In the Beginning…. Images of City's Past on Display

By Teresa Rochester

Once upon a time in a sleepy seaside town beachfront property went for $50 to $300 a lot, the schoolhouse boasted four rooms and the biggest public nuisance were drunkards, who were swiftly carted away in wheelbarrows to jail by policemen.

First trains, then trolleys and finally buses and automobiles brought hundreds and then thousands of visitors a year to the town -- which nearly went bust in its infancy -- to enjoy the oceanfront. There were piers, concerts, dance halls, beauty pageants and always the ocean to take in. From almost the beginning Santa Monica has been a tourist mecca.

While a lot of the early buildings, wool bathing suits and horse-drawn fire wagons are long gone their images live on in the lobby of City Hall. In celebration of the city's 125th birthday the Santa Monica Historical Society Museum unveiled earlier this month "City by the Sea: Life and Landmarks in Early Santa Monica," a city sponsored photography exhibit charting the seaside city's birth and formative years.

"There's a lot of history that people don't know about," said Louise Gabriel, president of the Historical Society. "We wanted to make Santa Monicans more aware of the community they live in. Each year we get more residents in Santa Monica and this helps them to learn more about the history."

The photographs, culled from the museum's collection of more than 200,000 images, make up a visual time line of Santa Monica's development, from its founders Colonel Robert S. Baker and Senator John P. Jones to the groundbreaking of Saint John's Hospital in the 1950s.

There's an image of the storefront office of the city's first newspaper, The Evening Outlook, which folded abruptly on Christmas Day 1878, when the city's fate hung in a financial balance, only to reopen a few years later.

There are smiling bathing beauties in wool bathing suits standing in the surf and contestants in a 1932 beauty pageant (an annual event Gabriel said was extremely popular).

There are images of a small but stern faced police force and members of the fire department sitting on their horse drawn wagon in 1910, three years before the department used its first fire truck.

"We thought it was best to start with the very early history of Santa Monica," said Gabriel.

Baker and Jones, who bought the land from the heirs of Don Francisco Sepulveda for $55,000, founded the city in July, 1875. In 1872 Jones had purchased three-fourths interest in the property from Baker.

On Sunday, July 23, Jones' grandson, John Farquhar, will serve as honorary chairman at the city's community birthday party and picnic at Clover Field Park, 2600 Ocean Park Boulevard, from noon to 3 p.m. Everyone is invited to bring their own picnic and beverages. Birthday cake and a keepsake will be provided.

The annual community picnic will feature a dance performance by Folklorico de Santa Monica College, games, face painting and visits from the fire department and its pal Sparky the dog. The police department will display its historical photographs and collection of police badges. Classic cars also will be displayed.