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Metropolis in the Making: Los Angeles in the 1920s
Los Angeles came of age in the 1920s. The great boom of that decade gave shape to the L.A. of its vast suburban sprawl and reliance on the automobile, its prominence as a financial and industrial center, and the rise of Hollywood as the film capital of the world. This collection of original essays explores the making of the Los Angeles metropolis during this remarkable decade. The authors examine the city's racial, political, cultural, and industrial dynamics, making this volume an essential guide to understanding the rise of Los Angeles as one of the most important cities in the world.
These essays showcase the work of a new generation of scholars who are turning their attention to the history of the City of Angels to create a richer, more detailed picture of our urban past. The essays provide a fascinating look at life in the new suburbs, in the oil fields, in the movie studios, at church, and at the polling place as they reconceptualize the origins of contemporary urban problems and promise in Los Angeles and beyond. Adding to its interest, the volume is illustrated with period photography, much of which has not been published before.
These essays showcase the work of a new generation of scholars who are turning their attention to the history of the City of Angels to create a richer, more detailed picture of our urban past. The essays provide a fascinating look at life in the new suburbs, in the oil fields, in the movie studios, at church, and at the polling place as they reconceptualize the origins of contemporary urban problems and promise in Los Angeles and beyond. Adding to its interest, the volume is illustrated with period photography, much of which has not been published before.
380 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2001
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
October 30, 2019
This book gave me a much fuller understanding of what it was like to live and work in Los Angeles during the decade of the 1920s. I had read other history books that touched on the subject, but this pegged a point in time and riffed around that theme. Granted, this is an academic book, and as such, it is not a page turner. The prose of academics lies along a spectrum that leads to unreadability. However, I am still glad that I read this book.
This is an anthology, a series of essays written by experts in specific areas. Each expert goes into great detail about his own thin slice of the 1920s. Chapter 2, "Mulholland Highway and the Engineering Culture of Los Angeles in the 1920s," opened my eyes to the moment when the Hollywood Hills were developed. In fact, before 1924, those hills were just a wilderness owned by over 4,000 different landowners, but occupied by only a few shacks and connected only by dirt roads. Many sections were impassable. So at a time when downtown was bustling and Hollywood was subdivided, Laurel Canyon and Coldwater were a dusty nothing. Fires plagued the area during dry summers, and landslides were common during heavy rains. Although this was an eye-opening chapter, however, it was one of the worst written.
Chapter 5 was a standout, as well. I've always known that So Cal was once covered with oranges groves and other crops, and that people had to drive long distances through the groves to get from downtown to Long Beach, for example, but this author made me see the whole setup in a different way. Nancy Quam-Wickham painted a portrait of So Cal in 1920 as a bustling city surrounded by a few scattered *country* communities, such as San Pedro, Wilmington, Brea, and the like. But then the oil boom hit, big money poured in, and those rural citizens cashed in. They invited ugly, smelly industry into their community, and in return, they received high prices for their land, which had suddenly soared in resale value. As industry moved in, each of these communities one by one became industrial pits, from the oil-refinery town of Torrance to the autoworker's town of Bell to the steelworkers' town of Huntington Park and many others. Signal Hill and Santa Fe Springs were oil-drilling towns. And as these industries took over, the lives of the residents changed depending on the companies' preferences. Quam-Wickham does a good job of painting that family portrait.
Chapter 7, "Making Mexico in Los Angeles," was the most important chapter for me, since I am researching my own Mexican ancestry. It's written by Douglas Monroy, an abysmal writer whose previous book about Mexican-Americans, "Rebirth," I have read. Still, his grasp of the subject is firm. He talks about the desire of Mexicans to return to Mexico after the Revolution, but the financial impossibility of it, and as a consequence, their goal of creating a little Mexico in America, which they called Mexico de afuera. Then he goes into great detail about the cultural life of Mexicans in LA, such as the live theatres along Main Street that did performances in Spanish, and who the performers were. You feel that you are on a walking tour. Then he goes into the Mexican department stores of the time, the baseball leagues, the churches, the politics, the fiestas, the boxing scene, the attitudes towards women's equality, and Mexican movie stars, including Dolores Del Rio, Lupe Velez, Ramon Novarro, and Gilbert Roland.
I didn't expect read chapter 8, but it caught me. Titled, "The View from Spring Street: White-Collar Men in the City of Angels," this chapter goes into the employment requirements and opportunities for whites. This follows white-collar men, who faced a buttoned-down time, with many social and reputational restrictions on workers.
I wasn't so interested in the chapters on religious institutions, skimming through chapter 9, "Practically Every Religion Being Represented." However, I was interested in chapter 10, "Fighting Like the Devil in the City of Angels: The Rise of Fundamentalist Charles E. Fuller," mainly because I wanted to know the story of Biola Bible College. The chapter outlines how Biola started as a huge Bible college in the 1920s, occupying an entire city block, and I later learned that the college didn't move to La Mirada until 1959. The bulk of the chapter, though, is a fascinating fight between different millennial factions with the fundamentalist movement, which is strange in the extreme. This, too, suffers from inadequate writing.
There are a couple chapters on Hollywood, which I didn't read, and ones that touched on labor struggles, which I ditched, as well. I wasn't interested in black history, either.
However, I was interested in chapter 12, "My America or Yours? Americanization and the Battle for the Youth of Los Angeles," which is written by another author that I had previously read, William Deverell, author of Whitewashed Adobe. Another poor writer, this academic starts off by telling the fascinating story of Bromley Oxnam, a pastor of the social-reformer ilk who fought against the forces of the right, the Better America Foundation, which could just as easily have been called the Commercial Mendacity Foundation. Their lies were in the service of big business, and are familiar to us even today. They pushed legislation to push the age of compulsory education from 16 down to 14, lobbied for six-day workweeks, fought minimum-wage laws, and opposed reform of workplace hours. They opposed the abolition of night work for women and minors, pitted themselves against equal pay for women, and were, of course, anti-union. The chapter outlines Oxnam's campaign for school board member, and the BAF's vigorous fight against it. Ultimately, the BAF defeated Oxnam and basically ran him out of town. He ended up taking the job as president of De Pauw University in Chicago.
Chapter 13 was the last chapter in which I was interested. "Did the Ruling Class Rule at City Hall in 1920s Los Angeles" was interesting because it outlined how different forces fought for power during that decade. It also established that Los Angeles was not a crooked machine, even though aspects of the bureaucracy may have been on the take. District Attorney Asa Keyes was convicted in 1928 of selling selective prosecution to the highest bidder, but hey, they put him behind bars. Owner of the LA Times Harry Chandler was also crooked, selectively covering various issues and public figures depending on where his financial interests lay. However, no one person ran the town, and wrongdoers were often being caught and put behind bars. This is useful to know about this town.
In all, I'm glad I read the book. Now on to another book on the same topic, Kevin Starr's "Material Dreams: Southern California through the 1920s."
This is an anthology, a series of essays written by experts in specific areas. Each expert goes into great detail about his own thin slice of the 1920s. Chapter 2, "Mulholland Highway and the Engineering Culture of Los Angeles in the 1920s," opened my eyes to the moment when the Hollywood Hills were developed. In fact, before 1924, those hills were just a wilderness owned by over 4,000 different landowners, but occupied by only a few shacks and connected only by dirt roads. Many sections were impassable. So at a time when downtown was bustling and Hollywood was subdivided, Laurel Canyon and Coldwater were a dusty nothing. Fires plagued the area during dry summers, and landslides were common during heavy rains. Although this was an eye-opening chapter, however, it was one of the worst written.
Chapter 5 was a standout, as well. I've always known that So Cal was once covered with oranges groves and other crops, and that people had to drive long distances through the groves to get from downtown to Long Beach, for example, but this author made me see the whole setup in a different way. Nancy Quam-Wickham painted a portrait of So Cal in 1920 as a bustling city surrounded by a few scattered *country* communities, such as San Pedro, Wilmington, Brea, and the like. But then the oil boom hit, big money poured in, and those rural citizens cashed in. They invited ugly, smelly industry into their community, and in return, they received high prices for their land, which had suddenly soared in resale value. As industry moved in, each of these communities one by one became industrial pits, from the oil-refinery town of Torrance to the autoworker's town of Bell to the steelworkers' town of Huntington Park and many others. Signal Hill and Santa Fe Springs were oil-drilling towns. And as these industries took over, the lives of the residents changed depending on the companies' preferences. Quam-Wickham does a good job of painting that family portrait.
Chapter 7, "Making Mexico in Los Angeles," was the most important chapter for me, since I am researching my own Mexican ancestry. It's written by Douglas Monroy, an abysmal writer whose previous book about Mexican-Americans, "Rebirth," I have read. Still, his grasp of the subject is firm. He talks about the desire of Mexicans to return to Mexico after the Revolution, but the financial impossibility of it, and as a consequence, their goal of creating a little Mexico in America, which they called Mexico de afuera. Then he goes into great detail about the cultural life of Mexicans in LA, such as the live theatres along Main Street that did performances in Spanish, and who the performers were. You feel that you are on a walking tour. Then he goes into the Mexican department stores of the time, the baseball leagues, the churches, the politics, the fiestas, the boxing scene, the attitudes towards women's equality, and Mexican movie stars, including Dolores Del Rio, Lupe Velez, Ramon Novarro, and Gilbert Roland.
I didn't expect read chapter 8, but it caught me. Titled, "The View from Spring Street: White-Collar Men in the City of Angels," this chapter goes into the employment requirements and opportunities for whites. This follows white-collar men, who faced a buttoned-down time, with many social and reputational restrictions on workers.
I wasn't so interested in the chapters on religious institutions, skimming through chapter 9, "Practically Every Religion Being Represented." However, I was interested in chapter 10, "Fighting Like the Devil in the City of Angels: The Rise of Fundamentalist Charles E. Fuller," mainly because I wanted to know the story of Biola Bible College. The chapter outlines how Biola started as a huge Bible college in the 1920s, occupying an entire city block, and I later learned that the college didn't move to La Mirada until 1959. The bulk of the chapter, though, is a fascinating fight between different millennial factions with the fundamentalist movement, which is strange in the extreme. This, too, suffers from inadequate writing.
There are a couple chapters on Hollywood, which I didn't read, and ones that touched on labor struggles, which I ditched, as well. I wasn't interested in black history, either.
However, I was interested in chapter 12, "My America or Yours? Americanization and the Battle for the Youth of Los Angeles," which is written by another author that I had previously read, William Deverell, author of Whitewashed Adobe. Another poor writer, this academic starts off by telling the fascinating story of Bromley Oxnam, a pastor of the social-reformer ilk who fought against the forces of the right, the Better America Foundation, which could just as easily have been called the Commercial Mendacity Foundation. Their lies were in the service of big business, and are familiar to us even today. They pushed legislation to push the age of compulsory education from 16 down to 14, lobbied for six-day workweeks, fought minimum-wage laws, and opposed reform of workplace hours. They opposed the abolition of night work for women and minors, pitted themselves against equal pay for women, and were, of course, anti-union. The chapter outlines Oxnam's campaign for school board member, and the BAF's vigorous fight against it. Ultimately, the BAF defeated Oxnam and basically ran him out of town. He ended up taking the job as president of De Pauw University in Chicago.
Chapter 13 was the last chapter in which I was interested. "Did the Ruling Class Rule at City Hall in 1920s Los Angeles" was interesting because it outlined how different forces fought for power during that decade. It also established that Los Angeles was not a crooked machine, even though aspects of the bureaucracy may have been on the take. District Attorney Asa Keyes was convicted in 1928 of selling selective prosecution to the highest bidder, but hey, they put him behind bars. Owner of the LA Times Harry Chandler was also crooked, selectively covering various issues and public figures depending on where his financial interests lay. However, no one person ran the town, and wrongdoers were often being caught and put behind bars. This is useful to know about this town.
In all, I'm glad I read the book. Now on to another book on the same topic, Kevin Starr's "Material Dreams: Southern California through the 1920s."
January 2, 2022
Very good history of LA during the formative period of the studio system.
February 22, 2014
This book is essentially a collection of essays about Los Angeles in the 1920's detailing various aspects of the city from the movie industry, to religion, to labor versus management, to even the concept of the memorial park. The essays are written very much like a scholarly piece. Though the book is laid out and written academically, it isn't that difficult to read, it is just dry. Metropolis in the Making is fantastic for providing a glimpse at the rapidly growing city during some of its most important years.
March 31, 2016
This is one of my favorite books on California history. Each chapter is an essay on some aspect of the history of this state and all are interesting.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews