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History

Venice of America was founded by tobacco millionaire Abbot Kinney in 1905 as a beach resort town, 14 miles west of Los Angeles. He and his partner Francis Ryan had bought two miles of ocean front property south of Santa Monica in 1891. They built a resort town called Ocean Park on the north end of the property, which was soon annexed to Santa Monica. After Ryan died, Kinney and his new partners continued building south of Navy Street in the unincorporated territory. After the partnership dissolved in 1904, Kinney built on the marshy land on the south end of the property. His intent was to create a seaside resort like its namesake in Italy.

When Venice of America opened on July 4, 1905, Kinney had dug several miles of canals to drain the marshes for his residential area, built a 1200-foot-long pleasure pier with an auditorium, ship restaurant, and dance hall, constructed a hot salt-water plunge, and built a block-long arcaded business street with Ventetian architecture. Tourists, mostly arriving by interurban trolley from Los Angeles and Santa Monica, then rode Venice's miniature railroad and gondolas to tour the town. But the biggest attraction was Venice's mile-long gently sloping beach. Cottages and housekeeping tents were available for rent.

The town grew in population, annexed adjacent housing tracts, and changed its official name of Ocean Park to Venice in 1911. The population (3119 residents in 1910) soon exceeded 10,000, and drew 50,000 to 150,000 tourists on weekends.

Attractions on the Kinney Pier became more amusement oriented by 1910, when a Venice Scenic Railway, Aquarium, Virginia Reel, Whip, Racing Derby and other rides and game booths were added. Since the business district was allotted only three, one-block-long streets, and the City Hall was more than a mile away, other competing business districts developed. Unfortunately this created a fracturious political climate. Kinney, however, governed with an iron hand and kept things in check. But when he died in November 1920, Venice became harder to politically govern. Then with the amusement pier burning six weeks later in December 1920, and Prohibition (which had begun the previous January), the town's tax revenue was severely affected.

The Kinney family rebuilt their amusement pier quickly in order to compete with Ocean Park's Pickering Pier, and the newly built Sunset Pier. When it opened it had two roller coasters, a new Racing Derby, a Noah's Ark, a Mill Chutes, and dozens of other rides. By 1925 with the addition of a third coaster, a tall Dragon Slide, Fun House, and Flying Circus aerial ride, it was the finest amusement pier on the West Coast. Several hundred thousand tourists visited on weekends and spent their hard-earned money on rides, restaurant food, and souvenirs. In 1923 Charles Lick built the Lick Pier at Navy Street in Venice, adjacent to the Ocean Park Pier at Pier Avenue in Ocean Park. Another pier was planned for Venice in 1925 at Leona Street (now Washington Street).

For the amusement of the public Kinney hired aviators to do aerial stunts over the beach. One of them, movie aviator and Venice airport owner B.H. DeLay, implemented the first lighted airport in the United States on DeLay Field (previously known as Ince Field). He also initiated the first aerial police in the nation, after a marine rescue attempt was thwarted. DeLay also performed many of the world's first aerial stunts for motion pictures in Venice.

But by 1925, Venice politics became unmanagable. Its roads, water and sewage systems badly needed repair and expansion to keep up with its growing population. When it was proposed to be annexed to Los Angeles, the board of Trustees voted to hold an election. Those for annexation and those against were nearly evenly matched, but many Los Angeles residents, who moved to Venice to vote, turned the tide. Venice became part of Los Angeles in October 1925.

Los Angeles had annexed the Disneyland of its day, and proceeded to remake Venice in its own image. They felt the town needed more streets for automobiles, not canals, and paved the bulk of them in 1929 after a protracted three-year court battle led by canal residents. They wanted to close Venice's three amusement piers, but had to wait until the first of the tidelands' leases expired in 1946.

In 1929 oil was discovered south of Washington Street on the Venice Peninsula, which was a fashionable residential area where movie stars lived. Within two years 450 oil wells covered the area and drilling waste clogged the remaining waterways. It was a short-lived boom, that provided needed income to the community, which suffered during the Depression. The wells were still producing oil into the 1970s.

The city of Los Angeles had neglected Venice so long that it had become the "Slum by the Sea" by the 1950s. With the exception of new police and fire stations in 1930, the city spent little on improvements since annexation. They didn't pave Trolleyway (Pacific Avenue) until 1954 when county and state funds became available. Cheap rents for run-down bungalow housing attracted predominately European immigrants (including a substantial number of Jewish refugees from Hitler's death camps), and young counter-cultural artists, poets and writers. The "Beat Generation" hung out at the Gas House on Ocean Front Walk and at Venice West Cafe on Dudley where they held poetry readings and smoked dope. Police raids were frequent as they tried to rid the community of "undesirables."

In 1961 the city in their misguided attempt at improving the community instituted a building code enforcement plan to bring all buildings up to city code. Many homes, built 50 years earlier, rested on sand with no foundations. But the city's real intent was to tear down all of Venice's 1600 structures and get rid of the recalcitrant hippie population. Banks wouldn't make loans for improvements, and owners had to pay for demolition. By 1965, one third of Venice's buildings, mostly in the historic district along the beach, were reduced to rubble before the city was stopped in court. Irronically Venice's slums in the (then) black-populated Oakwood section survived because it was last on the city's agenda, and the NAACP and the Peace and Freedom Party organized to protect the poor. The city's dream of building highrise hotels and apartments like Miami Beach was thwarted. Venice looked like it was bombed during World War 2 as little was rebuilt during the next decade.

Venice and neighboring Santa Monica were hosts for a decade to the Pacific Ocean Park (POP), an amusement and pleasure-pier built atop the old Lick Pier and Ocean Park Pier by CBS and the Los Angeles Turf Club (Santa Anita). It opened in July 1958. They kept the pier's old roller coaster, huge airplane ride, and carousel, but convered its theaters and smaller pier buildings into sea-themed rides and space-themed attractions designed by Hollywood special-effects people. Visitors could travel in space on the Flight to Mars ride, tour the world in Around the World in 80 Turns, go beneath the sea in the Diving Bells or at Neptune's Kingdom, take a fantasy excursion into the Tales of the Arabian Nights on the Flying Carpet ride, visit a pirate world at Davy Jones' Locker, or visit a tropical paradise and its volcano by riding a train on Mystery Island. There were also thrill rides like the Whirlpool (rotor whose floor dropped out), the Flying Fish wild mouse coaster, an auto ride, gondola ride, double Ferris wheel, safari ride, and an area of children's rides called Fun Forset. Sea lion shows were performed at the Sea Circus.

Since attendance at the seaside park was too low to operate during the winter, and there was competition from Disneyland, Knotts Berry Farm, and Marineland, it was sold after two seasons to a succession of owners, who let the park deterioate. And since Santa Monica was redeveloping the surrounding area for high-rise apartments and condos, they made it difficult for patrons to reach the park. They forced it into bankruptcy in 1967. After the park suffered a series of arson fires beginning in 1970, its rotting structure was demolished by 1974. Another aging attraction in the 1960s was the Aragon Ballroom that had been the longtime home of The Lawrence Welk Show, and later the Cheetah Club where rock bands like the Doors performed. It burned in the 1970 fire. The district around POP is known as Dogtown, which was home to pioneering skateboarders the Z-Boys, as profiled in the documentary film, Dogtown and Z-Boys.

Producer Roger Corman owned a production facility, the Concorde/New Horizons Studio, on Main Street for many years, in which a large number of his films were shot. This facility was torn down to build lofts.

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