THE ONCE-THRIVING BLACK COMMUNITY OF EARLY 20th CENTURY SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA - Part 2 of a Series: Beginning of the 1900s©

 

Santa Monica, California, located approximately 20 miles from Downtown Los Angeles, has appealed to L.A.-area residents since it was first launched in mid-1870s as a prospective port city with a wharf and a railroad.

Its natural scenic and environmental assets, however, coupled with it having a long stretch of coastline sandy beaches at the edge of the Pacific Ocean, turned Santa Monica instead into a beach resort and an attractive place to live instead of an industrial port.  Most of Santa Monica was agricultural at the time, filled with fields of flower barley and beans.

Aerial view, Santa Monica
circa 1920
Photo source:  Wikipedia Commons

Incorporated in 1886 as a separate city within the geographical parameters of Los Angeles County, Santa Monica quickly became a popular place to take a "day trip by horse and buggy (and later by motorcar) to the beach" for Angelenos seeking to escape the summer heat in the more inland residential areas, such as Bunker Hill, Angeleno Heights, West Adams, Hollywood, Hancock Park and Beverly Hills.. 

Blacks began moving to Los Angeles and its surrounding towns, such as Santa Monica, from the southern USA states in the late 1880s because they hoped to get away from the overt racism they were experiencing in the American South, and to find better opportunities.

Growth was stimulated once electric trolleys began running in 1896, linking Santa Monica to the City of Los Angeles.  New residential areas sprang up, and the town of Ocean Park became part of Santa Monica.  

Piers, often with accompanying amusement parks, were a great attraction for coastal cities, and Santa Monica was no exception -- at one time having no fewer than five piers.  The current Pier, built in 1909 and in 1916, with its historic Carousel, is the last remaining amusement park on the West Coast. 

Santa Monica Pier and Amusement Park
circa 1900
Photo source:  L.A. Water and Power Archives

There was a period of time in the early 1900s prior to the end of World War I when Santa Monica's Black community thrived due in part to job opportunities in several new, emerging industries -- film and aircraft.  

For a few years prior to 1920, the film industry had a presence in Santa Monica, the most famous being the Vitagraph Film Company which was located next to a saloon.  Although filming on the beach had a certain appeal, by 1915 the Santa Monica-based film companies had decamped and moved to Hollywood where coastal fog did not regularly hamper production.  

It was during the 1920s that Santa Monica experienced significant  growth in industry and population.  Douglas Aircraft took up residence in one of the abandoned film studios, and was the location for the starting point of the first around the world flight in 1924 by Douglas World Cruisers. 

With the boom in industry and job opportunities during the 1920s, came expansion in residential development and commercial development.  Henshey's Department Store  and the Criterion Theatre opened, and the central business district extended eastward onto Fourth Street.  Most notably was the neighborhood within what was known as the Belmar Triangle, no longer extant and where the City's Civic Center, famous  Auditorium, and Historic Belmar Park currently are located.  A number of upscale beach clubs opened, albeit segregated, and film celebrities began building beach-front houses north of the Pier, some of which still stand today behind colourfully painted tall privacy walls with their garages opening close to the edge of Pacific Coast Highway (Highway 1) on the now uber-crowded, highly sought after multi-million-dollar sandy stretch of beach which has come to be known as "The Gold Coast".  

Unfortunately, Santa Monica did not turn out to be the refuge from racism and discrimination which its Black residents had hoped it would be, and eventually, many of their neighborhoods were totally erased in the name of "progress and redevelopment".

(Primary sources:  Santa Monica Conservancy)

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