculated the total number of electrons in the universe . . .

     " . . . Dr. Millikan . . .

     " . . .

     "Dr. Millikan was inclined to shock the profundity of the scientific minds at first. He is gay, handsome, a good talker, likes sports and society . . . is a capital toast-master, orator and California booster. Basically he is an experimental rather than a theoretical physicist. He achieved world fame and the Nobel Prize on the "oil drop" experiment (the minutest details of which every freshman chemistry student now knows by rote) which proved conclusively the existence [p. 367] of the electron. Since coming to Cal Tech, his best personal work has been the investigation of the cosmic rays.

     "[p. 367] . . .

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 Kelyn Roberts 2017