Les Storrs Santa Monica Portrait of a City Yesterday and Today, Santa Monica Bank: Santa Monica, CA, 1974, 67 pp., 1908
Pp. 44, 45 [Photo captions: "Santa Monica had an indoor swimming pool, then known as a "plunge," on the beach until perhaps 1908. The building was gone but the empty concrete pool remained until 1912"]
"By 1908 no less than four local financial institutions were in operation. They were the Bank of Santa Monica, the Ocean Park Bank, of which Thomas H. Dudley was president, and Percy J. Dudley, a member of his family, cashier; the Merchants National Bank of Santa Monica, James H. Grigsby, president, and E.J. Vawter, vice president; the Santa Monica Savings Bank, Thomas H. Dudley, president and Martha Relyea, cashier. Two rising young men in the field were Harry Hudson in the Bank of Santa Monica, and Frank J. Townsend in the Merchants National.
"The brief period in which the Long Wharf was the port of Los Angeles had ended, and Santa Monica was moving steadily toward its manifest destiny, that of a residential community. In fact, little by little, the wharf was first shortened, then removed. Aubrey E. Austin, Sr., whose career as a contractor preceded his banking endeavors, was the contractor entrusted with the final work of removing the deteriorated structure . . ."