Los Angeles's The Palms Neighborhood

By George Garrigues

The Westside neighborhood of Palms is the oldest suburb of Los Angeles. Founded in 1886 halfway between L.A. and the beach on a steam railroad line, Palms attracted wealthy Angelinos escaping the summer’s downtown heat as well as Easterners seeking a new life in “the natural home of the fig, olive, lemon, lime, apricot, and that class of fruit that brings the largest profit in the local market.” Rancho Park and Mar Vista had yet to make it onto maps—it was all “The Palms.” The school district stretched from the Santa Monica Mountains on the north toward Redondo Beach on the south. A lively social and business life sprang up, but gradually the metropolis enfolded Palms, which was annexed into Los Angeles in 1915. After World War II, subdivisions brought young families, the flatlands became a huge swath of apartments, and the barren hill area became the tree-shrouded Westside Village.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Release date: Feb 2, 2009
• ISBN: 9781439638149

George Garrigues

Author George Garrigues’s first job after leaving UCLA in 1953 was as a technical copy editor in Palms. He later became a newspaper reporter and retired as a university journalism professor. He was one of the founders of the Palms Neighborhood Council and is a past president. He lives in Northwest Palms (Westside Village).

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INTRODUCTION

Imagine West Los Angeles in the 1880s. Men on horseback ride to the top of a rise some 6 miles east of the Pacific Ocean—about where Westside Village is today. They look south, their eyes ranging over the La Ballona Valley, and they like what they see: A broad swath of fertile land, well-drained (unlike the cienega swampland a few miles to the east or the Del Rey area to the southwest), and mostly flat. They can buy it, subdivide it, and turn a nice profit by selling home lots to the first wave of what will eventually become a tidal flood of immigrants to Southern California from the East Coast and from around the world.

Behind the horsemen, the Southern Pacific Railway has recently finished a steam line to Santa Monica. In the distance southward they can make out the trace of the sole county road between Los Angeles a dozen miles to the east and Santa Monica to the west. (Later the trace will become Washington Boulevard.) They see a dust cloud rising there from a passing tallyho; a bit closer, smoke drifts from a trash fire.

There are already people living on isolated farms in the valley. The Charnocks own a large amount of land. There is a post office and general store (the Halfway House, opened in 1871 by Ygnacio Saenz) at the corner of what will later be Washington Boulevard and Overland Avenue. The few children of the area attend La Ballona School (erected in 1865). Some kids ride to high school in Santa Monica by horseback.

The observers do not see many trees, but many will be planted later.

Imagine if Joseph Curtis, Edward H. Sweetser, and C. J. Harrison gather for cigars later that evening in Sweetser’s comfortable Santa Monica home to debate what to call their proposed tract. There is a railroad shack there already, with a grasshopper bypass that enables a train going east to pass another one going west without slowing down. And that little station already has a name, Bay View.

But Bay View could describe any place from Massachusetts to San Francisco, so it is not much of a selling point.

Why not ‘The Palms’? one of the men might suggest, perhaps thinking of the scraggly palm trees near the Saenz grocery. There are no palms in Massachusetts. We’ll haul some in from the desert and plant a bunch of them.

And so it is done. They pay $40,000 for 500 acres (about $875,000 in today’s money). They survey their land and cut it up, and then they sell it, parcel by parcel. They plant 5,000 trees along 8 miles of graded streets. And The Palms begins.

Soon Curtis, Sweetser, and Harrison had established a burgeoning Anglo community, with deep lots where the buyer could build a house about a third of the way back and still have enough room at the rear to raise vegetables or keep a goat or some rabbits or chickens.

No Cold Winters. No Hot Summers. No Saloons at The Palms. So proclaimed their advertisements. Deeds contain a forfeiture clause prohibiting the sale of spirituous liquors. . . . The soil . . . is the natural home of the fig, olive, lemon, lime, apricot, and that class of fruit that brings the largest profit in the local market. Pure water is taken from gravel beds from 30 to 100 feet in depth, and is forced into a cement reservoir, which is covered by a roof to keep the water pure and cool.

There was no Culver City. There was no Cheviot Hills. There was no South Robertson. There was no Pico Boulevard, no Olympic Boulevard. There was no Rancho Park, no Westside Village, no Mar Vista. It was all The Palms. The school district stretched from the Santa Monica Mountains on the north to maybe Redondo Beach on the south.

The first hint of a Palms community was the United Brethren Church, which was founded in 1883. The school came next, in 1886. As the years passed, there were formed the First Baptist Church of the Palms (1891), the Palms Silver Cornet Band (1904), the Palms Chamber of Commerce (1907), the Palms Parent-Teacher Association (1919), the Palms Women’s Club (1921), an American Legion post (1921), two Masonic lodges (1917 and 1921), and a band, known as the Palms HillBillies, consisting of three banjos, zither, violin, and piano, [which] twanged its way into the hearts of the audience with a lively rendition of old-time melodies. (Los Angeles Times, 1930.)

Palms grew so rapidly and with so much spirit that, in 1907, the L.A. Examiner predicted it would become A New Pasadena. In August 1913, the settlers met in the Woodmen of the World Hall to talk about the future, and, according to the Los Angeles Times, This enterprising community, situated on a sightly ridge of fertile land between city and sea . . . will try incorporation.

Instead the community annexed itself to Los Angeles in 1915, and its future became inextricably linked with the growing metropolis to the east. This book is the story of Palms’s birth, its growth, its decline, and its renaissance.

PALMS THROUGH THE DECADES

In the 1880s, Anderson Rose (1836–1902) was reputed to be the first American settler in these parts. Rose (who kept cattle, made cheese, and raised walnut orchards) volunteered in the election precinct at La Ballona School. Rose Avenue was named for him.

Palms had its own newspaper for 10 weeks in 1887–1888 when the Palms Review carried on a sniping feud with the Santa Monica Outlook. Another paper, the Palms News, was published between 1906 and 1908 by S. C. Perrine and W. G. Rennie. The Palms Press began in 1921.

In June 1891, plans were laid to complete National Boulevard, which has long been the dream of horsemen and others who find enjoyment in long and pleasing drives.... In addition to the panorama of scenery along the route, ... it is proposed to plant a row of trees on both sides of the road. (Los Angeles Times.)

Some Chinese farmed the area. Much indignation is felt by our townspeople over the coldblooded murder committed on the Chinese vegetable peddler near Ballona. (Los Angeles Times, August 3, 1891.) In a later story, "Louie Sing, a Chinaman who keeps a vegetable garden on the Ballona Road [Washington Boulevard] near The Palms . . . said that . . . he and his partner were driving toward their house, which was a shack 12x10 feet.... Suddenly the house was lifted into