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Venice

History of Venice

On July 4th 1905, fifty years before Disneyland, California’s first theme park, Venice of America opened to the public. Yacht racing, concerts, swim races, and fireworks highlighted the many events that impressed the 40,000 spectators. Although some attractions were still unfinished Venice of America was an instant success.
 
Electric trolley cars from Los Angeles and Santa Monica ran frequently. Visitors marveled at the network of canals, the Venetian style business center and the enticing pier with its immense auditorium and Ship Cafe. Tourists got around the resort by miniature steam railroad or gondolas. An orchestra serenaded guests at a 2500-seat amphitheater next to a swimming lagoon with room for five thousand. That filled in lagoon is now the front yard for the post office.
 
Venice’s founder, Abbot Kinney won the right to develop the area on a coin toss. In the then undeveloped marshlands he intended to recreate Venice, Italy on the shores of the Pacific.Venice of America was to be a showcase of the "City Beautiful Movement," modeled after Venice, Italy with enclosed walkways with colonnades. A network of canals was excavated followed by an amusement pier.
 
Roller-skating proved popular in Venice from the start. A skating rink was built that featured a resident roller hockey team. A huge dance hall with space for 800 couples was added to Kinney’s Pier, as was the Venice Aquarium, which became the official marine biology station for the University of Southern California.
 
New attractions kept the visitors coming. A scenic railroad ride next to the pier surrounded viewers with mountainous terrain as they rode through a tunnel. The pier was widened and Kinney added a carousel, Japanese Tea House and restaurant. Other new rides included a Ferris wheel. Attractions kept being added and updated throughout the pier’s forty-one year life.
 
Decline began in the 1920’s. The most obvious sign of deterioration was the erosion of the beach itself. The Kinney Pier breakwater had robbed South Venice Beach of its sand supply. 1920 was also the beginning of prohibition. Canadian whiskey was smuggled into Venice from high-powered motorboats that tied up beneath the pier in the wee hours running the contraband to Windward hotels through steam tunnels. In his hard-boiled novels, Raymond Chandler’s used “Bay City” as a pseudonym for a corrupt town that spanned the coast from Venice to Santa Monica.
 
In 1922 Venice’s city treasurer, James Peasegood absconded with $22,000 in city funds about a quarter of a million in today's dollars. Although he ultimately returned the loot, his action was a symptom of a city that had become ungovernable. It couldn’t even secure a water supply. In the fall of 1925 citizens had it and voted to join the City of Los Angeles.
  
The twenty-year-old canal network was expensive to maintain and did not always flush as intended. As auto traffic grew, more roads were needed. Los Angeles decided to fill in the canals over the objection of the locals. After a two-year court battle half the canals and the swimming lagoon were filled in during the summer of 1929. The beginning of the Depression saved Venice’s remaining canals.
 
The twenties saw the era of gaming ships. Although gambling was illegal in California, the state’s jurisdiction only extended to a three-mile offshore limit. Operators of floating gambling casinos simply anchored at three miles plus where they provided booze, food and games of chance with subsidized water taxi service from the Venice, Santa Monica and Ocean Park piers.
 
A month after the stock market crashed in 1929, oil was discovered in Venice. The financially stressed community was gripped by black gold fever. 148 wells sprouted on the Venice Peninsula. The last working rig in Venice shut down in the 1990’s.
 
World War II brought nighttime blackouts, putting an end to after dark recreation along the coast. After the war, the city of LA closed the Venice Pier. In the fifties a new group of residents moved into Venice attracted by cheap rents and local tolerance of their unconventional lifestyles. Writers like Jack Kerouac and Charles Bukowski called Venice home. The beat generation hung out at the Gas House and Venice West Café where they held poetry readings and listened to jazz or folk. LA’s heavy hand welcomed the new arrivals with vice raids, drug arrests and fire department citations for overcrowded bars and coffee houses.
 
By the mid-sixties Venice was in a state of decay. LA recognized a need for urban renewal but went about it the wrong way, instituting a policy where all buildings had to be upgraded to current building standards or face demolition. Five hundred and fifty historic buildings were torn down before a lawsuit halted Venice’s mass destruction. For a while locals as described the community as “where the debris meets the sea.”
 
Muscle Beach in the heart of Venice was originally located two miles north in Santa Monica where it helped create the image of bodybuilding as a sport. In the seventies it moved to Venice, where it became the workout center of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
 
The invention of polyurethane skate wheels led to Venice’s comeback in the seventies. Los Angeles’ mayor Tom Bradley declared Venice “The Roller Skating Capital of the World.” Entrepreneurs were soon making thousands a week from skate rentals, while others were honing their extreme stunt skills on skate boards.
 
The T shirt hawkers and sunglass sellers moved in next. With the crowds came street performers. Word soon spread that topless sunbathing was allowed on the beach north of Windward but the crush of tourists proved so enthusiastic that the LA’s City Council voted to ban the practice.
 
In the 1990’s Oakwood, the poor section of Venice, became a crack supermarket with drive up service. Venice Beach became a hangout for inner city black gangs. On hot summer Sundays thousands would gather along Ocean Front Walk with confrontations occasionally flaring. In 1993 fifty youths tore up the place. Police shut both beach and boardwalk and calm has largely reigned since.
  
Still Abbot Kinney’s dream lives on. It has a diverse population including Hare Krishnas who still on their annual Festival of the Chariots on the boardwalk. Most importantly, a person with a modest income can still find a home half a block from a spectacular Southern California beach.
 

The street that now bears the founders name, Abbot Kinney Boulevard is the center of Venice’s thriving arts and cultural scene, with galleries bars and restaurants.

Another center of night light with bars and restaurants is the ocean terminus of Washington Blvd.