Update on a Rainy Day
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
My plans to explore and
photograph the landscapes of Venice Beach and Ocean
Park have been put on hold for a few days, due to some
otherwise welcome wet weather. The rain delay gives me
a chance to process the nearly 300 photos I took ten
days ago on my exploration of the Santa Monica
beachfront, as well as to begin writing text that will
accompany all the images on my finished website
presentation. I've included some of that text below,
after the jump. But first, I have one more example of
repeat photography, this one from Santa Monica rather
than Playa del Rey.
This example starts with a postcard image (ca. 1930s) of the most famous property along Santa Monica's historic Gold Coast. Among the luminaries who built luxurious beach homes along the newly opened "Roosevelt Highway" (today's PCH) at the foot of the palisades, where Southern Pacific trains had previously run on their way to the Long Wharf, was mining heir and newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. Constructed in the 1920s for his longtime companion, the actress and producer Marion Davies, the 5-acre estate at 415 PCH centered around a mansion featuring well over 100 rooms, and it served as one of the premier social epicenters of pre-war Hollywood. Davies left the estate in 1942, and five years later it became the Oceanhouse Hotel and beach club. The hotel lasted only a dozen years, the mansion was torn down in 1956, and the State of California acquired ownership of the property in 1959, but the Sand & Sea beach club continued to operate by a concession agreement through the 1980s. Following the 1994 Northridge earthquake, the much-damaged facility sat largely abandoned until earlier this year, when it was re-opened as a new Community Beach House, jointly run by the City of Santa Monica and the California State Parks, and dramatically refurbished with a $27.5 million grant from the Annenberg Foundation.
Photo credit: Santa Monica Public Library Image Archives, #PST64
As my recent photo above shows, the new facility has a glass-dominated, boxy modern design, accented throughout by swaths of bright beach-ball colors and generally not reminiscent of its Georgian predecessor. The estate's history is far from hidden, but it does take some imagination for today's visitor to translate the line of tall white pillars into the columns of the old mansion. Other than the palisades backdrop, the refurbished north guest house (background, far left) is the main surviving element still visible, although just beyond the chest-high fence in today's photo is the old mansion's large marble swimming pool, which also has been preserved and renovated for public use. In the background of these two images one can see more evidence of landscape change over the last 70 years. The palisades, of course, remain, but high-rise condominiums have been added both up on top and along the steeply sloped north end. In addition, what appears to have been a dense stand of mature urban trees atop the palisades—most likely planted during Santa Monica's initial development in the 1870s and 1880s—have been mostly removed, replaced by a more iconic, but no more ecologically native, collection of tall palms.
As this pair of images illustrates, Santa Monica's beach and palisades have witnessed substantial change since Hollywood's Golden Age. But then as now, a complicated mix of public and private uses characterized these spaces. Given that there was no historic Georgian mansion to preserve, the Annenberg Foundation and their partners with the City and the State should be commended for adding a very welcome addition to the Southern California beachfront. It neither obliterates nor fossilizes the past, and it provides very open public access to at least a hint of a formerly exclusive private beach-club world.
Read more ...
This example starts with a postcard image (ca. 1930s) of the most famous property along Santa Monica's historic Gold Coast. Among the luminaries who built luxurious beach homes along the newly opened "Roosevelt Highway" (today's PCH) at the foot of the palisades, where Southern Pacific trains had previously run on their way to the Long Wharf, was mining heir and newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. Constructed in the 1920s for his longtime companion, the actress and producer Marion Davies, the 5-acre estate at 415 PCH centered around a mansion featuring well over 100 rooms, and it served as one of the premier social epicenters of pre-war Hollywood. Davies left the estate in 1942, and five years later it became the Oceanhouse Hotel and beach club. The hotel lasted only a dozen years, the mansion was torn down in 1956, and the State of California acquired ownership of the property in 1959, but the Sand & Sea beach club continued to operate by a concession agreement through the 1980s. Following the 1994 Northridge earthquake, the much-damaged facility sat largely abandoned until earlier this year, when it was re-opened as a new Community Beach House, jointly run by the City of Santa Monica and the California State Parks, and dramatically refurbished with a $27.5 million grant from the Annenberg Foundation.
Photo credit: Santa Monica Public Library Image Archives, #PST64
As my recent photo above shows, the new facility has a glass-dominated, boxy modern design, accented throughout by swaths of bright beach-ball colors and generally not reminiscent of its Georgian predecessor. The estate's history is far from hidden, but it does take some imagination for today's visitor to translate the line of tall white pillars into the columns of the old mansion. Other than the palisades backdrop, the refurbished north guest house (background, far left) is the main surviving element still visible, although just beyond the chest-high fence in today's photo is the old mansion's large marble swimming pool, which also has been preserved and renovated for public use. In the background of these two images one can see more evidence of landscape change over the last 70 years. The palisades, of course, remain, but high-rise condominiums have been added both up on top and along the steeply sloped north end. In addition, what appears to have been a dense stand of mature urban trees atop the palisades—most likely planted during Santa Monica's initial development in the 1870s and 1880s—have been mostly removed, replaced by a more iconic, but no more ecologically native, collection of tall palms.
As this pair of images illustrates, Santa Monica's beach and palisades have witnessed substantial change since Hollywood's Golden Age. But then as now, a complicated mix of public and private uses characterized these spaces. Given that there was no historic Georgian mansion to preserve, the Annenberg Foundation and their partners with the City and the State should be commended for adding a very welcome addition to the Southern California beachfront. It neither obliterates nor fossilizes the past, and it provides very open public access to at least a hint of a formerly exclusive private beach-club world.
Read more ...
The first month: a lesson in rephotography
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
The first month of my
sabbatical has been a period of adjustment. Trying to
find the right balance between completing bigger and
smaller tasks is never easy, and for me at least, it's
even more challenging without the imposed discipline of
a daily teaching schedule. Moreover, as I've allowed my
curiosities to roam relatively free, I've found "small"
projects tend to blossom into much larger ones. Such is
certainly the case with my ongoing first attempt to
produce an illustrated historical geographical transect
across a portion of metro L.A.: the Santa Monica Bay
shore. I chose this one first because it's a transect
I've already spent several years thinking about and
exploring. Moreover, this arc across the Southern
California landscape provides a quintessential example
of what Kevin Lynch called an "edge", as well as
providing--at least in segments--a series of "paths"
that run parallel to the ocean front. As arguably the
most prominent face of Los Angeles, the Santa Monica
Bayshore is also something of an elongated "district",
which Reyner Banham identified nearly four decades ago
as one of the four "ecologies" of the region: "Surfurbia." In
short, this is a transect that provides,
potentially, a variety of different lessons.
The idea of exploring L.A.'s landscapes via transects is not an original one. I was introduced to the idea by a professor of mine in graduate school, the geographer Thomas R. Vale. Tom and his wife Gerry--yes, they really are named Tom and Gerry--co-wrote a pair of books during the 1980s that explored the landscapes of the United States by following two national highways from one end of the country to the other. In Western Images, Western Landscapes: Travels Along U.S. 89 (Univ. of Arizona Press, 1989), the Vales traveled border to border, from Arizona/Sonora to Montana/Alberta, to reflect on the complicated interplay between the highly imagined, mythic, iconic American West and the actual, visible landscapes of today. In U.S. 40 Today: Thirty Years of Landscape Change in America (Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1983), they went one step further; not only did they cross the country on its longer east-west axis, coast to coast, but they did so in the footsteps of a similar journey made thirty years earlier by George Stewart. Both of the books are thoroughly illustrated by the Vales' own photography--a geographer's-eye view rather than an artist's--and the theme of landscape change in U.S. 40 Today is provocatively illustrated by their exercise in rephotography. That is, the Vales attempted to re-take dozens of photographs from Stewart's book, presenting their photos alongside the republished originals as a collection of before-and-after pairs.
Read more ...
The idea of exploring L.A.'s landscapes via transects is not an original one. I was introduced to the idea by a professor of mine in graduate school, the geographer Thomas R. Vale. Tom and his wife Gerry--yes, they really are named Tom and Gerry--co-wrote a pair of books during the 1980s that explored the landscapes of the United States by following two national highways from one end of the country to the other. In Western Images, Western Landscapes: Travels Along U.S. 89 (Univ. of Arizona Press, 1989), the Vales traveled border to border, from Arizona/Sonora to Montana/Alberta, to reflect on the complicated interplay between the highly imagined, mythic, iconic American West and the actual, visible landscapes of today. In U.S. 40 Today: Thirty Years of Landscape Change in America (Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1983), they went one step further; not only did they cross the country on its longer east-west axis, coast to coast, but they did so in the footsteps of a similar journey made thirty years earlier by George Stewart. Both of the books are thoroughly illustrated by the Vales' own photography--a geographer's-eye view rather than an artist's--and the theme of landscape change in U.S. 40 Today is provocatively illustrated by their exercise in rephotography. That is, the Vales attempted to re-take dozens of photographs from Stewart's book, presenting their photos alongside the republished originals as a collection of before-and-after pairs.
Read more ...
I'm on Sabbatical!
Wednesday, September 02, 2009
The beginning of my tenth
year at Santa Monica College is a special one. For the
first time in my career, I'm on sabbatical from my
usual teaching duties. At least at our college,
sabbatical does not mean vacation. Instead, it means
the freedom to pursue projects that the usual full-time
teaching schedule just doesn't allow. For me, this
means an opportunity to update and transform my
classes, particularly my introduction to Urban
Studies, Geography
8.
The core of my proposed sabbatical project consists of exploring the places and neighborhoods of the Santa Monica Bay region—and greater Los Angeles beyond. These explorations will become the foundation for an expandable on-line collection of virtual field trips and illustrated essays that delve into our local history, which is often concealed by our present-day landscapes, or else reveal significant themes about the urban experience in 21st-century Southern California. My earlier photo essay, "Walking in OC", provides a small taste of the sort of material I have in mind. Read more ...
The core of my proposed sabbatical project consists of exploring the places and neighborhoods of the Santa Monica Bay region—and greater Los Angeles beyond. These explorations will become the foundation for an expandable on-line collection of virtual field trips and illustrated essays that delve into our local history, which is often concealed by our present-day landscapes, or else reveal significant themes about the urban experience in 21st-century Southern California. My earlier photo essay, "Walking in OC", provides a small taste of the sort of material I have in mind. Read more ...