Venice Beach History: From Resort Town to Gentrification

Introduction

Originally founded in 1905 by tobacco businessman Abbot Kinney, Venice, California, was an independent city until 1925, when it merged with Los Angeles. Today it is known for its beach boardwalk and circus-like atmosphere, and in the past decade Venice has undergone a process of gentrification like many other cities across the United States (Abcarian). Yet Venice Beach was for years a center of the arts. In the 1960s it was ground zero for the counter-culture movement, with musicians like Jim Morrison and The Doors getting their start there. It was home to late R&B musician Teena Marie, now forever memorialized in a Venice mural (Argonaut).

Venice Beach was also home to Muscle Beach, boardwalk roller skating, diversity, and cultural foods. It was home to the Oakwood African American community, whose members helped dig the canals of Venice but were not permitted to settle along them. Instead, they were placed inland on the one square mile of roads known as Oakwood — a neighborhood today threatened by the expansion of Silicon Valley and the influx of new residents (Carroll). Venice Beach was a popular resort destination that drew tourists from around the world — people who came for the beach sunsets, the shops, the tattoo parlors, and the artists selling their work right on the streets. It was a place full of culture, history, life, and stories.

Today it has gone the way of many other cities with storied pasts: it is entering a new phase of existence — a new stage of life disconnected from its past, one that has more to do with avocado toast, Millennials, and the gentrified tastes of those spilling over from Silicon Valley than with hippies, dancing, roller skating, or the doors of perception. This paper describes the history of Venice Beach and how it has changed over time.

The Beginning: Abbot Kinney's Vision

The canals of the Venice of America were originally dug to drain the area of marshes that kept the land uninhabitable. Abbot Kinney, who founded the city, constructed a large pier more than a thousand feet long that included a ship-style restaurant, an auditorium, and a dance hall. Venetian architecture studded the business street, and tourists traveled by miniature railcar or gondola down the various lanes of the Venice-inspired city.

Kinney died in 1920 and the pier was destroyed by fire around that same time. Prohibition had also come into effect, threatening the city's revenues — but the Kinney family restored the pier and constructed new amusements, including roller coasters, a racing derby, a fun house, and much more. It was a top-notch year-round attraction for tourists (Stanton). It was generally a destination of innocent fun that fit squarely within the culture of pre-1960s America. Americans were broadly jubilant throughout the 1920s, depressed throughout the 1930s, energized by the 1940s, and exultant during the 1950s.

Transformation and Decline

Venice in its original state did not last long. When Kinney died, the city essentially went up for grabs: its infrastructure was in need of repair and Prohibition had cut into its funds. Los Angeles annexed Venice in 1925, and changes to its character began immediately. While designed to reflect Venice, Italy — its canals dug by African Americans brought from New Orleans who were then settled in Oakwood — Venice quickly took on a more status quo character as Los Angeles did not want to pay the costs of upkeep. Many canals were filled in and paved over as a cheap solution to the maintenance problem. During the Great Depression, the city relied on oil derricks — oil had been discovered beneath the city streets — as its main source of revenue, and the proliferation of oil wells further altered the face and character of the city. With little investment from Los Angeles, by the time the 1950s arrived Venice was generally regarded as the "Slum by the Sea" — not a flattering designation in mid-century America (Maynard).

Yet a decade later, there would be a kind of bohemian allure about the Slum by the Sea — one that attracted off-the-beaten-path types: artists, those interested in American subculture, counter-culture, and revolutionary change. The Beat Generation occupied the Venice West Café, and the region became synonymous with poets, artists, beatniks, and musicians drawn to the new wave of pop music culture springing up as a form of cultural protest against the politics of the era, the Vietnam War, and a general rejection of Old World values (Maynard).

Conclusion

Venice Beach started off as a kind of ode to the most architecturally stunning and iconic city in the world: Venice, Italy. Kinney had a dream to bring the Renaissance of the European world to California. He constructed the city of Venice with the help of African Americans who, though they dug the trenches and made the canals, were not permitted to live on the streets they lined because segregation was still a reality of American life at the time. Kinney designed the 1,200-foot pier that was a destination in and of itself, complete with rides, an auditorium for performances, a dance hall, space for skating, a restaurant housed in a ship, and all manner of entertainments.

When Kinney died in 1920, the city fell into disarray, and with Prohibition underway it lost a great source of funding. Los Angeles moved in to save the city by incorporating it but did little to shore it up or further its charm. Instead, the City of Angels filled in many of the canals, installed oil wells, and allowed it to deteriorate into what became known as a giant slum. By the 1950s, however, the Slum by the Sea had become a refuge for America's starving artists. The Beat poets, musicians, painters, and performers gathered in Venice Beach because it was cheap, fun, exciting, and eclectic. There were bodybuilders, beatniks, bars, dancers, skaters, musicians, and more — a place where diversity was one of its greatest qualities.

By the 1990s, the culture had shifted once more, and Venice was best viewed as a washed-out representation of a once-glorious past. By the 2000s, it became a place like so many others: a focus for gentrification. The story of Venice Beach is, in many ways, the story of urban America — a cycle of creation, neglect, cultural reinvention, and ultimately the displacement of the communities that made it remarkable in the first place.

Works Cited

Abcarian, Robin. "They discover, they gentrify, they ruin: How 'progress' is wrecking Los Angeles neighborhoods." LA Times, 2017. https://www.latimes.com/local/abcarian/la-me-abcarian-venice-density-20170719-story.html

Argonaut. "Teena Marie Mural." Argonaut, 2012.

Carroll, Rory. "LA's black enclave buffeted by police pressure and tech-driven gentrification." The Guardian, 2016. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/01/venice-gentrification-oakwood-african-american-california

Horowitz, D. Betty Friedan and the Making of The Feminine Mystique. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1998.

Maynard, John Arthur. Venice West: The Beat Generation in Southern California. Rutgers University Press, 1993.

Stanton, Jeffrey. Venice, California: Coney Island of the Pacific. Donahue Publishing, 2005.