[Editor’s Note: Emulating Harry Hazel Culver on the 100th anniversary of his I Have a Dream-style speech that Culver City’s Founding Father gave to the California Club, downtown Los Angeles, City Councilman Jim Clarke was sterling last evening. As the Los Angeles Times once described July 22, 1913, “smooth-talking Harry H. Culver plunked down $2,000 for 93 acres of barley fields between Los Angeles and the seashore and started a city. Culver, a real estate developer, saw the area where the old train tracks crossed Washington Boulevard as ‘the neck of the bottle where everything had to come through,’ according to a local history.”]
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Mr. Culver
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Mr. Clarke
In 1,062 words, Mr. Culver and Mr. Clarke both said of the community that would be incorporated in 1917:
“I Love You, California,” has been re-echoed around the world, both in song and story.
But no one can fully appreciate its meaning as much as the person who is fortunate enough to call California home.
And to all true Californians those magic words send a thrill similar to that which is experienced by all true Americans at the mention of the “Star-Spangled Banner.”
California, besides its thousands of fertile acres that in the different sections will grow to perfection anything in plant life that can be raised anywhere on earth, its countless oil wells and mines of gold, silver and other metals, has within its confines more natural scenic attractions than any other equal area on the face of the globe.
Los Angeles. It’s a well-organized modern city with a population of 75,000, with banks and factories and stores great and small and millions of dollars with railroads and street railways, with sixty miles of solid, substantial, beautiful homes, with schools and churches,
And were it to be picked up one fine day and moved intact and complete, people and all, onto vacant territory adjoining the city of Los Angeles, the whole world and particularly we of this city would be overwhelmed with wonder and amazement.
The event would become one of the marvels of the world. It would be discussed in all the languages. And it would go down in history as the most extraordinary event the human mind ever struggled to grasp.
That very thing was done in the year which closed June 30.
Of course, the people came in groups and carloads, and were assimilated gradually. The buildings came by train and ship, in the form of materials. The money came in from all over the world – $250,000 a day. The railways and railroads came with extensions of a few miles each month.
Very few realized what was being achieved in this city. All watched the growth with interest, but the recurrence of the story month after month dulled interest. This same growth goes on constantly. The sound of the hammer and the saw, the groan of derricks, the clatter of the riveter, the fall of the pile-driver, the whistle of engines, the gong of cars, saturate us and benumb our minds.
When the whole column of figures showing progress is totaled, we rub our eyes.
But do we grasp its significance? Does the world know what we are doing?
Think, if you can, without confusion, of sixty-three solid miles of new residences in twelve months!
Think of $33,000,000 expended in one year for buildings.
Think of the post office receipts gaining $200,000 in one year.
Think of a 20 per cent increase in all business in 365 days.
Think of bank clearings of more than one billion dollars.
Think of a manufacturing business of $100,000,000 – and Los Angeles only just making the first feeble beginning as an industrial center!
So the great prosperity of the last twelve months is a lesson as well as a source of pride and gratification. It has been wonderful, and the world is beginning to realize it.
What is the attraction, gentlemen? Climate.
What makes possible the climate?
That wonderful ocean.
On a clear day, step out to the last home on Washington Street and gaze towards the ocean – and what do you see?
Venice of America! A city built on the sands, but as enduring as the hills because the very reason of its being is based on that play-spirit of the people.
To the casual observer, Venice is merely a gigantic amusement place, whose purpose is solely to draw the nickels and dimes of the people. This was probably the only outward reason for its creation, but unconsciously there must have been a realization of the city’s great need.
Thousands and thousands of city dwellers, tired of apartments that you can fold up and tuck in your vest pocket; tired of great buildings that reach up to heaven but never get there; tired of the feverish madness of the marathon of gold; these thousands must play.
Therefore, Venice is the big playground. The cool ocean breezes blow away all mental dustiness as the big cars of the Pacific Electric flash through the twenty-three subdivisions that intervene between Los Angeles and Venice.
Venice may have been an inspiration, but the inspiration was handled by a master mind.
It is the nearest beach to the city of Los Angeles. That in itself is a big item, for minutes and seconds rise far above par when dealing with thousands and thousands of passengers.
There are already seven railroads, electric and steam, entering Venice and connecting it with Los Angeles and neighboring places.
The question of a subway must be taken up soon.
This will mean shortening the time from Los Angeles to Venice by several minutes, and will enable the railroads to handle the crowds to much better advantage.
When Venice was conceived there was nothing for the imagination to work upon but a stretch of sand and low, dark marshes. The same sand which sold for ten cents per load then is now valued at $1,500 per foot front. This has all been accomplished in eight years.
Gentlemen, for two years I have carefully watched a courtship maturing between these two cities – in fact, the stork has been busy, and at this time, I can’t tell whether it’s a boy or a girl, but I can certainly hope “it’s a bear.”
If you draw a straight line from the Story Building to the Ocean Front at Venice, at the halfway mark you will find three intersecting electric line – the logical center for what we propose to develop as a town site. We believe this is the time, place and the girl; and so the deal is going over.
After the town has been christened, we propose to wage a selling campaign second to none in California for rapidity of sales.
I believe I can count on every man present here this evening to boost the proposition, and as a result the new-born town will have a successful career, and be a credit to the community as well as to the men associated with me in its development.
