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    Redondo Beach Pier
    Redondo Beach Pier
    Redondo Beach Pier
    Ebook136 pages39 minutes

    Redondo Beach Pier

    By Jennifer L. Krintz

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    About this ebook

    Piers have always drawn people to the mysterious wonder of the ocean. The ability to seemingly walk on water with the construction of a pier has created for humans a sense of temporary mastery of the majestic and merciless sea. The Southern California shoreline has always attracted tourists from near and far to experience the natural beauty of the coastline. Capitalizing on the natural and man-made appeal of the ocean and the pleasure pier, Henry Huntington created in Redondo Beach a fantasyland of wonder and excitement for beachgoers in the early 20th century. As one of the major rivals to the pleasure piers of Santa Monica, Ocean Park, and Venice to the north, the Endless Pier and later the adjacent Monstad Pier in Redondo Beach drew in thousands of tourists a day. Pleasure-seekers can still fish, enjoy dinner and music, shop, or simply take a nighttime stroll over the water on today's Municipal Pier--remnants from the heyday of Redondo Beach's pleasure pier of the early 20th century.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateSep 18, 2012
    ISBN9781439639337
    Redondo Beach Pier
    Author

    Jennifer L. Krintz

    Author Jennifer Krintz is a professional architectural historian and a former resident of Redondo Beach. She wrote her master�s thesis on Southern California pleasure piers and is an active member of and volunteer with several historic preservation organizations in the Los Angeles area.

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      Book preview

      Redondo Beach Pier - Jennifer L. Krintz

      Museum.

      INTRODUCTION

      The natural beauty of the Southern California coastline has been drawing tourists for generations. The warm climate, sunny skies, and beautiful white beaches still make Southern California one of the top tourist destinations in the world. Today, these beaches boast pristine sandy shores with modest contemporary, albeit dense, architecture and the occasional unassuming pleasure pier denoting the next beach town along the coast. However, the shoreline of the early 20th century presented a very different culture. Before Disneyland, the pleasure piers in Southern California were the ultimate vacation destination of the early 1900s. Known as the Coney Island of the West, these pleasure piers of Southern California brought the splendor of the Pacific Ocean and its famous beaches together with the excitement of the American amusement park. Roller coasters, music and dance halls, billiards, casinos, curios, and souvenir shops sat atop these massive piers lining the Southern California coast. The architecture of this time period represented the unveiling of Southern California fame before the peak of the motion picture industry and Disneyland. As the precursor to these famous Southern California attractions, study and exploration of this topic is a necessary chapter in California history.

      From 1542 to 1821, Spain ruled what is now California. By the time Mexico declared independence from Spain in 1821, the Spanish governors had distributed several land grants, subdividing the land into several ranchos. Mexican governors took over land grants, and the ranchos continued to subdivide the land. Redondo Beach was part of rancho land granted to Juan Jose Dominguez in 1784. Early Redondo Beach was primarily agricultural up until the late 1800s. With the arrival of the railroad in Los Angeles in 1887, more and more people traveled across the country to settle in the bucolic, fair-weathered landscape and climate of Southern California. Of course, one of the main attractions to this area was its picturesque setting of a pristine white shoreline.

      During the late 19th century, the Industrial Revolution played a significant role in boosting the United States as a major player in foreign trade and commerce. The railroad was integral to moving goods and passengers across the country, establishing towns along the way. Along the coasts, ports were set up to import and export freight and people. In California, major ports were built in San Francisco and San Diego. Situated inland, the city of Los Angeles relied on its coastal cities to transport goods and passengers. At one point in the late 19th century, the burgeoning city of Los Angeles had three major ports of call: San Pedro, Santa Monica, and Redondo Beach.

      Redondo Beach had three wharves before the construction of the horseshoe-shaped pier, the fourth- or fifth-generation descendant of which can be seen today. The shipping industry in the late 19th century was so successful in Redondo that the town incorporated into a city in 1892. Because of the frequent passenger traffic from the shipping ports, the Redondo Beach Company constructed the beautiful and lavish Hotel Redondo, located on the bluff with a magnificent view of the ocean. This was one of the first beach resort attractions and a sign of the abundant tourism that thrived in later years. Although Redondo Beach had a relatively small shipping port operation, it flourished as a shipping port town up until 1912, when the Los Angeles Harbor in San Pedro finally took the last of Redondo Beach’s shipping business. As a result, the city of Redondo Beach turned its sights to another asset of the beachfront: the beach resort. Because its wharves were no longer in major competition for transport duties, the pleasure pier became the main seaside commodity. Developers began to plan the cities that would appeal to potential commercial investors, residents, and tourists. A pavilion, bathhouse, casino, and hotel drew tourists to Redondo Beach via the Pacific Electric Red Cars line, of which Redondo Beach was a main tourist stop. Under the direction of Henry Huntington, Redondo Beach’s shoreline was transformed in the early 20th century with entertainment venues, roller coasters, lavish architecture, and of course, its pleasure piers jutting out into the ocean.

      The predecessor of today’s Municipal

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