New walking tour goes back 130 years into past
DOWNTOWN, SM Who says there’s no history in Santa Monica?
To learn more than 130 years of history about a city that seems to have very little, especially compared to its east coast counterparts, all that’s required is a comfortable pair of shoes and just two hours.
For the price of $10, certified docents with the Santa Monica Conservancy will lead interested history lovers into Santa Monica’s past, through just six blocks in Downtown Santa Monica.
The Santa Monica Conservancy launched its new Downtown Walking Tours earlier this month after providing sneak peak tours every Saturday last month to a test audience of conservancy members.
More than 120 people have taken the tours in the past month and a half, according to Ruthann Lehrer, member of the Santa Monica Conservancy who helped develop the tour along with conservancy board member Carol Lemlein.
The idea to start a downtown walking tour came from a similar successful program with the Los Angeles Conservancy of which Lehrer was a director prior to coming to Santa Monica. After receiving a grant from the Santa Monica City Council nine months ago to jump start the program, members of the conservancy began extensive research of the history of Downtown Santa Monica, reviewing city records and inventory of buildings, reading old newspaper articles and history books written about the area.
Initially proposed as a monthly occurrence, the tours have been held on a weekly basis after more and more conservancy members volunteered to serve as docents. There are now 22 docents that have gone through six weeks of training11 “The one comment we receive is from Santa Monica residents who shop at the [Third Street] Promenade but never looked at the buildings,” Lehrer said. “They discovered a part of Santa Monica they never thought about.”
The tour covers 21 buildings total in Santa Monica, starting at the oldest building — the Rapp Saloon, which was constructed on Second Street in 1875 — and concluding at the Natural Resource Defense Council building, constructed in 2003 on the next block on Second Street.
The Saturday tour attracted Chad Max and Renee Travlos from Venice. Frequent patrons of the promenade, they decided to embark on the morning tour after reading about it in a calendar listing.
Max has always been intrigued by the Rapp Saloon, but admits not knowing much about the building itself.
“We don’t know much about the history of Santa Monica,” Max said before the tour began.
GOING BACK IN TIME A group of about five or six people converges at the Youth Hostel on Second Street around 10 a.m. It is here where the tour begins as the Youth Hostel was built around the same time as the Rapp Saloon.
Originally constructed as a beer hall by William Rapp, the building was in constant use until the late 1970s when it was boarded up after being deemed unsafe by the city. The landmarked building was reopened years later when Hostelling International came along and proposed wrapping the new hostel around the saloon in “loving embrace,” as described by docent Kay Pattison who led a tour on Saturday.
Along the side of the building are remnants of old store signs, giving a glimpse at how the building was used after its life as a saloon. The building was at one time a city hall, a piano store, a tire store and an art gallery.
There are about four historically landmarked builΔdings in the tour, including the famous Bay Cities Guaranty Building and a skyscraper clock tower on Santa Monica Boulevard that sits 12 stories in the air.
The building, constructed in 1929, became Santa Monica’s first true skyscraper when it opened. An example of the popular art deco architectural style of the time, the building was constructed by the Bay Cities Guaranty and Loan Association, which later left the building after the Great Depression caused it to go bankrupt.
Several of the 21 buildings along the tour, which covers parts of Second Street, Broadway, Fourth Street, Third Street Promenade, Santa Monica Boulevard and Arizona Avenue, come with interesting stories unknown to the average resident.
For example, an apartment in the Builders Exchange Building (1927), located on the southeast corner of Fourth Street and Broadway, was once home to an up and coming cartoonist by the name of Elzie Crisler Segar. An avid fisherman, many believe that it was in the apartment where Segar came up with the idea for Popeye the Sailor.
Through the buildings along the tour, docents dip into the stories of how Santa Monica came to be. They tell the stories of town founders, Col. Robert S. Baker and Senator John P. Jones of Nevada, and their dreams to turn Santa Monica into the port of Los Angeles.
Though they built a railroad and wharf, their dreams never materialized. Instead, their efforts brought tourism into the city, turning Santa Monica into the vibrant community it has become today.
After covering historic buildings like the Central Tower Building on Fourth Street, an office complex where an old brass U.S. Mailbox and chute is still in use, and the old Majestic/Mayfair Theater on Santa Monica Boulevard, which has been boarded up for years, the tour ends in a building that has come to represent what the city stands for today — green living.
The local office of the NRDC was one of the first buildings in the country to receive the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design designations from the United States Green Building Council. The designation certifies the building as being environmentally friendly.
The building is a symbol of the city’s future, sitting amongst buildings of the past.
The tours are held every Saturday from 10 a.m. to noon. The tour costs $10 for the general public and $5 for members of the Santa Monica and L.A. conservancies. Reservations can be made the Thursday before the tour online at www.smconservancy.org.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 23, 2007. Read the original PDF.