Pacific Electric in Los Angeles

In April last year the Guardian retold the story of the Great American Streetcar Scandal. It’s a depressing tale of unregulated capitalism triumphing over the interests of the consumer and the public realm. A syndicate involving Detroit motor manufacturers, major oil companies and the makers of auto tires assumed ownership of urban streetcar systems across the USA in the immediate post-war years and began the business of eliminating the electric powered streetcar in favour of bus lines with diesel engines running on rubber tyres. By the early 1960s all but a handful of streetcar mass transit systems had been converted to buses much to the satisfaction of the auto industry. This accelerated the trend towards individual vehicle ownership leading to massive congestion on urban roads and rapid deterioration in air quality. Local taxpayers had to fork out for grandiose freeway projects while federal taxes funded a new interstate highway network that had the effect of killing off the last vestiges of long distance rail travel. It remains a textbook case of corporate expansion funded largely by the public purse. The social costs – health impact of atmospheric pollution, limited mobility on the part of low-paid workers, the financial cost of chronic traffic congestion – all passed on to third parties.

The postcard history of Pacific Electric shows the downtown ten storey office block and streetcar terminal that served as the hub of the system and survived to the very end in 1961. The Pacific Electric Building was opened in 1905 to a design by Thornton Fitzhugh. Among the first tenants was the architectural practice Greene and Greene, noted Arts and Crafts designers responsible for the famous Gamble House in Pasadena. Until its closure in 1914, Arcade Depot was the principle station for Los Angeles – Pacific Electric streetcars wait in front. Santa Monica was just under 17 miles from the Pacific Electric Building at the end of what became known as the Santa Monica Air Line. The last two cards are real estate promotional cards issued by Pacific Electric to encourage homebuyers to settle along their routes in the verdant surroundings of Brentwood Park and Beverley Hills. These images offer a distinctly bleak prospect to a potential customer but that didn’t stop them becoming some of the most affluent neighbourhoods in Los Angeles. Beverly Hills had the dubious distinction of being planned as a white-only development, a situation that remained unchallenged until the 1940s when a group of black screen actors mounted a successful legal action.

It would be misleading to leave the impression that Pacific Electric was a philanthropic enterprise. The leading promoter was Henry E Huntington, a businessman of impeccably capitalist instincts. For him, the transport networks were entirely subordinate to his interests in the real estate developments they existed to serve. Profitability declined in the 1930s as the supply of development opportunities dried up. In the absence of any public sector transport authority, the unregulated network was fully exposed to a predatory assault from the auto industry. Indeed the switch from electric traction to diesel engined buses began in the Pacific Electric era. For light relief, watch Harold Lloyd’s efforts to control a Pacific Electric streetcar in the 1924 movie, Girl Shy.

Postcard of the Day No. 85 – Hauling Rocks, San Pedro CA

It’s a great day when a card like this turns up. All our expectations of postcard imagery are overturned. A steam powered freight train hauling rock armour may be a thrilling sight to some (myself included) but that’s very much a minority view. More curious is the presence of a trio of ladies of leisure dressed for a stroll through the shady avenues in the garden of a luxury hotel, scrambling down an embankment to the railroad tracks. There’s a possibility the figures were added by a picture editor in the hope that a feminine touch would enhance the appeal of the image. Or perhaps there’s a pedestrian right-of-way across the tracks – given the extent of the tracks and the lack of an obvious destination that seems unlikely. San Pedro was, and remains the port for Los Angeles and the breakwater was constructed between 1899 and 1911. Below are some other examples of railroad freight on postcards.

Postcard of the Day No. 66, Cawston Ostrich Farm

Never a dull moment down at the Ostrich Farm as these postcards show. When they’re not fighting among themselves they’re being encouraged to swallow oranges or forcibly divested of their plumage. Others were pressed into service to take visitors on carriage rides. In the ultimate demonstration of man’s mastery over nature, this ostrich has been mounted by a gent in a Derby hat. The egg looks on in silent reproach. While the ostrich is the more successful in maintaining its dignity. The Cawston Ostrich farm was a visitor attraction in the Los Angeles area for almost 50 years from 1886 until 1935. The world has moved on from this type of exploitation – today’s most lucrative proposition would be an ostrich rescue centre. 

Round the Docks

The work was demanding and dangerous, the workforce was casualised and routinely exploited and the workplace was disorderly and perilous but the image of the docks held a special place in the imperialist imagination. All of Britain’s maritime supremacy and economic power as a nation that traded to survive was focused on the dockside. Despite the development of mechanised lifting gear the greater part of the labour involved came from physical effort – enormous quantities of finished goods and raw materials were loaded on and off ships by hand. A picture of ceaseless activity is placed before us. Rail mounted cranes, teams of horses, motor vehicles and railway wagons compete for space on the quayside, above them swing cradles of locomotives or turbines and hoists bearing cotton bales, sacks of sugar or animal carcasses. A compelling theatrical scene of wonder for the spectator and a raucous, turbulent and unstable environment for the manual labourers where the threat of serious physical injury could come from any direction at any moment. 

Our old friend the shipping container killed off this spectacle and replaced it with a highly formalised aerial display of bar-coded containers – all very fascinating in a different way but totally inaccessible to the general public. It’s a world of computer commanded reach-stackers, gantry cranes and side-lifters manoeuvring outsize boxes from ship to shore and back again with maximum cost effectiveness in an anonymous intermodal zone where the most frequently heard sound is the warning beep of reversing vehicles. 

Fredric March

Fredric March was at the height of his fame as a Hollywood star in 1936 when this linen postcard was published showing his home in the Los Angeles exclusive gated community of Bel Air. William Wellman’s A Star is Born was filmed that year. March played the male lead and the role would assure his place among the Hollywood immortals. Like his industry colleagues, he found it impossible to resist the easy money to be made from celebrity endorsement and in 1938 he got very excited about the new DeSoto car with its streamline styling, handy shift and wide-range safety headlights. March was a lifelong Democrat and never succumbed to the rightward transition that afflicted so many of his fellow actors from Reagan to Heston and he remained a free agent, unsigned to any major studio. There are two cars parked outside his home – whether they are DeSotos is something best left to more expert eyes than mine.