1918 (1917) (1919)(1910-1920) (1920-1930) Table of Contents
Harry Carr Los Angeles City of Dreams (Illustrated by E.H. Suydam), D. Appleton-Century Co.: NY, 1935, 402 pp., 1918, 1880s, 1860s See Text
Donald M. Cleland A History of the Santa Monica Schools 1876-1951, Santa Monica Unified School District, February 1952 (Copied for the Santa Monica Library, July 22, 1963). 140 pp., 1918 See Text
Paul J. Karlstrom and Susan Ehrlich Turning the Tide: Early Los Angeles Modernists 1920-1956, Barry M. Heisler Introduction Santa Barbara Museum of Art 1990, 1918 See Text
Tom Moran and Tom Sewell Fantasy by the Sea Peace Press: Culver City, CA, 1980 (1979) (Originally published by Beyond Baroque Foundation with a grant from the Visual Arts Program of the National Endowment for the Arts), 1918 See Text
William Perry Sanders Days That Are Done, Grafton Publishing Corporation: Los Angeles, U.S.A., 1918, Seven Photo Illustrations, 134 pp. See Text
Amanda Schacter (ed.)
Santa Monica Landmarks Santa Monica Landmarks Commission,
1990.
12 Ocean Park Branch Library See
Text
Jeffrey Stanton Santa Monica Pier A History from 1875 to 1990, Donahue Publishing: Los Angeles, CA, 1990, 1918, 1910s See Text
Jeffrey Stanton Venice of America: 'Coney Island of the Pacific,' Donahue Publishing: Los Angeles, CA, 1987. 176 pp., 1919, 1918, Chapter 3: Growth through the Teens (1913-1919 See Text
Betty Lou Young Our First Century: The Los Angeles Athletic Club 1880-1980, LAAC Press: Los Angeles, California 1979, 176pp., 1918 See Text
Notes:
Santa Monica votes in Prohibition, 1 January 1918, 1987
World War I Armistice signed 11 November 1918, 1987
Documents
Harry Carr Los Angeles City of Dreams (Illustrated by E.H. Suydam), D. Appleton-Century Co.: NY, 1935, 402 pp., 1918, 1880s, 1860s
Chapter XXVI Our Literati
[p. 340] "Major Horace Bell's Reminiscences of a Ranger is scarcely less significant than Ramona. As Helen Hunt Jackson saw the leisurey pastoral life, so Major Bell saw the little pueblo from the far end of the hotel bar. He wrote with the gusto of the third tequila cocktail, with Mike, the bar-keeper, wiping the damp off the baize table to make room for the writing materials. Ramona is Louisa M. Alcott listening to mission bells . . . a pastoral played with plaintive flutes. Reminiscences of a Ranger reads as though played on a cracked piano in the back room, with a cigarette making yellow smut on the ivory. It is a swaggering, bawdy, delightful record of a little gringo-Mexican town. Some other author is likely to produce another Ramona out of faded dresses packed in trunks and yellowed diaries. But no one else will ever write another Reminiscences of a Ranger.
"Helen Hunt Jackson died in 1884 [1885], but Major Bell was in my time. I knew him well-a pompous, strutting old gentleman who affected a Kentucky colonel, black, planter sombrero and military capes. He looked exactly like his literary style-hifallutin, swaggering and compelling . . . a D'Artagnan, practising law in a frontier town.
"Major [Horace] Bell [1830-1918] had served in the Civil War and came to California in the sixties. His uncle was Alexander Bell, a respected pioneer of parts and influence. The major came to San Pedro by boat and tells of his first mad ride to the pueblo in one of Phineas Banning's stages.
"The pueblo then had about five thousand people-with mud holes in the street, adobes and saloons enough to liquidate a center of population. The major seems to have made [p. 341]a bee-line for the Bella Union bar with the unerring instinct of a carrier-pigeon. Thereafter he attended all the fandangos; saw most of the gun-fights and knew all the scandals; joined an illegal filibustering expedition to Nicaragua; but helped organize the volunteers-the Rangers-who ran down the last of the great Calfornia bandits-Joaquín Murietta. I never saw Major Bell on horseback but I am willing to wager that his tapaderos were so long that they swept the ground; that his saddle had more silver geegaws and that the wheel in his horse's bit more noise than any of the other silver bits.
"[p. 341] The major kicked out the box from under one of the last murderers lynched in the pueblo, and carried on several feuds with gusto and high drama . . .
"[p. 342] . . .
"For several years, Major Bell [1830-1918] ran a weekly newspaper called the Porcupine [1882-1888] and its quills were as poison arrows. He had a pen that seared and scalded. His particular animosity was the equally pompous Colonel G.J. Griffith who gave Griffith Park to the city [Los Angeles}.
" . . .
Donald M. Cleland A History of the Santa Monica Schools 1876-1951, Santa Monica Unified School District, February 1952 (Copied for the Santa Monica Library, July 22, 1963). 140 pp., 1918
During the years of World War I, when the impact of the conflict was felt strongly by students and faculty, Santa Monica High School engaged in many patriotic activities. Among other things, they raised money for an ambulance to be sent to the French army. The Red Cross sewing class at the school numbered 216 participants, the largest class in the history of the school. So many young patriots joined the armed forces that there were almost twice as many girls as there were boys in the school. The total enrollment dropped to 455, with chemistry the most popular study of that period, and home gardening also proving to be an important interest." [63. Pearl, op. cit., p. 97]
". . .
In 1918, a complete printing plant was installed [at Santa Monica High School] at a cost of $1840.
Paul J. Karlstrom and Susan Ehrlich Turning the Tide: Early Los Angeles Modernists 1920-1956, Barry M. Heisler Introduction Santa Barbara Museum of Art 1990, 1918
Stanton Macdonald-Wright (1890-1973), 1990, 1918, 1916, 1913, 1912, 1910, 1907, 1904, 1900, 1890
". . . With the onset of the First World War, Macdonald-Wright fled to London where he roomed with his brother Willard Huntington Wright, an editor for Smart Set magazine, whom he assisted in writing books on art. In 1916 he sailed to New York where he mingled in vanguard circles and participated in The Forum Exhibition of Modern American Painters. Subsequent shows at progressive New York galleries, including Alfred Stieglitz's 291, served to secure his East Coast reputation.
"The artist, however, despite his success, felt uneasy with life in Manhattan. Thus, he left New York in 1918 and returned to Southern California. Inspired by the mountains and valleys surrounding his home, he trained his pictorial gaze on the verdant outdoors. In the process, he lightened his palette with streaks of white that invoked Santa Monica's damp coastal air.
"In his California Synchromies, Macdonald-Wright brings his early discoveries to a state of perfection. Now, as before, color determines structure and obliges other elements to submit to its control. Operating as a spatial force, it grants forms plasticity. As the artist observed: "Form to me is color . . . I conceive space itself as of a plastic significance that I express in color. Form not being simply the mass of each object seen separately, I organize my canvas as a solid block as much in depth as laterally."
"Clearly, color and form in these Synchromies function synergistically to yield an interwoven field in the mode of the late Cezanne. Luminous hues, harmonically grouped, give the impression of tiny, bright rainbows adrift in a moist atmosphere. . . .
" . . . [These paintings] sustain a light, impalpable air. Blithely, they accurately capture a sense of place-of gullies and bluffs sheathed in soft haze, of villas stacked on palisades overlooking cool bays. Gauzy white patches powder the fields to evoke Santa Monica's ambient fog. the manner in which they blanket the forms recalls the Oriental landscape painting which the artist admired. The gaps that they create on the surface thus might be read, not a negative voids, but as resonant regions of light in accord with their Eastern models."
Tom Moran and Tom Sewell Fantasy by the Sea Peace Press: Culver City, CA, 1980 (1979) (Originally published by Beyond Baroque Foundation with a grant from the Visual Arts Program of the National Endowment for the Arts), 1918
"The worldwide epidemic of the Spanish influenza reached Venice and at least three fatalities were attributed to the highly contatgious disease. The city's movie theaters, bars, carnivals and saloons were closed by order of the State Board of Health. Dancing was prohibited.
"The anti-flu bans were in effect for 42 days. The health orders were rescinded November 27, 1918, 16 days after the armistice had been signed ending the First World War."
William Perry Sanders Days That Are Done, Grafton Publishing Corporation: Los Angeles, U.S.A., 1918, Seven Photo Illustrations, 134 pp.
Bound in this soft-bound edition are publication notices from the Outlook, Santa Monica, 1918 and the Los Angeles Times, Mr. Sanders lives at 513 California Street, Santa Monica, from whom the book may be obtained, including authentic reminiscences of a buffalo hunter and a New Mexico cowboy, an unlikely two generations of western lore.
Amanda Schacter
(ed.) Santa Monica Landmarks Santa Monica Landmarks
Commission, 1990.
12 Ocean Park Branch Library
2601 Main Street
Built: 1917 -1918
Architects: Kegley & Gerity
Designated 3 May 1977
"The Ocean Park Branch Library is the
last Carnegie Library remaining in Santa Monica, and one of the few
remaining examples of a small Carnegie library left in California.
The architecture is a simplified variation of Greek Revival design.
The library site was donated to the City by the Tegner* family, and
was the site of the original Tegner* home. The building for library
was a gift of the Carnegie Foundation. This library first opened
February 4, 1918. The building was closed for remodeling in the mid -
1980's at which time a rear addition to the building was
constructed."
Jeffrey Stanton Santa Monica Pier A History from 1875 to 1990, Donahue Publishing: Los Angeles, CA, 1990, 1910s
"It was fitting, when Santa Monica voted in December 1918 for Prohibition of alcoholic beverages, that the pier required no changes since drinking and gambling were never allowed. In fact, it pleased the town that the Looff Pier was a resort of character and refinement lacking the "honky-tonk' ribaldry that characterized many other sea side resorts. . ."
Jeffrey Stanton Venice of America: 'Coney Island of the Pacific,' Donahue Publishing: Los Angeles, CA, 1987. 176 pp., 1919, 1918, Chapter 3: Growth through the Teens (1913-1919)
"When the Armistice was signed November 11, 1918, California was in the midst of a killer influenza epidemic. At first the flu epidemic wasn't feared, for county health officials like Dr. J.L. Pomeroy were certain that Southern California's sunshine would prevent it. But by late October the flu spread and the health department overseeing Venice and Santa Monica was forced to close schools, theaters, saloons and all places where soft drinks and ice cream were sold. The latter places had to establish a sanitation and sterilization system for glasses before they were allowed to reopen. Regulations were quirky and often silly. Music and liquor were allowed in restaurants, but no dancing. Bars and saloons had to shut down but not package liquor stores.
"At first the flu seemed to spare Venice. Perhaps washing down the streets with salt water did the trick, or due to the lack of medical facilities the afflicted just went elsewhere. Regardless, Venice was well enough to lift the quarantine for the Armistice Day celebration. Only one dance hall and two theaters were closed, while nearby Santa Monica was shut down tight. Everyone thought the epidemic was over when an alarming increase occurred- 169 new cases and six deaths were reported the week of December 12th. Everyone wore flu masks on the streets, and the flu bandits were having a splendid time robbing businesses. The influenza epidemic was still around but abating by the end of January 1919."
Betty Lou Young Our First Century: The Los Angeles Athletic Club 1880-1980, LAAC Press: Los Angeles, California 1979, 176pp., 1918
"In the mood of the day, the revolutionary new "LAAC System" of physical fitness was introduced by an anonymous guru in January, 1918: the perfect body working in harmony with the subconscious mind to develop the perfect man. Adherents were promised that the proper application of thought, desire, and will, leading to concentration guaranteed a life expectancy of one hundred years, with middle age beginning at seventy. The regimen included regular exercise, daily baths, correct living, two meals a day, and a proper mental attitude.
"Al Treloar's program translated theory into action . . .with before-and-after pictures of his male clients int their undershorts . . . Insructors were hired in the exotic arts of judo and jiu jitsu to foster the cause of bodily and intellectual training, will-power development, and character-building."