LANDSCAPES WITH ANGELS - A HISTORY OF LOS ANGELES

[Music] I am Overjoyed really overwhelmed by this by the people of Los Angeles Southern churches of the [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Los Angeles begins in isolation set apart from the continent by mountains desert and [Music] ocean an unlikely place for a Frontier Town to grow [Music] in 1781 a group of Spanish emissaries among them Indians mulad and blacks founded Los Angeles at the site of an Indian settlement in 1822 Los Angeles became part of Mexico and in 1850 part of the United States a new flag but its presence hardly felt while Yankees swarmed North for gold in San Francisco Los Angeles was ignored a Dusty and violent PB trading center for a land of Ranchos suppliers of hides and Tallow to the American East only this surveyor map from 1849 hinted at things to come [Music] the peblo soon began to change Government taxes impoverished the Ranchos and the drought of the 60s finished them off Rancheros sold their land at bargain prices to American entrepreneurs [Music] Yankee settlement was well underway when the Southern Pacific arrived in 1876 9 years later came the Santa Fe the town's isolation was no more the railroads put Los Angeles on the map with land to sell they waged frantic rate Wars launched extravagant promotions newcomers poured in a thousand a week seeking as advertised homes and profit sunshine and health the result was a land rush of unprecedented proportions speculators carved home sites and small farms out of the old ranches the city went wild buying and selling it was the boom of the 8S and Los Angeles the modern American city was born [Music] but inevitably in 1888 the boom went bust the locals panicked some kept the faith the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce was formed its purpose to sell the city as no other City had been sold before Los Angeles became a [Music] commodity in one year alone over 90 million advertisements were placed in newspapers and magazines throughout the country boosterism became a Civic Obsession one veteran resident observes boosterism in Los Angeles is a sense of optimism it is a real American characteristic you went out and you found a Forest you cut it down you went out and you found a desert and you watered it and you came out to LA and you looked around and everything was lovely and wonderful and you said listen I found the dream blessed by temperate clim climate and ample land Los Angeles offered something no other city heret for could boast the promise of the good life every day of the year and the people responded in Great Waves of migration which peaked in the 1880s the 20s and the 40s the new angelinos for that's what they came to be called created a city which expressed their search for the dream they built a city of homes at first these homes looked like transplants from the Midwest which wasn't so surprising since like the people that built them they were but by 1910 there emerged a distinctive residential architecture its impact to be felt Nationwide angelinos called these homes bungalows [Music] The Bungalow was a simple home with its open construction its modest [Music] cost it was a democratic home perfectly suited to the city which said it had something for everyone in the words of an early Los Angeles Builder above every other land here is the paradise for the Common Man the rich can make them M themselves comfortable anywhere for wealth makes them superior to the climate but the poor can have homes in the midst of beauty here in Los Angeles Los Angeles rejected traditional ideas about City Life in 1907 One Civic reformer explained it this way this city of the angels can be among the first to realize the world's dream of the city beautiful for all the that everything can be easily transformed formed here will be found only happy healthy families scattered over a vast area instead of the pent up millions of other cities angelinos embrac this newfound Freedom Gardens were imported from the far reaches of the globe and like these Gardens new styles of life and thought took root in Los Angeles exotic forms of the churchgoing and the conventional flourished the city has always been known as the Vanguard for The Young and the old the new and outrageous unrestrained by the weight of tradition where imaginations took flight in an architecture of fantasy [Music] and the Pioneer example of this Spirit was the Beachside community of Venice [Music] a wealth of Creative Energy was released over the years the city of homes has brought forth a rich variety of residential architecture from the anonymous do-it-yourself Bungalow to the sign masterpieces of green and green Irving Gill Richard neitra Rudolph Schindler and Frank Lloyd [Music] Wright and all the while the boosters got help from an unexpected Source a new industry the movies came to Los Angeles seeking daylight fair weather and refuge from the Eastern patent truck and wound up recording the growth and the look of a special City [Music] some of the newcomers even made it big in [Music] Hollywood some struck at rich in [Music] oil but in Los Angeles real state was the big business it was and still is on everybody's mind well we came in 1924 and so when my friends were taking me around to show me the city and the outside country why we'd see all these subdivisions all the real estate people had subdivisions and the flags were flying and the sometimes they'd even have a band and they'd take you if you wanted to on a bus to go see their subdivision of course we'd go in our own cars and uh then they'd give you a free lunch and then they'd try to sell you the lcks and you just pay so much down then you had to pay for the month and of course it Disturbed me because uh I didn't know which one to buy I thought I'd have to buy one every place and uh so then I said to my friend I said uh well I don't know which place I want to live and she said well I wouldn't live any place but Hollywood so then that settled me because then I knew I could stay in Hollywood I thought I had to buy one of these places the way they were advertising themselves [Music] anyhow after the uh lecture gave his sales talk the people were then escorted out in an automobile to show one lot or two lots or three lots and from there the procedure was to take them back into a room we call a closing Booth where a high pressure artist was uh uh located and his main business was to sell these people the idea they must buy this lot and tell them the reasons why and get their name on the dotted line with a check or some kind of deposit now we'd take anything we'd take a $100 bill we'd take a check we'd take a diamond ring right off their hand or a $1 bill or anything if we took a local check the enclosure would then hand it out the window to a motorcycle man he would take it downtown and have it cash before the buyer could get in town to stop it and strange it may seem while those predictions in the early 20s sounded pretty wild the facts are they all happened everything we predicted was going to happen did happen we predicted the Sano Valley would grow from 50,000 to 8 or 900,000 which it has the only thing is it took a little longer than we thought but the San Fernando Valley like all the Los Angeles region depended on water for growth [Music] vast tracks of undeveloped land were held by the wealthy and Powerful of the city at the urging of these private interests Los Angeles and William M hulland the city's water commissioner engineered a bold and controversial plan the city bought a river and diverted it 230 Mi South to the San Fernando [Music] Valley annexation of the valley was assured when in 1913 the Los Angeles Aqueduct was [Music] [Applause] [Music] completed the project dried up the rich farmlands of the Owens Valley but few angelinos seem to care angelinos achieved their City beautiful but at a cost their special vision of city life was a white American Vision restricted neighborhoods and their opposite Urban ghettos were facts of Los Angeles life [Music] life there were further contradictions to the good life an Interurban Railway system the large lest in the world once linked together the far reaches of Los Angeles whose sprawl it had helped create over this rail network ultimately replacing it the freeway system was built the freeway signaled the Triumph of the automobile for Los Angeles and encouraged further expansion of the city but they served as well to disperse and fragment the residential neighborhoods also discouraged contact among people many subdivisions lacked parks and convenient public areas city planners accepted the status quo and developers busy maximizing profits rarely thought they could do more the new angelinos uprooted from old communities and social ties often felt like strangers in their newly chosen City they form form State societies whose picnics became fixtures of Los Angeles life over 100,000 people more even than the population of De Moine attended the 1930 Iowa State picnic and even today vestages of these ritual Gatherings survive and so that's what we did we formed uh you know Missouri group and it's been going ever since we have uh meetings occasionally and we get together and have watermelon feeds and ice cream socials just to have a real good time and to meet new friends and uh to meet old friends again and just like today we've met a lot of new uh you know people I mean old people that we haven't seen for a long time and so we've really stuck together as a group the search for roots took other forms because the city was so new and so constantly changing Los Angeles groped for a past and fashioned one in terms it could accept and understand [Music] even the restoration of the last remaining Adobe structure in central Los Angeles generated considerable debate a member of the restoration commission explains the controversy seems to represent a microcosm of the larger controversy which surrounds our work uh whether we should restore the building and the project in general as truly and accurately as possible to the history of Los Angeles or do we try to build it back to some preconceived image of what the old city was like a City built upon the ruins of a Mexican peblo [Music] and upon the bones of an Indian [Music] culture Los Angeles falsified its past in romanticized images there were many who predicted the consequences of this rootlessness among them novelist Nathaniel West all their lives they had slaved at some kind of dull heavy labor saving pennies and dreaming of the Leisure that would be theirs when they had enough where else should they go but California the land of sunshine and oranges once there they discover that Sunshine isn't enough they get tired of oranges nothing happens they don't know what to do with their time did they slay so long just to go to an occasional Iowa picnic what else is there they watched the waves come in at Venice there wasn't any ocean where most of them came from but after you've seen one wave you've seen them all for some the Land of Plenty and promise bred confusion and despair but there were other reasons for this sense of personal cataclysm natural forces that angelinos were powerless to control [Music] young man you probably saved my life now what can I do for you take us the Shang High Shang High yeah matter Earth take everybody walking all right now it's all right all right [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] okay I had just gotten up to remove the plate in preparation of bringing in the dessert when the first shot came my husband start to get up to get bottle fell over and the dishes fell from the table uh the birthday cake is still in the house with the candle UNL come on let's go in the house and get some hay well I wouldn't go in that house for a million dollars I'm here for the night [Music] [Music] these disasters real and imagined assume great force in the popular mind but the change rought by man have been the most extraordinary and even the most [Music] devastating the landscape of the angels has always been shifting and continues to change in New and sometimes disturbing ways [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] the landscape is altered history is [Music] erased the past is fostered into forgetfulness in the name of progress [Music] the city crowds in upon itself the land is no longer plentiful and the great migrations have ceased [Music] what is to become of the promise that Los Angeles once held out to its settlers [Music] [Applause] what is to become of the [Music] dream what is to become of Los Angeles [Music]