by Paul R. Spitzzeri
As we continue with our deep dive into the pages of the “Annual Midwinter Number,” a lavish promotion of the region by the Los Angeles Times at the onset of 1930, the theme of deeming the Angel City to be “The Athens of the West” continued with a page titled “The New Olympia.” This was because civic leaders had long been planning for the summer Olympic Games of 1932, which included a statewide bond issue of $1 million to help pay for hosting (we can assume there’ll be no such largesse for the 2028 games held in Los Angeles!)
The publication pointed out that
In 1932 the eyes of the world will be focussed [sic] on Los Angeles, for here the athletes, artists and intellectual leaders of every nation in the world will be competing for supremacy in a more comprehensive program of athletic, art and educational features than has ever before been attempted.
While the art and education elements largely fell by the wayside as economic realities with the worsening of the Great Depression during waves of bank failures that year made a major course correction, it was added that the Coliseum, completed in 1923, was being expanded to seat 125,000 persons, while a pool was being added at the southwest corner of the venue area—this will be used again in 2028.
The account went on that “few cities in the world are better fitted to accommodate such a contest” because of the 130-acre Exposition Park, established in 1870 as Agricultural Park for horse races and early county fairs and where “is now located one of the world’s finest coliseums” which then had a capacity for 78,000. Also mentioned were a track and field, not to mention the nearby California National Guard Armory, the State Exhibition Building and the Los Angeles County Museum, an addition of which from 1927 cost around $1.2 million and, when plans were completed for more work, meant that the region “will have one of the finest museum buildings in the world.
In the realm of entertainment, specifically “Music and Drama,” highlighted were a range of performance venues, with one in particular given attention, though this section began with “wherever people have sunshine in their souls, they turn to music. It is the essence of poetry and prayer and power combined. Medicine to troubled minds, it exalts joy, sweetens grief, inspires devotion.” It was then noted that,
In the great Hollywood Bowl, lighted by stars and cooled by soft sea breezes, Southern California holds the summer festivals that are famous throughout the music world. Here the great directors [conductors], from near and far, wield their batons. And here one does not have to worry about the weather; between auditors and stars there are no umbrellas. The mountains made the Bowl, and all man had to do was set up a stage and place 25,000 stairs on the terraced slopes.
The association that raised the funds and oversaw the planning and construction of the venue would likely find it took a little more than that! The piece also mentioned that “with equal éclat, the Philharmonic Orchestra, with its one hundred musicians, holds winter festivals.” Regionally, “music is literally in the air” with orchestras in Glendale, Hollywood, Long Beach and the San Gabriel Valley and an outdoor venue in Eagle Rock. Across from the Bowl, the Pilgrimage Play was performed in what is now the John Anson Ford Theatre, so that it was concluded “it is a good place to live—Southern California, the land out of doors.”
With regard to plays, the next featured section concerned community playhouses and it was deemed “inspirational” that nearly two dozen were operating in greater Los Angeles. Among local talent, some “stepped into popularity,” though no examples were given, but highlighted among the venues was the Pasadena Playhouse, which still functions today, and the theater for which cost $400,000.
Gilmor Brown (1886-1960) was praised for his efforts to establish the Playhouse when only a handful such institutions existed in the country and it was observed that “he started with nothing but a father and mother, plus a lot of ability and enthusiasm,” though it was not mentioned that he did this through his Fairoaks Playbox, which produced three seasons of performances before the Playhouse was launched.
The other highlighted venue was the Mission Playhouse at San Gabriel, with the second venue completed in 1927 principally for the staging of John Steven McGroarty’s popular but paternalistic Mission Play, which “in the last nineteen years has been produced over three thousand times to delighted audiences.”
It was added that the $650,000 for construction were raised by subscription—this was from an association to which Walter P. Temple gave $15,000, the highest individual total aside from Henry E. Huntington, and his business manager, Milton Kauffman, was a director. A $40,000 organ was installed in 1928 and, the account concluded, “a $25,000 museum of Mission relics, in which Indians will ply their native trades, is to make the Playhouse a center for the romance of early California life and customs.”
Another edifice celebrated for its contributions to culture was the Los Angeles Central Library, completed in 1926, more than a half-century after the institution was founded with Thomas W. Temple, Walter’s oldest sibling, as one of the trustees. After all those years in buildings constructed for other purposes, the library finally had its own home on the site of the former state Normal School for teacher education and where, it was asserted, “books in an environment of beauty is the ideal” in the $2 million structure, the architect of which, Bertram Goodhue, spoke of it as a shared work with sculptors and painters.
The first was handled by Lee Lawrie, a German-born architectural sculptor, while the second included the work of Dean Cornwell (the feature called him “Cromwell,” the name of the University of Southern California track and field coach), who was then finishing his contributions in the stunning Rotunda (these were completed three years later), and Julian E. Garnsey, who did work in the children’s room and various ceilings—earlier in the Twenties he created murals for Walter Temple’s Alhambra movie theater.
The account concluded with the observation that “changing exhibits of art in the Library’s gallery and lecture room complete the environment of beauty in which the Los Angeles public enjoys its great collection of books and manuscripts.” Next year, the institution will celebrate its centennial in the current building as a unifying force of “beauty and books” and a center of culture and education in the Angel City.
The next feature concerned “Temples of Worship” with photos of the remarkable $1.5 million Jewish Temple B’nai B’rith on Wilshire Boulevard and the Immanuel Presbyterian Church, located nearby, and erected at a cost of a million dollars. The publication pronounced that,
The enduring character of the religious life of Los Angeles is revealed by her churches, which are lasting monuments to civic beauty. The building of great temples of worship never seems to end.
None was specifically discussed, but the account observed that, in 1928, close to two million dollars was spent on construction, while that number jumped 75% the following year. Of ten such edifices, the two depicted cost more than a million dollars each, while, since the onset of the Roaring Twenties, close to half the city’s 711 houses of worship were built to the tune of more than $13 million—it seems a bit incongruous that so much attention should be placed on the dollars spent as opposed to the souls saved, but the Times was always fixated on real estate and monetary value—its publisher, Harry Chandler, was said to be far more interested in this realm than journalism.
The two major Los Angeles museums were highlighted next, though the emphasis of the description of the Los Angeles County Museum, which was founded to feature art and history, as well, was its prehistoric animal fossils found in the well-known La Brea Tar Pits, where, decades later, the George C. Page Museum was built. Well north of 4,000 specimens were removed from the pits with it stated that this was “the richest deposit of pleistocene fossils in the world.”
Meanwhile, the Southwest Museum in Highland Park was founded more than fifteen years earlier “to preserve, in photograph, manuscript and human handiwork the story of the Southland before the white man came.” In addition to an illustration of petroglyphs near the future Boulder (Hoover) Dam along the Colorado River, the distinctive building, now owned by the Autry Museum of the American West, was depicted.
“Business in Art” is the title of the next section and focused on two private institutions of note, with the publication remarking,
The art activities of Los Angeles form a very busy and extensive part of the social life of the community, for here is the leisure and wealth to make art a business.
This curious comment was followed by the observation that there were up to twenty art galleries, which “make it a business to cater to the demands of art connoisseurs,” though it was added that a half-dozen institutes and schools and around that number of university and college art departments existed. About a dozen art organizations, most with clubhouses and galleries, also served to “mark the city as an art center.”
Illustrated was the California Art Club, located on the Olive Hill property in Hollywood of oil heir Aline Barnsdall (her name misspelled as “Barnsdale”) and housed in a remarkable house (the Hollyhock House) designed by renowned architect “Frank Lloyd,” who, of course, was Frank Lloyd Wright—one wonders how much the Times really knew or cared about art with major faux pas as these!—and, possibly in an attempt at modesty with the briefest of descriptions only noting that it was “the pioneer art institute in the community,” the Otis Art Institute, bestowed to the county by the paper’s late publisher (and Chandler’s father-in-law), Harrison Gray Otis.
Lastly, “Art in Business” featured a photograph of the Art Deco masterpiece, the Wilshire Boulevard branch of the Bullocks department store, completed in 1929 and now the home of Southwestern Law School. The publication commented that “where beauty is embedded in the consciousness of the people, even factories and marts of trade can be made beautiful,” with readers directed to part two of the Midwinter Number (which we will likely highlight in a future post).
Amplifying the above observation, it was continued that,
Not only is art an occupation of leisure, or of a specialized class in Southern California, but it is woven into the warp and woof of everyday life. Department stores are breaking away from the old box-like structures that make city streets dark caverns with monotonous walls, and are building, away from the congested [downtown] district, structures [like Bullocks Wilshire] . . . The interiors of our new shops are no longer cluttered depositories, but are taking on the appearance of art galleries or museums, intriguing the passer-by by the beauty of their interiors.
The remainder of the publication contains a great many advertisements for aircraft, oil, utility and other firms, as well as the imposing Central Manufacturing District in the downtown Los Angeles industrial core, the massive Los Angeles Union Stockyards and the Los Angeles Railway, the streetcar system facing increasing financial issues from declining ridership as the suburban development hinted at in the above description continued its inexorable movement.
The breathless boosterism, always a specialty and area of intense focus for the Times, embedded in the Midwinter Number of 1930 would, however, be tempered by the worsening Great Depression and the realities that the excesses of the Roaring Twenties had a true reckoning and enormous consequences. After World War II, however, the next big boom came and the language, while somewhat different, of the booster found greater expression.
Nearly a century after this publication, it is interesting and insightful to peruse the pages of the Midwinter Number and compare and contrast the attitude of the Times with our current perspectives and prospective future forecasting.