Betty Lou Young Our First Century: The Los Angeles Athletic Club 1880-1980, LAAC Press: Los Angeles, California 1979, 176 pp., 1880s
"Roller skating succeeded walking as a fad and was in turn eclipsed by the bicycle in the 1880s. The first velocipedes, unstable contraptions with a tall front wheel and a small one behind, were seen briefly in Los Angeles in 1869 . . .
"Baseball . . .
"Boxing . . .
" . . . By 1880 . . . in the fall, the circus came to town as it had each year since the 1840s . . . "Frank Gardner's famous double somersault over 3 elephants and 9 camels."
Page 15: Poster for W.W. Cole's Circus The Only Electric-Lighted Sun-Eclipsing Big Show That Ever Crossed the Great Divide "Cheer after cheer rent the air at each surprising feature." Nashville American. The Grandest and Best Circus Ever in California at Los Angeles Wedn'sday Sept. 15. Reproducing and Reflecting All Earth's Grandest Marvels! Under the resplendent glare of the Brush Dynamo Electric Light, used exclusively with W.W. Cole's Great Concorpation of Circus, Menagerie, Aquarium, and Congress of Living Wonders. "The best trained horse in the world"-Quincy Daily Herald The Only Show that Faithfully Keeps its Word. "A better show never existed."-Lincoln Daily Journal.
2. "The Best Young Men": The Arcadia Block
(Sept., 1880) Fifty-three original members formed "a purely American," as opposed to a Germanic, Los Angeles Athletic Club, renting Stearns Hall, on the second floor of the old Arcadia Block at the corner of Los Angeles and Arcadia Streets, built in 1858 by Don Abel Stearns and named in honor of his wife, Doña Arcadia Bandini . . . "In recent years the rooms had been used for dancing classes and as a skating rink, while the ground floor was occupied by the firm of "Harris Newmark and Co., Wholesale Grocers and Liquor Merchants." Across Los Angeles St. from the Calle de los Negros, the three-story Baker Block, immediately to the rear, contained shops, offices and the . . . apartments of Arcadia Bandini de Baker herself . . . By November the club had installed a trapeze, long horse, flying rings, parallel bars, dumbbells and Indian clubs, and turnverein trained teachers were teaching the beginners. Boxing was introduced.
" . . .
"[Ed] A. Preuss [a charter member of the Turnverein, and an accomplished athlete, served as the LAAC gymnastics instructor] was co-owner of the Preuss and Peroni Drug Store . . . which advertised . . . nostrums, "the Lion Malaria and Liver Pad, with body and foot plasters and three remedies in one, and only one dollar for all." The shop included a soda fountain . . .
" . . . In 1881 . . . Los Angeles celebrated its own centennial. . . . population 11,183 . . .
3. Blazing New Trails: The Downey Block [1882-1889]
The new quarters included a carpeted billiard room, as well as showers and dressing rooms and a reading room, along with new athletic equipment. . . .
" . . .
"Gradually the mania for cycling overshadowed public interest in track and field as well as other sports. This phenomenon had its beginning in 1882 when a group of young men who had formed the Century Club for cross-country horseback riding tried to decide to continue . . . In a flip of the coin, cycles won . . . the name of the club was changed to the Los Angeles Wheelmen . . .
" . . .
"In spite of the danger involved in riding the old-style velocipedes, cycling quickly became a recognized sport. Within the year, a season of races sponsored by the LAAC on a course between Los Angeles and Santa Monica proved . . . successful . . . the safety bicycle was invented with wheels of equal size in 1886 . . .
"Interest in amateur sports and physical fitness continued to grow as the boom reached its height (1887). Trainloads of tourists and new residents arrived daily on the competing Southern Pacific and Santa Fe lines, paying as little as a dollar for a ticket from the Midwest. Excursion parties of tired travelers who had been recruited en masse in their home towns were often met at stops along the way with offerings of flowers and fruit, band concerts, and the blandishments of land promoters.
"The new Angelenos were a remarkable lot: they were cultured, conservative, affluent, and most of them were health-seekers. Afflicted with a variety of real and imaginary ailments, droves of these self-proclaimed invalids had heard the promises of the railroad publicity agents and came to California seeking the benefits of the climate and miraculous cures. . . .
"The influence of the Club and the recently introduced science of "physical culture" balanced "the salves, tonics and nostrums." . . .
" . . . "