The New Italy, the New Spain, the New Athens

SAN FRANCISCO was known as the city but it was Los Angeles that grew immensely and steadily throughout the late 1800s and early 1900s. With the instatement of two rail lines into Southern California, Los Angeles began to emerge and flourish. At first, the “cow counties” were populated by a group of migrants made up of mostly white, middle class Protestants that bought into the spectacular marketing scheme that Los Angeles had to offer. By the 1920s, Los Angeles tied San Francisco’s population, but it was Los Angeles that had a secret weapon: space. Los Angeles spread across land from the San Gabriel Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, making it possible for the population to increase at rapid rates.

What boosted L.A.’s existence were the imperative connections it had. Journalists were added onto the railroad payrolls so they would have an incentive to boast about the “year-round sunshine” that came with living in California. It was these publicists that worked with city boosters, much like Los Angeles Times owner Harrison Gray Otis to promote the region. Even after Otis died, the Times collaborated with the Chamber of Commerce and the All Year Club to endorse L.A. as “the West Coast metropolis.” L.A. was an escape from the overcrowded East. People still tend to see Los Angeles as that. They leave their snow-filled hometown and retreat to the southern California beaches. When I go back home, I constantly get asked why I’m so pale, as if they think I spend every day under the bright California sun. I myself was disappointed after spending last summer in L.A. only to find that it didn’t live up to its reputation, that the June Gloom never seemed to end and the days at the beach were few and far between.

Being the spread out city that it was, Los Angeles was equipped for the arrival of the automobile. With this came the Auto Club and tourists, Disneyland and Magic Mountain. I would love to learn more about the influence the automobile had on the creation of the city. What I understood from what David Fine said in his book Imagining Los Angeles, was that the automobile did not have any influence per say, but rather the city was prepared for the use of them. It wasn’t until recently, as I was driving along the 405 with one of my California-native friends that I was informed about the car industry’s involvement in the making of the layout of the city as it is today.

If you look at present-day Los Angeles, you can see the clear separations of the different communities. Before the railroad came about, the city was made up of Mexicans, Indians, Anglos, and Chinese. There were plenty of racial conflicts, so the white Anglos took control of the land. They began to see the darker-skinned population as “dangerous aliens and foreigners” who, from the eyes of the Anglos, were a threat to the community and any progress that needed to be made. Because of their ignorance and racism, there are modern ethnic neighborhoods that have been extended from the past.

The history of Los Angeles can be seen in the fiction that was written during the time the city was being established. Although there is so much literature from this time, one must keep in mind that the writers were “outsiders, newcomers, visitors” to Los Angeles. Therefore, the majority of the written work was about the differences between the East and the new West. Displacement and estrangement played major roles in the fiction, the authors focusing on themes of “unreality, masquerade, and deception.” Although fiction, it is these themes that influenced the people of the time, bringing a whole new light to California. Unfortunately, the fiction of this time, and even the newer fiction that comes in the form of screenplays and movies, has become more factual than not. Hollywood has overtaken all of Los Angeles, becoming the image for how people are supposed to represent themselves. We have all taken on roles, characters of a movie that should be called Reality. Yet, despite all this, Los Angeles still holds some sort of appeal to those on the outside looking in.

-- Jackie DiBiase
photo: Close-up of Hollywood sign, Hollywood, California, USA
credit: Michael Dean Roberts