Carolyn Elayne Alexander Images of America: Venice, Arcadia: San Francisco, CA 2004 (1999), 128 pp., 1920
Dedicated to Kendrick Kinney, son of Innes (third son of Abbot and Margaret, who ran the U.S.C. Marine Biological Research Station,) and Helen Kinney and grandson of Abbot and Margaret Kinney, who worked at M.G.M. on such films as The Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind and was nominated for an Academy Award for Sound Editor for The Wreck of the Mary Deere.
Acknowledgments include Thornton Kinney, Abbot Kinney's eldest, was married to Mabel Cohen, co-founder of the Church of Religious Science along with Earnest Holmes, brother of the Reverend Fenwicke L. Holmes, of the Venice Union Church; Jack and Mary Kinney, and Michael Steen of the Woodlawn Cemetery.
Introduction:
Abbot Kinney [1850-1920], son of Franklin Kinney and Mary Cogswell, attended Columbia University, and then the University of Heidelberg, the Sorbonne, and various Swiss schools, all the while suffering from asthma. He formed the Kinney Brothers Tobacco Company in his mid-twenties with his brother, Francis, using his multi-linguistic skills as foreign buyer. On one such trip he docked in San Francisco (1880) and traveled south to Los Angeles and from there to East Pasadena and the Sierra Madre Villa Hotel, a hotel and sanitarium. Finding it salubrious, he built an estate (1881) nearby which he called Kinneloa, improving many new strains of fruit, especially the blood orange. He failed to win a seat in the State Legislature but did win the hand of Margaret Thornton [ -1911] daughter of State Supreme Court Justice William Dabney Thornton. Kinneloa didn't suit her in the summer months and they built Mayflower Cottage at Marguerita and Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica. Abbot sold his tobacco company shares to his brother enabling him to speculate in land and development, including Abbotsford Inn and the Boyle Heights Cable Railway. Kinney, a California men's tennis single's champion, wrote numerous books, founded libraries and chaired a Yosemite Committee. He accompanied Helen Hunt Jackson on her trip to Indian country, which resulted in the book Ramona. In Santa Monica he met Francis Ryan and they formed a land development partnership which purchased Rancho La Ballona. ". . . they built a walk/fishing pier in the Ocean Park section of Santa Monica, developed a commercial street, a family entertainment casino, and a bandstand." Ryan died in 1898. Matilda Ryan married T.H. Dudley six months later. In 1899 the Dudley's sold their share to four men, also with whom Kinney couldn't agree, so they split the Ocean Park property half of which was developed. Kinney chose the undeveloped half . . ."Although the area was called Venice, it was really part of the Ocean Park district of Santa Monica until 1911, when residents voted to break away from the mother town and become an independent city." Abbot Kinney remarried in 1914 to Winifred Harwell and they had two children, Helen (who married Jack Gerety, the son of Venice's mayor) and Clan, who was briefly married to an Al G. Barnes Circus elephant rider named Patricia Clancy.
[Page 14 Two photos. At the top, the walking and fishing pier built by Francis G. Ryan and Abbot Kinney; at the bottom, 1044-Ocean Park, picturing the Ocean Park Pier at Pier Avenue, c. 1903, with a bandshell and casino, with a cigar stand and soda water and ice cream window. On the bandstand is a sign for the Examiner newspaper.]
[Page 28 Photos identify the U.S. Life Saving Corps, led by Captain George Douglas Freeth, in 1908, who received a Congressional Medal of Honor for rescuing six people. Abbot Kinney professionalized this service. At the bottom, "Children's dancing lessons were held inside the [Venice] Pier Auditorium to a live orchestra]
[Page 32 ". . . Because of the early century prejudices against minorities, Caucasians were permitted to ride in any of the watercraft, while African Americans were restricted to boats painted black.]
[Page 33 No date: "Manfredi Chiaffarelli, center, led the Venice-of-America Band in the Pavilion. He and his family were brought from Italy specifically to fill this city post, but after his 14-year-old daughter, Wilhelmina, was tragically killed in 1914, he resigned and accepted another orchestra leader's position in Santa Monica."]
[p.41 "In 1917, Cesare LaMonica took up the baton for the Venice Band, whose members were Italian immigrants. La Monica was a well-known and loved musician in the Santa Monica Bay district, but when World War I was declared, he was arrested as a "slacker." He explained that he had not known about enlistment and immediately volunteered.]
[p. 59 "Children's beauty contests were embraced with an immense amount of enthusiasm by parents in Venice and the neighboring district of Ocean Park. Some kiddies dressed in costume, while others just wore their best Sunday dress."]
[p. 61 "Mr. and Mrs. James T. Peasgood Sr. . . . their home on Electric Avenue. He was the street superintendent of the City of Santa Monica and is shown here with his second wife, Ellen. The house still stands in the 1600 block of Electric Avenue in Venice." His daughter was Cathryn and her brother was James Jr., city treasurer of Venice who embezzled $18,000 before being sent to prison. He was released after a year and pardoned by the governor.]
[p. 64 Henry Winebrenner, Venice High School Art Department Head with sculpture which was toppled in 1929.]
[p. 67 Top photo: "Venice City Hall, left was constructed in 1906, and because residents were angry that it was so far away from town center, they said it was "far away as Tokio" and nicknamed it "Tokio City Hall." On the right is the 1920s police station with a prisoner drop-off point at the portico." The bottom photo: Six Santa Monica Bay piers are pictured here. They are, from the background moving to the foreground, as follows: Santa Monica, Bristol, Ocean Park/Lick, Venice, and Sunset (angled.)]
[p. 69 "Venice High School girls celebrated Mayday, c. 1924. Beatrice Owens, front row, right, later won the title of Miss Ocean Park and went on to a career in the final days of vaudeville on the Orpheum Circuit, on stage, and in the movies."]
[p. 78 "The Santa Monica Dairy, also called Edgemar Farms, was founded by a Swiss immigrant, Herman Michel, in 1880. The creamery progressed from horse-drawn milk carts to trucks and later to vans before the sons gave up the Rose Avenue establishment in the 1960s. Michel also served as the mayor of Santa Monica . . . ]
[p. 83 ff. Arthur Reese, the first African American to live and work in Venice, came to Venice from New Orleans in 1905, and built a house in the new section of town, Oakwood, along with his cousin Irving Tabor who became Abbot Kinney's chauffeur and inherited Kinney's house. Reese was named town decorator by Abbot Kinney, and produced the annual Mardi Gras.]
[P.97 The advent of the 1940s saw little change in Venice economy. Things were still sliding. Needed repairs to the colonnades and the streets were not made. The Kinney Company was not clearing enough profit to upgrade the pier, and a group of lawyers had stepped in to control what was left. The most viable business on the pier was the Ballroom with its exhausting dance marathons."]
[P. 101 "The Rex was another ship anchored off the Venice Pier. It was three miles out into the bay due to anti-gambling laws in Los Angeles County, but there was a difference of opinion as to where the shoreline was located in the bay. Here, authorities fight to board the Rex and close operations and are held off with fire hoses. After a three-day siege, the crew ran out of food and drinking water and surrendered."]
[P. 103 Top photo: "Psychics, fortune-tellers, and other clairvoyant concessionaires were always permitted on the pier, but his middle-aged woman, dressed to the nines, was the first handwriting analyst given a license. . . . Bottom: Film Shoot: "A Hollywood film crew shot a small replica train on the beach at Rose and Ocean Front Walk for an unknown movie. The tall white building in the background was the hotel from which Aimee Semple MacPherson, founder of the Foursquare Church, disappeared in the 1920s . . ."]
[P. 110 "If nothing else is to be said for the Beat era in Venice, it was the advent of the artistic and literary communities, which still exist today. Beyond Baroque Literary Foundation is based in the 1906 City Hall. Mural art is recorded by the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC) centered in the old police station. The mural shown was the first in Venice [near the corner of Pacific and Brooks by the Venice Fine Arts Squad.]
[P. 111 Top photo: Other more sophisticated murals have been painted since the first one, such as this beautiful Windward Avenue building by Art Mortimer in the 1970s. SPARC gives selective and interesting van-driven art tours. Bottom photo caption: "In Santa Monica, a group of physical culturists assembled an informal group in the 1930s, known as Muscle Beach. Weightlifters and acrobats performed on the beach until the city tired of crowds and prohibited performances in 1958 . . . ]
[P.112 Top photo: "Muscle men worked out on the beach, developing a craze that swept the nation. It was the beginning of the Jack LaLanne movement . . . Arnold Schwarzenegger and Hulk Hogan . . . ]
[PP. 116, 117, 118 Paddle tennis, basketball, gymnastics, handball, surfing, bicycling, rollerskating, skateboarding . . . ]
[P. 121 . . . murals on the building at the corner of Dudley and Ocean Front Walk . . . ]
[P. 126 . . . (Los Angeles) Councilwoman Ruth Galanter . . .]
[P. 128 Carolyn Elayne Alexander . . . author, photographer, producer, president of the Venice Historical Society, honored in 1994 by the California Conference of Historical Societies