1915 (1914) (1916) (1900-1910) (1910-1920) Table of Contents
Donald M. Cleland A History of the Santa Monica Schools 1876-1951, Santa Monica Unified School District, February 1952 (Copied for the Santa Monica Library, July 22, 1963). 140 pp., 1915 See Text
Laurence Goldstein, The American poet at the movies: a critical history, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1994 , 272 pp. 1915 See Text
Vachel Linday The Congo and Other Poems, 1915 (1914), reprinted by Dover: NY 1992. The Santa-Fe Trail See Text
Esther McCoy Irving Gill 1870-1936 Five California Architects, 1960, Reprinted in Marvin Rand Irving J. Gill: Architect 1870-1936, Gibbs Smith, Publisher: Salt Lake City, UT, Design, Ahde Lahti; Photographs, Marvin Rand, 2006, 238 pp. pp. 219-227, 2006a, 1916, 1915 See Text
Tom Moran and Tom Sewell Fantasy by the Sea Peace Press: Culver City, CA, 1980 (1979) (Originally published by Beyond Baroque Foundation with a grant from the Visual Arts Program of the National Endowment for the Arts), 1915 See Text
Ocean Park float in the parade of La Fiesta de Los Angeles, 1915 See Text and Link
Ocean Park Pier Burns, 1915 See Image
Rex and Eliza Roberts c. 1915 See Image and Text
Jeffrey Stanton Venice of America: 'Coney
Island of the Pacific, ' Donahue Publishing: Los Angeles, CA,
1987, 176 pp., 1915
Chapter 3: Growth through the Teens (1913-1919)
See Text
Notes
Panama Canal is completed.
P. 46 [Photo captions: "Santa Monica's municipal pier was, at one time, all concrete, as shown in this 1915 photo. Unfortunately, salt water penetrated the concrete pilings, rusted the reinforcing steel, and caused the concrete to shatter. Rust requires more space than steel. It was replaced with wood about five years later."] Storrs, 1974
Documents
Donald M. Cleland A History of the Santa Monica Schools 1876-1951, Santa Monica Unified School District, February 1952 (Copied for the Santa Monica Library, July 22, 1963). 140 pp., 1915
Five years later the program was expanded to include classes in English for non-English speaking adults. These were initiated through the efforts of Nettie B. Rice, then principal of Garfield School, who for some time had been concerned about the acute attendance problems and migratory enrollments of children of Mexican laborers. Upon investigation, she determined that the fathers of such children enrolled in her school had difficulty in securing and holding jobs because of their inability to speak English. She immediately brought her findings to the attention of Superintendent Rebok, and persuaded him to ask the Board's permission for her to establish classes in English for the Mexican laborers. The board approved the plan, and the evening classes then established have become a firmly entrenched part of the adult education program. [55. Personal interview with Elmer M. Krehbiel, director of the division of adult education, Santa Monica City College, May 28, 1951; Santa Monica, California.] Although now retired from her regular teaching duties, after forty-eight years of service to day pupils, Miss Rice still continues in the evening school program the English classes for the foreign speaking which she initiated over thirty-six years ago. Besides these, she has also taught Americanization classes for those desiring to obtain their citizenship papers.
" . . .
Special Services
Many special services have been introduced in the Santa Monica schools during the years, some of the earlier ones being these: [46: Martin, op. cit., p. 60.]
1915 After-school playgrounds instituted.
" . . .
Laurence Goldstein, The American poet at the movies: a critical history, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1994, 272 pp., 1915
Griffith proclaimed in 1915 that because of film "the human race will think more rapidly, more intelligently, than it ever did. It will see everything-positively everything."
"Here are sample comments by Griffith from an interview of 1915."
"Audiences have the good old American faculty of wanting to be "shown" things. We don't "talk" about things happening, or describe how a thing looks; we actually show it-vividly, completely, convincingly. It is the ever-present, realistic, actual now that "gets" the great American public, and nothing ever devised by the mind of man can show it like moving pictures.
"The time will come, and in less than ten years … where the children in the public schools will be taught practically everything by moving pictures. Certainly they will never be obliged to read history again."
"There is nothing surprising in Griffith's ambition to marginalize historiography and literature in favor of his own technics."
Cited in Harry M. Geduld, (ed.) Focus on D. W. Griffith (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1971), 34.
Vachel Linday The Congo and Other Poems, 1915 (1914), reprinted by Dover: NY 1992.
The Santa-Fe Trail
(A Humoresque)
I asked an old Negro, "What is that bird that sings so well?" He answered: "That is the Rachel-Jane." "Hasn't it another name, lark or thrush, or the like?" "No. Jus' Rachel-Jane."
I. In Which a Racing Auto Comes from the East
This is the order of the music of the morning:- To be sung delicately, to First, from the far East comes a crooning. an improvised tune. The crooning turns to a sunrise singing. Hark to the calm-horn, balm-horn, psalm-horn. Hark to the faint-horn, quaint-horn, saint-horn . . . Hark to the pace-horn, chase-horn, race-horn. To be sung or read And the holy veil of the dawn has gone. with great speed. Swiftly the brazen car comes on. It burns the East as the sunrise burns. I see great flashes where the far trail turns. Its eyes are lamps like the eyes of dragons. It drinks gasoline from big red flagons. Butting through the delicate mists of the morning, It comes like lightning, goes past roaring. It will hail all the wind-mills, taunting, ringing, Dodge the cyclones, Count the milestones, On through the ranges the prairie-dog tills- Scooting past the cattle on the thousand hills . . . Ho for the tear-horn, scare-horn, dare-horn, To be read or sung in Ho for the gay-horn, bark-horn, bay-horn. a rolling bass with Ho for Kansas, land that restores us some deliberation. When houses choke us, and great books bore us! Sunrise Kansas, harvester's Kansas, A million men have found you before us.II. In Which Many Autos Pass Westward
I want live things in their pride to remain. In an even,deliberate, I will not kill one grasshopper vain narrative manner. Though he eats a hole in my shirt like a door. I let him out, give him one chance more. Perhaps, while he gnaws my hat in his whim, Grasshopper lyrics occur to him.I am a tramp by the long trail's border, Given to squalor, rags and disorder. I nap and amble and yawn and look, Write fool-thoughts in my grubby book, Recite to the children, explore at my ease, Work when I work, beg when I please, Give crank-drawings, that make folks stare To the half-grown boys in the sunset glare, And get me a place to sleep in the hay At the end of a live-and-let-live day.
I find in the stubble of the new-cut weeds A whisper and a feasting, all one needs: The whisper of strawberries, white and red Here where the new-cut weeds lie dead. But I would not walk all alone till I die Without some life-drunk horns going by. Up round this apple-earth they come Blasting the whispers of the morning dumb:- Cars in a plain realistic row. And fair dreams fade When the raw horns blow.
On each snapping pennant A big black name:- The careering city Whence earch car came. They tour from Memphis, Atlanta, Savannah, Like a train-caller Tallahassee and Texarcana. in a Union Depot. They tour from St. Louis, Columbus, Manistee, They tour from Peoria, Davenport, Kankakee. Cars from Concord, Niagra, Boston, Cars from Topeka, Emporia, and Austin. Cars from Chicago, Hannibal, Cairo, Cars from Alton, Oswego, Toledo. Cars from Buffalo, Kokomo, Delphi, Cars from Lodi, Carmi, Loami. Ho for Kansas, land that restores us When houses choke us, and great books bore us! While I watch the highroad And look at the sky, While I watch the clouds in amazing grandeur Roll their legions without rain Over the blistering Kansas plain- While I sit by the milestone And watch the sky, The United States Goes by.
Listen to the iron-horns, ripping, racking. To be given very harshly, Listen to the quack-horns, slack and clacking. with a snapping, Way down the road, trilling like a toad. explosiveness. Here comes the dice-horn, here comes the vice-horn, Here comes the snarl-horn, brawl-horn, lewd-horn, Followed by the prude-horn, bleak and squeaking:- (Some of them from Kansas, some of them from Kansas.) Here comes the hod-horn, plod-horn, sod-horn, Nevermore-to-roam-horn, loam-horn, home-horn. (Some of them from Kansas, some of them from Kansas.)
Far away the Rachel-Jane To be read or sung, Not defeated by the horns well-nigh in a whisper. Sings amid a hedge of thorns:- "Love and life, Eternal youth- Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet, Dew and glory, Love and truth, Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet."WHILE SMOKE-BLACK FREIGHTS ON THE DOUBLE- Louder and louder, TRACKED RAILROAD, faster and faster. DRIVEN AS THOUGH BY THE FOUL-FIEND'S OX- GOAD, SCREAMINGI TO THE WEST COAST, SCREAMING TO THE EAST, CARRY OFF A HARVEST, BRING BACK A FEAST, HARVESTING MACHINERY AND HARNESS FOR THE BEAST. THE HAND-CARS WHIZ, AND RATTLE ON THE RAILS, THE SUNLIGHT FLASHES ON THE TIN DINNER-PAILS And then, in an instant, In a rolling bass, with Ye modern men, increasing deliberation Beheld the procession once again, Listen to the iron-horns, ripping, racking, With a snapping Listen to the wise-horn, desperate-to-advise horn, explosiveness. Listen to the fast-horn, kill-horn, blast-horn . . .
Far away the Rachel- To be be sung or read Not defeated by the horns well-nigh in a whisper Sings amid a hedge of thorns:- Love and life, Eternal youth, Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet, Dew and glory, Love and truth. Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet.The mufflers open on a score of cars To be brawled in the With a wonderful thunder, beginning with a snapping CRACK, CRACK, CRACK, explosiveness, ending in CRACK-CRACK, CRACK-CRACK, a languorous chant. CRACK-CRACK-CRACK, . . . Listen to the gold-horn . . . Old-horn . . . Cold-horn . . . And all of the tunes, till the night comes down On hay-stack, and ant-hill, and wind-bitten town. Then far in the west, as in the beginning, To be sung to exactly Dim in the distance, sweet in retreating, the same whispered Hark to the faint-horn, quaint-horn, saint-horn, tune as the first five Hark to the calm-horn, balm-horn, psalm-horn . . . lines. They are hunting the goals that they understand:- This section San Francisco and the brown sea-sand. beginning sonorously, My goal is the mystery the beggars win. ending in a I am caught in the web the night-winds spin. languorous whisper. The edge of the wheat-ridge speaks to me. I talk with the leaves of the mulberry tree. And now I hear, as I sit all alone In the dusk, by another big Santa-Fe stone, The souls of the tall corn gathering round And the gay little souls of the grass in the ground. Listen to the tale the cotton-wood tells. Listen to the wind-mills, singing o'er the wells. Listen to the whistling flutes without price Of myriad prophets out of paradise. Harken to the wonder That the night-air carries . . . Listen . . . to . . . the . . . whisper . . . Of . . . the . . . prairie . . . fairies
Singing o'er the fairy plain:- To the same whispered tune "Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet. as the Rachel-Jane song- Love and glory, but very slowly. Stars and rain, Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet . . ."
Esther McCoy Irving Gill 1870-1936 Five California Architects, 1960, Reprinted in Marvin Rand Irving J. Gill: Architect 1870-1936, Gibbs Smith, Publisher: Salt Lake City, UT, Design, Ahde Lahti; Photographs, Marvin Rand, 2006, 238 pp. pp. 219-227, 2006a, 1916, 1910,
"In the December, 1915, issue of Sunset magazine, he wrote, "If half the thought and time and money had been expended on perfecting the concrete floor that had been spent on developing wood from the rough board sidewalk to fine parquetry flooring, everybody would want concrete. (p. 224) To overcome the popular prejudice against concrete floors is the business of the architect."
"He mixed color with the cement, "usually tones of red and yellow, red and brown or yellow and brown, slightly mottled. Tempered by the gray of the cement these colors produce neural tones that are a splendid background for rugs and furniture. When quite dry the cement should be cleaned with a weak solution of ammonia and water, given two coats of Chinese nut oil to bring out the color, then finished with a filler and waxed like hardwood. Well done, this treatment gives an effect of old Spanish leather."
Tom Moran and Tom Sewell Fantasy by the Sea Peace Press: Culver City, CA, 1980 (1979) (Originally published by Beyond Baroque Foundation with a grant from the Visual Arts Program of the National Endowment for the Arts), 1915
Venice Grand Prix
"Venice scheduled a road race on the city's streets for Saint Patrick's Day, 1915. Sanction was obtained from the Western Automobile Association for the First Annual Venice Grand Prix. A winner's purse of $3,500 was guarenteed.
"The entry list included Earl Cooper, Dave Lewis, Dario Resta, Ralph DePalma, Orville Jones, Barney Oldfield, Johnny Marquis, Bill Carlson, G. Ruckstell, Eddie Hearne, Louis Disbrow, Harold Hall and Eddie Pullin.
"The motor car industry was represented by Peugeot, Mercer, Case, Stutz, DeLage, Napier, Bugatti, Chalmers, Simplex, Hercules, Maxwell and Chevrolet . . .
"A Saturday afternoon crowd estimated at 75,000 surrounded the race course. . . . Oldfield . . . a Maxwell. 400 hours and 24 minutes, 300 miles.
"There were two fatalities and a number of injuries. A riding mechanic was killed during a practice lap. A spectator died when he wandered fon the course and was struck by Marquis's Bugatti. The race scoreboard toppled over and injured nearby spectators.
"The City of Venice ws the official promoter of the event, which was a disappointment. Gate crashers, counterfeit tickets and lawsuits turned the race into a financial failure. The annual event was never repeated."
Ocean Park float in the parade of La Fiesta de Los Angeles, 1915
http://digarc.usc.edu/search/controller/view/chs-m11052.html?x=1226440051233
Ocean Park float in the parade of La Fiesta de Los Angeles, 1915
Description: Photograph of the Ocean Park float in the parade of La Fiesta de Los Angeles, 1915. Four people in bathings suits (all women?) sit, lay or stand on the back of the flower-bedecked float. Their bathing suits and the float itself bear the name "Ocean Park". The driver of the float is dressed in white. Two cars are parked at the curb. Residential buildings are visible behind. Legible posted bills read: "Morosco's Burbank Theatre, The Burbank Stock Co., [. . .] May". . .
Title: Ocean Park float in the parade of La Fiesta de Los Angeles, 1915
Record ID: chs-m11052; Names & Dates: 1915
Rex and Eliza Roberts c. 1915 Probably Grand Rapids. Unknown Publisher; Unsent Post Card c. 1915
Jeffrey Stanton Venice of America: 'Coney Island of the Pacific, ' Donahue Publishing: Los Angeles, CA, 1987, 176 pp., 1915
Chapter 2; Chapter 3: Growth through the Teens (1913-1919)
"Venice 's fascination with new forms of transportation extended to the automobile as well. road racing, the most exciting spectator sport of the era, captured the public's fancy and also that of the Board of Trustees, who authorized the 1915 Venice Grand Prix on the the streets of Venice. It was roughly a triangle course down Electric Avenue, Rose Avenue, and Compton Road (Lincoln Boulevard). The curves were banked for high speed turns. Eight thousand dollars in prize money was offered.
"A Saturday afternoon St. Patrick's Day crowd of 75,000 watched the 300 mile road race from the bleachers and anywhere they could find a view. Seventeen drivers entered some of the fastest racing machines of their day; Bugatti, Simplex, Stutz, Mercer, Peugeot, Maxwell, Napier, Chevrolet, DeLage and Hercules. Mechanical problems plagued most of the drivers as one after another dropped out of the grueling race. Dave Lewis was in the lead on the 80th lap with just 17 laps to go when engine trouble forced out of the race. Barney Oldfield's Maxwell went on to an easy victory. Billy Carlson, also driving a Maxwell, finished second just 41 seconds behind Oldfield. Only eight of the seventeen entries finished the race. Average speed of the winner in the four and one-half hour race was 68.5 mph.
"The race was considered a success despite injuries to bystanders when a scoreboard toppled, and the death of an elderly spectator who wandered on to the course and was struck by a car. However, the city lost $10,000 due to gate crashing and the sale of 1000 counterfeit tickets by con men. Despite 40,000 paid admissions, thousands rushed the gates and sneaked in when ticket takers were unable to handle the large crowd." p.60