South Bay History

This 1895 photo shows the former Pacific Salt Works buildings after the plant had been bought and shut down by Liverpool Salt Works. The salt lake is partially visible at left.

 

The first local industry in Redondo Beach began with the sale by Manuel Dominguez of  215 acres of the Rancho San Pedro to merchants Henry Allanson and William Johnson of Los Angeles for $500 on December 15, 1854.

The centerpiece of the land sale was a spring-fed salt lake about 200 yards wide and 600 yards long located about 200 yards inland from the ocean. The natural salt lake was near Redondo Beach’s northern border with Hermosa Beach, in the area where the AES Redondo Beach Generating Station now stands.

Allanson and Johnson formed the Pacific Salt Works, and began manufacturing salt by using wood-fired boilers to hasten evaporation. Though their product reportedly was excellent, the local Los Angeles market wasn’t large enough to support them at the time, and shipping it out was not economically feasible due to high costs.

The rival Liverpool Salt Works actually could ship its product from the Salton Sea to Los Angeles by train more cheaply than the Pacific Salt Works could by wagon from Redondo Beach.

The pair gave up on the business in 1862, selling it to another L.A. businessman, Frances Mellus, who operated the Pacific Salt Works until 1881, when Liverpool Salt Works bought Pacific and shut it down.

 

An unidentified gentleman stands near the abandoned Pacific Salt Works office building in 1901.

 

By 1901, most of the equipment had been removed. The buildings remained abandoned for several decades, until they were finally all torn down by 1924.

The land was used for electric power stations and substations after the salt works closed down. In 1948, Southern California Edison opened its major south Bay power plant there. AES bought the facility in 1998.

In 1941, the Old Salt Lake site became California State Historical Landmark Number 373. On March 27, 1955, a granite marker denoting the salt lake was placed at the southeast corner of Harbor Drive and Yacht Club Way, near what is now the AES plant.

A granite marker placed near the site of the Old Salt Lake stands near the AES power plant in Redondo Beach.

 

 

 

Sources:

City of Redondo Beach Historic Context Statement, by Marguerite Duncan-Abrams and Barbara Milkovich, Ph.D, Historical Resources Management, 1995

Daily Breeze files.

Old Redondo: A Pictorial History of Redondo Beach, California, by Dennis Shanahan, Legends Press, 1982.

“Old Salt Lake,” City of Redondo Beach website, http://home.earthlink.net/~beckers912/presprog/lmlists/oldsaltlake.htm

“Salt and Power,” by Kathy McLeod, Redondo Beach Historical Society website, http://www.redondobeachhistorical.org/saltworks.htm

 

Isabel Henderson established the first public library in Torrance in 1913 in the parlor of her house at 1804 Gramercy Avenue.

Torrance’s first librarian, Isabel Henderson. (Photo courtesy Torrance Public Library.)

The collection consisted of 300 books donated by her cousin, Jared Sydney Torrance, the city’s founder.

 

 

The first receipt for books purchased by Isabel Henderson for the library. (Courtesy Torrance Public Library.)

 

By September 1914, the collection had increased to 510 books and 4 magazine subscriptions. There were 193 library card holders and circulation to date for the year was 1,935. The library was open Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m., and from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Henderson held the post of city librarian for 22 years. During that time, the library had several homes, including a vacated school building on Cabrillo Avenue, the former Dominguez Land Co. office at Cabrillo and El Prado Avenue and, finally, a cottage on El Prado.

Her daughter, Mrs. Dorothy Jamieson, took over as librarian in 1935, and also held the post for 22 years. Isabel Henderson died in 1936, the same year that the library’s first permanent home, a Works Progress Administration project, opened at 1345 Post Avenue.

The Torrance Public Library’s first permanent home was in this building on Post Avenue downtown, which now houses the Torrance Historical Society.

 

The library operated independently in its first year before joining the new Los Angeles County library system in 1914. In 1935, the city contracted with the county library to provide services for the Torrance library. Under the agreement, Torrance owned the buildings and furnishings, but the county owned the books and supplied library staff members.

 
Torrance had eyed the current central library site as early as 1959. (Click on clip to enlarge.)

 

As early as 1958, the city considered ending ties with the county and establishing its own independent library system. But it was not until April 18, 1967 that the city’s voters passed a $2.35 million bond issue to finance its establishment.

 

It was left to then-city librarian Russell West to build the independent system from scratch, as the county took all its books once its agreement with Torrance to provide books and services expired on June 30, 1968. (West had been hired in February, 1967 in anticipation of handling the transition to an independent system.)

In addition, the city broke ground for its new central library the next year, on Sunday, March 31, 1968. (See clip, above. Click to enlarge.) The $1.4 million structure had been in the planning stages for years as part of the city’s new civic center complex. Construction began on the site just east of the Victor Bensted Plunge on Torrance Boulevard.

Construction crews work on the Torrance Civic Center Library building in this 1970 Daily Breeze file photo.

 

The new Torrance Civic Center Library at 3301 Torrance Boulevard was dedicated on Sunday, April 4, 1971. West fought to have a basement added on to the original plans, in order to have room for expansion.

That’s exactly the space that was used 30 years later when the basement was converted into the audiovisual department in a $1.2 million project. The remodeled library reopened on February 22, 2001, after the completion of the first major renovation in the library’s history.

Another major remodeling costing $1.8 million began in 2008 and was finished in 2009. After the central library remodeling was completed, each of the city’s five branches – Isabel Henderson (named for the city’s first librarian), El Retiro, Walteria, Southeast and North Torrance – also underwent remodeling. The final branch to be revamped, North Torrance, is currently closed and scheduled to reopen in June 2010.

Another major change occurred on December 11, 1996, when the main library was renamed the Katy Geissert Civic Center Library, after the city’s first woman council member and mayor. Geissert, a driving force during the library’s conversion to an independent entity back in 1967, died in July 2000.

Sources:

“25 Things About the Torrance Public Library,” blog post by Michael George, reference librarian: http://torrancepubliclibrary.wordpress.com/2009/04/08/25-things-about-the-torrance-public-library/

Daily Breeze files.

Historic Torrance: A Pictorial History of Torrance, California, by Dennis F. Shanahan and Charles Elliott Jr., Legends Press, 1984.

Images of America: Old Torrance Olmsted Districts, by Bonnie Mae Barnard and Save Historic Old Torrance, Arcadia Publishing, 2005.

News Notes of California Libraries, Vol. 9, No. 1, Jan.-Sept. 1914, California State Library/California State Printing Office, 1915. 

The year 2010 marks the 50th anniversary of the opening of Providence Little Company of Mary Medical Center in Torrance.

The hospital’s unusual name comes from the Sisters of the Little Company of Mary, the congregation of nuns founded by Mary Potter in Nottingham, England in 1877. The “little company” refers to “the faithful followers who stayed with Mary, the Mother of Jesus, at the foot of the cross throughout his suffering and death,” according to the hospital’s website.

The congregation’s stated mission is to help for the poor, sick, suffering and dying. The Sisters worked extensively in Europe in its early years. A Chicago businessman visiting Rome was so impressed with the Congregation’s care of his terminally ill wife that he offered to sponsor the group in the U.S. Three nuns established the order in Chicago in 1893 as a result.

 

“Who was it that remained faithful to Our Lord on Calvary? Was it not the little group who remained in the company of Mary at the foot of the cross?” – The Venerable Mary Potter, above, founder of The Sisters of the Little Company of Mary. (Photo courtesy Providence Little Company of Mary Medical Center.)

 

Mary Potter died in 1913. In 1988, Pope John Paul II gave her “Venerable” status, a step on her way to eventual canonization as a saint.

The Sisters of the Little Company of Mary arrived in Torrance in 1957 to begin planning and fundraising for a new hospital to be built there. Hospital board co-chairman Sam Levy headed the fundraising campaign, which raised $500,000 from donations. Some federal funds were used, but no new bond issues or taxes were used to finance the effort.

The general contractor Steed Bros. broke ground on construction of the new five-story, four-wing structure on December 19, 1957. The completed Little Company of Mary Hospital at 4101 Torrance Boulevard had 150 beds, and was engineered to accommodate three additional stories for future expansions. It cost approximately $3.5 million to build.

Dedication ceremonies for the new hospital were held on Saturday, December 12, 1959. His Eminence James Frances Cardinal McIntyre  blessed the facility. Among the estimated 1500 other attendees were County Supervisor Burton Chace, Torrance Mayor Albert Isen and many other mayors and chamber of commerce presidents from throughout the South Bay.

The first patients were admitted to the hospital on Sunday, January 3, 1960. Dr. John A. Wilson, M.D., of Manhattan Beach headed its medical staff of 175 physicians.

The hospital has expanded many times over the years. A new convent and chapel opened in August 1966. Major expansions also took place in 1969 and and 1979. after which the hospital’s bed count increased to 263.

Little Company of Mary Hospital in 1965. Daily Breeze file photo.

 

In 1992, San Pedro Peninsula Hospital became a part of the Little Company of Mary south Bay health network. Bay Harbor Hospital in Harbor City was added in 1997. In 1998, Little Company began leasing the former South Bay Hospital in Redondo Beach, transforming it into the Beach Cities Amublatory Care Center.

On September 1, 1999, Little Company of Mary began its affiliation with the Seattle-based Sisters of Providence Health System. By merging with Providence’s Burbank facilities, the Providence Health Care System Southern California Region was formed.

 

Another major expansion of Little Company’s Torrance hospital occurred in 2002 with the opening of the $55 million state-of-the-art Hannon Tower. The five-story, 122,000-square-foot building now houses about two-thirds of the hospital’s beds.

In April 2007, Little Company purchased the 6.7-acre parcel where the Daily Breeze had operated for more than 40 years, with plans to demolish the old Breeze building and construct new medical office buildings and a parking garage there.

On January 1, 2009, the facility officially changed its name to Providence Little Company of Mary Medical Center Torrance.

 

The first high school to be built in Wilmington was Wilmington High School, which was completed in 1912. The striking red brick structure was located on Anaheim Street facing Avalon Boulevard.

 

Wilmington High School opened in 1912. It had to be demolished after it was damaged during the 1933 Long Beach earthquake.

 

A group of architects assembled to write the 1914 book School Architecture in California (State Printing Office) had this to say about the building:

The Wilmington High School, Los Angeles, presents a refined and beautiful exterior and typifies an architecture of the civilization to which California really belongs. The use of brick in school buildings is here carried to an extremely high order of art and inspired the Jury with much hope for the future.

Its future lasted until it was seriously damaged by the 6.2-magnitude Long Beach earthquake of 1933, after which the facility was all but abandoned. It is believed to have been torn down during World War II.

 

The entrance to Wilmington High School.

 

Wilmington High School essentially had been replaced with the January 1926 opening of Banning High School at 1500 Avalon Boulevard (near Pacific Coast Highway). This even larger brick structure was named after wilmington’s founder General Phineas Banning, and cost $385,000 to build.

 

Students walk by the Banning High School main building in 1971, shortly after the Sylmar earthquake damaged it beyond repair.

 

This ivy-covered building would be the home of Banning High School until damage from the 1971 Sylmar earthquake caused its closure. Plans for the construction of the current Banning High School had already been on the boards in 1970, and involved using the current property and acquiring additional adjacent land.

 

Demolition crews apply the wrecking ball to the Banning High School main building in March 1973.

 

The old Banning High structure had to be vacated after the 1971 quake and lie empty until it was demolished late March 1973. Shortly after it was torn down, a time capsule from the last Wilmington High School that had been placed in the then-new Banning High School late in 1925 was opened (click on clipping to enlarge it):

 

Students attended in classes in temporary buildings and bungalows for another couple of years until the new facilities were completed and opened for classes in fall 1975. Because of the revised configuration, the school’s new address became 1527 Lakme Avenue.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sources:

“Banning High School History,” Banning High School website, http://www.banninghs.org/history.jsp.

Daily Breeze files.

Images of America: Wilmington, Wilmington Historical Society, Drum Barracks Civil War Museum, and the Banning Residence Museum, Arcadia Publishing Co., 2008.

School Architecture in California, California Superintendent of Public Instruction, State Printing Office, 1914.

 

The Hawthorne Club, shown here in an undated photograph from the 1940s, was a nightclub, a bowling alley, a boxing arena and a venue for community events in Hawthorne.

 

The Hawthorne Club was a focal point of night life in the city for several decades.

Located on the west side of Hawthorne Boulevard at 126th Street near the current city hall, the building was constructed sometime in the late 1920s, shortly after the city’s official incorporation in 1922.

The cavernous club hosted all kinds of events during its decades of operation. It hosted regular matches at its own bowling alley, and was large enough to stage prizefights and dance marathons in the 1920s and 1930s.

According to Robert S. Hartman’s History of Hawthorne, “No definite records are available, but old-timers claim that Frankie Laine, later to become a very popular singer, and his partner danced continually for six days to win the grand prize” at a Hawthorne Club dance marathon.

While Laine, then known as Frank Lo Vecchio, did indeed spend many years as a successful dance marathoner before becoming a singing star, I couldn’t verify if the above story is true.

Boxing matches also were a popular fixture at the Hawthorne Club. The photo below shows former world heavyweight champion Max Baer (in white t-shirt at right in ring) at a youth boxing exhibition at the club in 1936, during which he acted as a referee:

Baer went on to roles in several movies, including the 1956 boxing classic “The Harder They Fall” with Humphrey Bogart. His son, Max Baer Jr., became famous for playing Jethro in television’s “The Beverly Hillbillies.”

Legendary athlete Jim Thorpe also was regular at the club, frequently bowling on its lanes.

During the gambling boom of the late 1930s, the Hawthorne Club outfitted itself as a poker club at a cost of $25,000. According to a Nov. 7, 1938 Los Angeles Times story, crowds of poker players fled from the club when police raided it along with the Embassy Club in Gardena.

Both clubs were closed temporarily and had their gambling equipment seized. The raids were carried out in order to provide a test case for the legality of draw poker in California. The clubs lost their case in a Feburary 1939 ruling that didn’t outlaw the game, but did declare the poker halls a public nuisance.

The Hawthorne Club continued to host civic and recreational activities in Hawthorne until the late 1950s, when the Northrop Corporation bought it for use as a recreational facility for its employees. It was torn down in 1962 and replaced by office and retail buildings.

 

 

Sources:

“Frankie Laine,” http://www.frankielaine.com/.

History of Hawthorne, by Robert S. Hartman, 1972.

Images of America: Hawthorne, by Walt Dixon and Jerry Roberts, Arcadia Publishing, 2005.

“Picturing the past now part of the job,” by Ian Gregor, The Daily Breeze, Dec. 15, 2002, Page A4.

“Raiders close poker clubs,” Los Angeles Times, Nov. 7, 1938, Page 3.
“Poker parlor loses fight,” Los Angeles Times, Feb. 3, 1939, Page A12.

 

 

 

Members of the Sweetser family lived in the distinctive house at 417 Beryl Street in Redondo Beach for more than 60 years.

 

The Sweetser House stands out like a miniature oasis of serenity in the middle of one of the Redondo Beach’s busiest areas, on the corner of Pacific Coast Highway and Beryl Street.

The white clapboard Colonial Revival home and surrounding property at 417 Beryl contrasts with the commercial developments and the more typical stucco and cottage-style homes in the surrounding area.

Chase and Lillian Sweetser built the 2,600-square-foot house, designed by architect E.W. Stillwell, in 1921. They had moved to Redondo Beach from the Midwest in 1911, and owned several businesses in the city, including a grocery store.

Sweetser was an early investor in the Coca-Cola Company, and later became a member of the board of directors for the Coca-Cola Bottling Company of Los Angeles. He died at the age of 74 in 1947. Lillian Sweetser lived in the house until her death in 1981.

Chase Sweetser Jr., the couple’s only son, was born in 1912. He also became involved in the bottling business and was elected to the board of directors of Coca-Cola Bottling Company of Los Angeles, same as his father. He even served as president of the company from 1958 until 1961.

 

Chase Sweetser Jr. sits on the organ bench in the living room of the Sweetser House in this 1985 Daily Breeze photo.

 

He lived in the house until his death in 1987, long enough to see the Sweetser House added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984, only the fourth site in Redondo Beach to be so honored.

According to the National Register, the house is “a visual reminder of an era of home building which marked a change from resort to year-round community … in a city whose principal housing stock consisted of modest cottages and Spanish colonial stucco.”

 

The Sweetser family’s association with the house ended when Chase Sweetser III, above, sold it for $950,000 in 1989. 1988 Daily Breeze photo.

 

Chase Sweetser III then became the property’s sole owner. He sold the property in 1989 for $950,000 to mortgage finance executive James LaPoint, who received permission from the city to operate his business out of the house.

LaPoint sold the house to investors after his business was hurt by the real estate collapse in the early 1990s, and it sat vacant for several years. Chiropractor David Birdsall purchased the Sweetser House property in December 1998 for almost $2 million.

Birdsall planned to tear down the property’s guest house and build a cafe and a day spa in addition to his chiropractic office, but gave up after a lengthy, unsuccessful battle with the city over his proposed renovations. 

Birdsall sold the house in May 2003 to its current owner, financial executive Scott Leonard, who currently operates his wealth management business Trovena from the house.

 

Sources:

Daily Breeze news stories.

A Photographic Collection of Historic Landmark Properties, City of Redondo Beach Planning Department, December 2000.

 “The Sweetser Residence,” http://www.e-lwm.com/about/sweetser.htm.

The Plush Horse Inn and Restaurant in the early 1970s.

 

The Plush Horse Inn opened at 1700 Pacific Coast Highway in Redondo Beach on August 3, 1960, with help from a throughbred horse from Del Mar named Plush Horse. According a Daily Breeze story, he helped to untie the ribbon to open the motor hotel for business.
The Plush Horse’s rooms contained all modern conveniences, including air-condtioning, telephone and even indidivudal televsions.
The facility near the corner of PCH and Palos Verdes Boulevard had two adjacent eateries, a larger restaurant knows as the Plush Horse, and the Plush Pony coffee shop, and was large enough to serve as a banquet and meeting room.
In November 1980, the Plush Pony restaurant began a short but successful run as Annabelle’s Discotheque, but that incarnation was troubled and eventually closed because of unruly crowds and unhappy neighbors.
Upscale restaurateurs Michael Franks and Robert Bell transformed the Inn’s smaller coffee shop, the Plush Pony, into Chez Melange in 1982, when the inn was still known as the Plush Pony. It became one of the South Bay’s best-known restaurants almost immediately. In 1983,
The Plush Pony Inn became the Palos Verdes Inn.
After its stint as Annabelle’s, the main restaurant became the French restaurant Renaud’s, after its chef, Renaud Defond. Then-Daily Breeze restaurant critic Charles Britton gave it two stars in a 1985 review, but Renaud’s closed soon thereafter.

 

The Strand nightclub opened at the site in May 1986, and drew name acts such as the Fabulous Thunderbirds, Leon Russell, Chris Isaak, Gregg Allman, Nick Lowe and Pancho Sanchez during its ten years of operation as a supper club featuring musical entertainment. The Strand struggled in its later years, filing bankruptcy in 1994, though it continued to hold shows.

 

The Strand nightclub in 1994.

 

It was rechristened as Club Caprice in 1996 with the idea of attracting a more upscale and less rowdy clientele, but increasing competition from venues such as the House of Blues in West Hollywood, who paid more for acts and insisted on exclusivity, hurt the club’s revenues and it closed in late 1999.

Bristol Farms drastically remodeled the building before opening one of its gourmet grocery stores on December 6, 2000. It remains a successful location for the chain to this day. 

 

Bristol Farms Market now occupies the former Plush Horse Inn site. 2009 Daily Breeze photo.

 

 

Sources:

Daily Breeze files.

 

What institution has had four different names, and held classes in a banking office and an apartment building before finding a permanent home?

Answer: California State University, Dominguez Hills.

 

It was chartered on April 19, 1960 as South Bay State College as part of the founding of the California State College system. Its early years were spent in planning and development, mostly spearheaded by the college’s president, Leo F. Cain, who was hired to develop the school in January 1962.

During this time, the college was renamed California State College, Palos Verdes, which held its first classes for about 40-50 students in the California Federal Bank branch office at Peninsula Center in Rolling Hills Estates starting in the fall of 1965.

The debate over where to build the college’s permanent home went on for years, and centered on three sites: San Pedro, Torrance and Dominguez Hills, with Palos Verdes having been deemed too expensive.

 

The decision was made late in 1965 to purchase land for the college in Dominguez Hills based on not only on financial considerations but also in the hopes that the site would draw an ethnically diverse student population.

The purchase of 356 acres bounded by Victoria Street, Avalon Boulevard and Central Avenue  for its construction at a total cost of $10.15 million was not finalized until December 30, 1966.
In the meantime, the school’s enrollment had increased, outgrowing the temporary quarters at Cal Fed. The first phase of permanent buildings would not open until 1973, so a temporary location was needed.

In stepped South Bay developer Ray Watt, who built an apartment-like structure on the other side of Victoria Street from the permanent campus site in 100 days in 1966, in time for the beginning of the 1966-67 school year. The plan was to hold classes there until the permanent campus opened, and then remodel the temporary site back into apartments.

California State Sen. Joseph M. Kennick, center, inspects the new temporary Watt Campus of CSUDH with dean of instruction Dr. Lyle Gibson, left, and college advisory board chairman Tom Smith in December 1966.

 

That’s how the Watt Campus of California State College, Dominguez Hills came into existence. The college’s new name became official a few days after faculty, administrators and staff moved in on August 26, 1966. Classes on the Watt Campus for 180 students began there on September 22, 1966.

Students line up to register for classes at the Watt Campus in Fall 1968.

 

It originally was intended to be a one-year solution, but the Watt Campus remained in operation as the permanent buildings began to take shape directly across the street. By 1970, enrollment had increased to 2,652 students.

Parts of The Watt Campus were converted into condominiums after the permanent campus was built, but it also continued to be used for some classes until it was demolished to make way for residential development in 1972.

President Cain retired in 1976. In 1977, the college underwent its fourth and final name change, to California State University, Dominguez Hills, when it was certified as a university. In 1978, phase two of the school’s development was completed with the opening of the theater, health center, humanities building and gymnasium. By the end of the decade, enrollment had reached 7,173.

As of Fall 2009, CSUDH has an enrollment of 14,477 students and is among the most ethnically-diverse universities in the United States with a student population that is 41.5 percent Hispanic, 28.4 percent African American, 18.1 percent White, 11.7 percent Asian, and 0.3 percent American Indian.

 

Ray Watt died in July 2009 at the age of 90, but is still remembered for his contribution to the formation of CSUDH.

 

 

Sources:

“CSUDH History,” California State University, Dominguez Hills Web site timeline, http://www.csudh.edu/abouttheuniversity/history/

The Campus History Series: California State University, Dominguez Hills, by Gregory L. Williams, Arcadia Publishing, 2010.

Daily Breeze files.

“Ray Watt (1919-2009): South Bay Developer Built Original California State College, Dominguez Hills Campus Across From Current University Site,” California State University, Dominguez Hills Web site, http://www.csudh.edu/univadv/dateline/archives/20090710/campusnews/raywatt.htm

More photos

For more extensive photos from the Watt Campus era, go to the California State University, Dominguez Hills digital photo collection: http://archives.csudh.edu:2006/index.php.

 

The Pacific Electric Railway depot in Torrance is shown in this photo taken between 1912 and 1916. The cigar stand can be seen at left of the depot. (Source: Historic Torrance: A Pictorial History of Torrance, California.)

When noted architect Irving Gill designed the Pacific Electric Railway depot in Torrance almost 100 years ago, he probably didn’t imagine that it would evolve into one of the city’s toniest restaurants.

In 1911, Torrance agreed to donate a 125-acre site to the Pacific Electric Railway as a new location for its railcar construction and repair facilities. In return, Pacific Electric agreed to build a Red Car line to Torrance.

Gill’s depot at 1250 Cabrillo Avenue was completed in 1912 to serve Red Car passengers on this Torrance spur from the Gardena line. After the railroad’s maintenance facilites were completed in 1917, a special “shop train” began running that connected the Torrance depot to the Pacific Electric yards so that Pacific Electric employees could ride the trolley cars to get to work.

Aerial photo shows the Pacific Electric maintenance yards in the right front of photo, with downtown Torrance behind it. Oil wells can be seen in the distance. (Source: Historic Torrance: A Pictorial History of Torrance, California.)

 

As completed in 1912, Gill’s simple but elegant building at Sartori Avenue was topped off with a gold dome, and included an outdoor cigar stand.

When the Red Car lines to the South Bay began to disappear in the 1940s, the building’s importance diminished and it was used for storage. By the late 1980s, attempts to preserve it as an historical landmark had failed, and the building had fallen into disrepair.

 

This September 1977 Daily Breeze file photo shows the Torrance depot in its unoccupied state.

 

Several bidders expressed an interest in buying the property, including Tommy’s Coffee Shop owner Annie Zaharis, whose bid to turn the building into a restaurant was denied by the depot’s then-owner Southern Pacific in 1978. (She eventually gave up on the plan and opened a new restaurant in Carson in 1981.)

After several such offers, Southern Pacific finally agreed to sell to local developers Capellino and Associates in a deal signed on February 4, 1986. Capellino and Associates meticulously restored the building and interested Robert Bell and Michael Franks, the restaurateurs behind Chez Melange, in opening a new restaurant there.

The Depot opened in October 1991 with highly regarded Michael Shafer as its chef, and, other than a December 19, 1997 fire that destroyed the kitchen, has been thriving at the location ever since.

 

The Depot restaurant has occupied the former Pacific Electric Railway depot building since 1991.

 

The Red Car Brewery & Restaurant at 1266 Sartori Ave. sometimes gets its history confused with The Depot’s. Bob and Laurie Brandt opened the Red Car in 2000 in a building that once was the site of a Pacific Telephone and Telegraph office building from 1928 to 1953, not the site of the Torrance Pacific Electric depot itself.

 

 

The Red Car Restaurant & Brewery is located in a building that once housed a Pacific Telephone and Telegraph office.

 

Sources:

Daily Breeze news reports.

Historic Torrance: A Pictorial History of Torrance, California, by Dennis F. Shanahan and Charles Elliott Jr., Legends Press, 1984.

Images of America: Old Torrance Olmsted Districts, by Bonnie Mae Barnard and Save Historic Old Torrance, Arcadia Publishing, 2005. 

Pacific Electric Red Cars, by Bob Peterson, unpublished manuscript, February 1992.

South Bay County. Has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?

Well, 35 years ago, its formation was seriously considered.

The South Bay County Committee was formed in August 1975 to explore the creation of a separate county. It arose out of a taxpayer rights group called HURT — Homeowners Under Rapacious Taxation — formed by Jim Walker, who would also chair the South Bay County Committee.

HURT determined that the South Bay communities that would be part of the new county, namely Torrance, El Segundo, Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, Redondo Beach, Palos Verdes Estates and the El Porto section of Manhattan Beach, comprised three percent of Los Angeles County’s population, yet were paying six percent of the county’s taxes.

Calling that “basically inequitable,” Walker and his committee formally launched its petition to secede from L.A. County on Sept. 11, 1975 at a public meeting at the Joslyn Center in Torrance.

This map shows the proposed South Bay County, complete with numbered supervisorial districts.

The South Bay group wasn’t alone in this way of thinking. At the time, a formal secession movement had arisen in northern L.A. County with the proposed formation of Canyon County in the Newhall/Saugus area, talk had begun about a similar movement in the San Gabriel Valley and L.A. City Councilman Ernani Bernardi was pushing the formation of a new county for the San Fernando Valley, a much-discussed idea.

The South Bay drive began to gather momentum. It was endorsed with 4-3 vote by the Torrance City Council in December 1975, and committee members set out to gather enough signatures to qualify the petition for the June 1976 ballot.

Unfortunately, the initial drive fell short by a few thousand signatures by the March 8, 1976 deadline, and the first drive fizzled.

Enter Assemblyman Mike Cullen, D-57th District, who introduced a bill later that month that would have created a much larger county including everything south of Rosecrans and west of the San Gabriel River.

Cullen’s proposal didn’t gain favor in the South Bay, which considered the area too large. But it did keep the secession idea alive.

By May 1977, a new drive that revived the seven-city secession plan had qualified with enough signatures to be placed on the March 1978 ballot.

In October 1977, The South Bay and Peninsuala Formation Review commissions were formed. In addition to the South Bay plan, the three cities of Rolling Hills, Rolling Hills Estates and Rancho Palos Verdes also wanted to form their own county.

In March 1978, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors authorized placing Measures C and D on the June 6, 1978 ballot. Proposition C would have formed South Bay County, while Proposition D would have formed Peninsula County.

The Daily Breeze endorsed the June 1978 ballot measures.

The proposed South Bay County would have included 42.23 square miles and would have had a population of 277,847, while Peninsula County would have been 19.5 square miles in area with a population of about 55,000.

In order for the measures to pass, they would have needed not only more than a 50 percent majority of votes among voters in the proposed new counties, but also more than 50 percent of the vote among the rest of Los Angeles County’s residents.

I guess it’s obvious how the vote turned out. The good news? Voters in the proposed counties easily passed the measures. In the South Bay, the tally was 69,514 votes for and 21,070 against, while Peninsula voters approved their measure, 17,570 to 4,310.

Unfortunately, L.A. County didn’t agree, sending both measures down to defeat by large margins. The final countywide tally for Proposition C was 1,188,904 against to 449,971 for and for Proposition D, 1,214,255 against, 414,297 for.

The 14 newly elected officals who would have governed the new counties were left wihthout a government to serve, though most never expected the measures to succeed. Potential Peninsula County supervisor Melvin Hughes quipped, “You’ve heard of the man without a country? I’m the man without a county.”