Tom Moran and Tom Sewell Fantasy by the Sea Peace Press: Culver City, CA, 1980 (1979) (Originally published by Beyond Baroque Foundation with a grant from the Visual Arts Program of the National Endowment for the Arts), 1904
Building Venice
" . . .
"Southern California was not ready for such a far-reaching design. The financiers and investors knew of at least a dozen planned townsites premised on much more easily obtainable goals that had failed to materialize . . . They called it "Kinney's folly."
"Kinney's detractors had overlooked his pragmatism. His engineers had surveyed the land and suggested canals as an efficient method of reclaiming the muddy wasteland. Their canal proposal . . . suggested the Venetian theme to Kinney . . .
"The success of any real estate project in early Southern California depended on transportation. Much of the region was covered by a grid of interurban electric railroad lines, and Kinney convinced Henry Huntington of the Los Angeles Pacific Railroad to build a direct rail line to the property he called Venice . . .
"He submitted the necessary plat maps to subdivide the land and on June 21st, 1904, he signed a contract for work to begin on canal construction.
"Contracts for the construction of a pier over the ocean, a restaurant shaped like a sailing vessel, an electric lighting and power plant, a pavilion, hotels and other improvements soon followed.
"Teams of mules and draft horses, steam engines, pneumatic machinery and an electric dredge . . ."
The City
"When it was incorporated as a "sixth class city" on February 15th, 1904, Venice was named Ocean Park. It was overseen by a five-member Board of Trustees. The trustees, the city clerk, recorder, treasurer and school board members were all elected officials.
"But there was also a separate "Ocean Park" section in the neighboring city of Santa Monica to the north, and of course Kinney's popular resort within the municipal limits of the incorporated city of Ocean Park was called Venice. Because of the confusion, the name was officially changed to Venice by popular vote in 1911."