2 Why Visit Los Angeles The Climate 02_the_climate_a.jpg jpg 503 780 507 327 larger 02_the_climate_b.jpg jpg 503 780 507 327 larger 02_the_climate_c.jpg jpg 503 780 507 327 larger 02_the_climate_d.jpg jpg 503 780 507 327 larger "Citrus Groves and Snow Capped Mountains, Southern California," (ca. 1907). Title Insurance and Trust / C.C. Pierce Photography, USC Digital Archives. Hidden Images: 1) "Midwinter Strawberries and Roses in California" (ca. 1907), author's collection; 2) "Snow Scene on the Sierra Madre's from the Raymond" (ca. 1890). Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley; 3) "You Can Live on the Climate Here," Postcard (ca. 1907, Reider), Courtesy of Tom Tomlinson. The Raymond, December 21, 1886 -- "We have scarcely done anything but rest since we were here. There is a good deal of life and dress in the hotel. In the evening there is music always and the young people have danced some every evening. We have been out to walk twice through an orange grove and picked up oranges and eaten them. We have seen trees hanging with fruit in all stages of ripening, also a few blossoms, it is a beautiful sight. The weather has been so mild, it has been like summer or early spring all the time and when I am waling through the orange groves with the bright sun-shine and soft wind I can hardly believe it is only a few days to Christmas, but think I am at some summer resort." -1- -1- Amy T. Bridges. "Journal kept on a Raymond Excursion from Massachusetts to California and return, including a 3 month stay at the Raymond Hotel in South Pasadena, the Del Monte Hotel and San Francisco, etc.," 1886-7. [Huntington Library] Whereas in 1882, Southern California was a minor diversion on a tour itinerary that highlighted bigger and better cities, in 1886, it had become the perfect setting for resort life. Visual imagery such as this which depicted snow-capped mountains alongside orange groves were common inducements for visitors to the region. By the turn of the century, pockets of resort communities had developed all throughout the region, catering to guests who stayed months at a time. The influx of newcomers to the Southern California region during the 1880s, both settlers and tourists alike, has been well documented in the historiography of Los Angeles. Travel to Southern California on any significant level was only made possible through the completion of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad in 1885, which prompted a rate war with the Southern Pacific and disrupted the decade-long monopoly that the S.P. had over rail travel to Los Angeles. -1- Yet while low fare was perhaps the means by which thousands could now reach this West Coast terminus, the allure of the region as an Edenic resort would not have effectively attracted tourists without the introduction of the tourist resort hotel, the suitable setting from which visitors could truly enjoy the climate, landscape, and a community of others sharing similar tastes in leisure. -1- Glenn S. Dumke, The Boom of the Eighties in Southern California. (Los Angeles: Anderson & Ritchie: The Ward Ritchie Press, 1944). While Eastern and Midwest visitors to Los Angeles before 1886 were primarily upper-middle class, toward the turn of the century, Los Angeles became more accessible to visitors across class boundaries, and tourism exploded. The circulation of postcards of the greater Los Angeles area depict the most common sights and attractions. This 1907 postcard captures a light-hearted perspective on the Southern California climate, and is formally similar to a series of cartoons printed in the Los Angeles Express and Los Angeles Herald in 1910, titled "Postcards of a Tourist (Mr. "Skinny" East)." Even at this early phase in the city's history, the cartoons poke fun at the every-present tourist and cliché tourist attractions. -1- -1- Adolph C. Fera. Postcards of a Tourist (Mr. "Skinny" East): Cartoons of Southern California. (Los Angeles: Henry J. Pauly Company, 1910). 3 Why Visit Los Angeles The Mountains 03_the_mountains_a.jpg jpg 595 780 392 292 larger 03_the_mountains_b.jpg jpg 595 783 392 292 larger 03_the_mountains_c.jpg jpg 595 783 392 292 larger 03_the_mountains_d.swf swf 595 783 392 292 larger "View of the Strawberry Peak above Switzer Camp, Los Angeles" (ca.1900), USC Digital Archives. Hidden Images: 1) Overlay from "MOUNTAIN VIEWS.; San Gabriel Valley from the Flank of the Sierra Madre." Los Angeles Times, October 27, 1882, p. 4 2) "The Circular Bridge, Mt. Lowe, Altitude 3800 ft." (ca. 1907, Newman Postcard Co.,). Courtesy of Tom Tomlinson. 3) View From the Raymond, Pasadena, Cal [California]., U.S.A. Sierra Madre Mts. in distance (created from a stereoscope card), (ca. 1890, Kilburn Brothers), Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. This Los Angeles Times article is an advertisement for the newly subdivided Sierra Madre tract in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. The land had just been purchased and improved by Nathaniel Coburn Carter, who interestingly was also originally contracted to head the sales of the Marengo tract subdivision, just south of the Raymond Hotel. Carter was one of hundreds of local boosters intent on selling Southern California land to the many who were enticed by its climate and landscape. A major selling point for the Sierra Madre tract was its proximity to the imposing San Gabriel Mountains. Readers were urged to take the advice of "Professor Dane" of Boston, that among all the scenic spots throughout the world, the scenery of the Sierra Madre tract ranked only below the Ehrenbreitstein on the Rhine and the Catskill Mountains. -1- -1- "Mountain Views. San Gabriel Valley from the Flank of the Sierra Madre." Los Angeles Times, October 27, 1882, p. 4. The Circular Bridge on Mount Lowe was a spectacular highlight on the Pasadena & Mt. Wilson Railway, more popularly known as the Mt. Lowe Railway. The railway and hotels in this operation were the constructed by Professor Thaddeus S.C. Lowe. Taking passengers up through Pasadena to Rubio Canyon, where they would transfer to an incline railway to the summit of Echo Mountain, the Mt. Lowe Railway terminated at the Alpine Tavern. The incline railway was completed in 1893, and the following year, Echo Mountain House opened and began accommodating tourists. Alpine Tavern opened in 1896 and entertained guests until it burned down in 1936. On the route between Echo Mountain House and Alpine Tavern, the Circular Bridge gave passengers the sensational feeling of being suspended in mid-air as they traversed a 75 foot, 4.5% grade bridge of circular design. -1- -1- C.B. Waite, " Echo Mountain, Mount Lowe Railway." c. 1894 (Hungtington Library). The mountains are a prominent feature in the greater Los Angeles landscape as they act as topographical border to the region. The Santa Susana, San Gabriel and San Bernardino Mountains delineate the northwestern, north, and northeastern limits of the area, and were commonly referred to as the Sierra Madre during the Spanish Colonial period. As this image, created from the two views on a late nineteenth century stereoscope card, demonstrates, mountain views were defining "sights" of the region. The caption on the card reads: "View from the Raymond [Hotel]." The card's owner pencilled in "Sierra Madre Mountains in distance." The visual ephemera that catered to the tourist industry reinforced certain attractions as "noteworthy," and in turn these attractions influenced the way tourists "took in" the landscape. Reclining on the hotel veranda to take in the view was a common pass-time at the Raymond Hotel and others. "View from the Raymond," (ca. 1890). Bancroft Library, Online Archive of California. 4 Why Visit Los Angeles The Ocean 04_the_ocean_a.jpg jpg 524 780 432 290 larger 04_the_ocean_b.jpg jpg 524 780 432 290 larger 04_the_ocean_c.jpg jpg 524 780 432 290 larger 04_the_ocean_d.flv flv 240 320 160 120 larger Redondo Beach (ca. 1890). Huntington Library . Hidden Images: 1) Overlay from "REDONDO BEACH.; ONE OF THE GREAT PROJECTS OF THE DAY. A Million-Dollar Hotel Planned," Los Angeles Times, January 1, 1888, p. 17; 2) Huntington Library image with LA Times overlay; 3) "Panorama of Beach and Cliff House," (1903, American Mutoscope & Biograph Co), Library of Congress Moving Image Collection. "Redondo Beach, 16 miles southwest of Los Angeles, is confidently claimed by its owners as the most admirably adapted place for a seaside resort on the Pacific Coast, and the Redondo Beach Company is doing all that ample means and broad ideas can compass to fully realize the grand results that Nature has made possible. Here are found two miles of ocean water front, gracefully aligned like a half-moon bay, of which the northern horn is occupied by a remarkably fine pebble beach; the southern part by the very best bathing beach anywhere to be enjoyed; while the middle portion is an abrupt shingle shore, bordering water so very deep that the largest ships may lie free from ground swell within a stone's throw of land. Rising behind this frontage a peculiarly beautiful rolling land is backed by low, but commanding, hills, something less than a mile from shore, and in amphitheater form, so that the place is a panorama unto itself from every point of view. The higher grounds look back upon the city of Los Angeles and the Sierra Madre range, and the ocean view, in the opposite direction, is set between rocky headlands that hold it as in a frame for the outlook of the surroundings. A salt spring lake, half a mile in length, whose waters are much more dense than those of the sea, presents opportunities for quiet boating and peculiarly healthful bathing not paralleled at other places. . . A hotel of most ample dimensions, picturesque effects, and perfect appointments is to be built adjoining the beach, on a site terraced to the water-front promenade and flanked by a park which extends to the bathing beach." -1- -1- "Redondo Beach: One of the Great Projects of the Day." Los Angeles Times, January 1, 1886, p. 17. Monday, March 6, 1893 [trip to Redondo Beach] -- "A free omnibus took us up to the Redonda Hotel [sic], a large, fine house, near the Ocean, where we strolled about the grounds, among the flowers and visited a garden of pinks near by. We all took lunch together and were seated at a large round table in the dining room. After lunch we were given a free ride in the omnibus to the hills back of the Hotel, where we saw streets laid out and named, but no buildings. These may be built later on and the owners of the property may realize their expected profits, and they may not. We have enjoyed a pleasant outing, have seen the Ocean, the town, the Salt Lake near by and the harbor, which are all that may be seen now." -1- -1- Augustus F. Tripp, "Notes of an Excursion to California in the Winter and Spring of 1893," 1893. [Hungtington Library]. Monday, Los Angeles, May 22, 1882 -- "The next day Saturday we went to Santa Monica, about seventeen miles away on the Pacfic Ocean. How good it was to see the ocean - and the Pacific - a dream I had never thought would be as soon realized. It seemed like going back to the days of Balboa and the old Spanish adventurers to stand and look upon its turquoise blue waters stretching far away to meet a lavender and pink sky while on the right hand the purple nicely - Sierra Madre Mts - came down to meet the sea (hues I never though natural when as combined before) and hear the great snowy crested breakers thunder on the broad white sands below. We lay upon the sand, idly piling it up in hillocks and looking out to sea for a long time, stiving to make it seeam really true that I had see[n] the Pacfic. Then we wandered along the beach gathering shells. They were very small and not at all rare, for it is not a shell beach. Then I went out on the long wharf and leaned upon the railing, imagining I was upon the deck of a ship bound for lands I long to visit. But at three o'clock we say goodby (adios) to Santa Monica, a regretful one though we expect to see the Pacific at Monterey before going home." -1- -1- Amy T. Bridges. "Journal kept on 4th Raymond Excursion [from Massachusetts to California and return]," 1882. [Huntington Library]. 5 Why Visit Los Angeles The Landscape 05_the_landscape_a.jpg jpg 512 755 377 256 larger 05_the_landscape_b.jpg jpg 512 755 377 256 larger 05_the_landscape_c.jpg jpg 512 755 377 256 larger 05_the_landscape_d.jpg jpg 512 755 377 256 larger From W. Raymond and C.H. Merrill. The Raymond and its Surroundings, East Pasadena, California. (Boston: James S. Adams, 1886). Hidden Images: 1) Ibid.; 2) "A Residence Street in Tropical Southern California" (ca. 1907), Courtesy of Tom Tomlinson.; 3) Detail from "Panorama of First Raymond Hotel," (ca. 1890). Huntington Library The visual imagery produced by the emerging tourist industry in and around Los Angeles during the late 19th century is both evidence of, and impetus for an imagined landscape of a serene and restful countryside. Imagery of resort hotels in particular, and the Raymond especially, were very effective at conveying this landscape, precisely because they were the conduits through which tourists could experience this desired natural setting. One method of stirring tourists’ imaginations was by juxtaposing the familiar with the exotic. Time and again, images of flourishing rose bushes were placed alongside exotic plants such as palm trees or orange groves, so as to enable the viewer to "picture" themselves in this distant and alluring place. -1- -1- For more on Los Angeles and landscape, see William Alexander McClung, Landscapes of Desire: Anglo Mythologies of Los Angeles. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000). The cultural significance of vegetation in the landscape of Los Angeles is evident in this early twentieth century postcard. The caption reads: "A Residence Street in Tropical Southern California," which actually mislabels the region's climatic type (Southern Califonrnia is a semi-arid climate, not tropical). The view is dominated by lush tropical plants, and the only trace of the actual residences is the sidewalk and pathways leading up to them. The landscaping of personal yards had by the late nineteenth century become a major feature of the built environment for the city. -1- -1- For more on Southern California climate, see Carey McWilliams, "Southern California: An Island on the Land," (Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith Books, 1946); especially, chapter six, "The Folklore of Climatology." The practice of envisioning Los Angeles through its nature was well enforced by a cadre of professional photographers associated with individual photography studios. In his history of the creation and transformation of the image of urban America as influenced through photography, Peter Bacon Hales describes the development of photography as a "quintessentially urban medium." Even at its origins in 1939, the daguerreotype fit neatly into a long tradition of urban art which privileged the "the urban topographical view, with its delicately balanced admixture of factual documentation, picturesque interpretation, and urban celebration." -1- By the 1880s, the massive breadth of American urban photography, while immensely diverse, had coalesced into a national urban photographic style that defined the city as a coherent entity easily definable by its component parts. Professional photographers then, like architects and planners, were closely involved with the creation of urban image particularly because in a close cultural exchange with their audience, they captured and reinforced views of the city that both implied factual and descriptive qualities, but also had symbolic meanings about civic pride and harmony. At this time, Los Angeles did not fit this mold of urban photographic style primarily because in size and complexity as an urban center, it was not yet comparable with the American cities frequently documented in professional photographic collections. Rather, for Los Angeles, as Jennifer A. Watts has argued, photography provided the technological means through which a vernacular, iconographic vocabulary of the region's climate could be invented and circulated. -2- -1- Peter Bacon Hales, Silver Cities: Photographing American Urbanization, 1839-1939. Revised and Expanded. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005), 14-15. -2- Jennifer A. Watts, "Picture Taking in Paradise: Los Angeles and the Creation of Regional Identity, 1880-1920," History of Photography 24, no. 3 (2000): 243-250. 6 What to do in Los Angeles Resort Culture 06_resort_culture_a.jpg jpg 487 780 400 250 larger 06_resort_culture_b.jpg jpg 487 780 400 250 larger 06_resort_culture_c.jpg jpg 487 780 400 250 larger 06_resort_culture_d.jpg jpg 487 780 400 250 larger "The Rotunda." Woodcut in W. Raymond and C.H. Merrill, The Raymond and its surroundings, East Pasadena, California (Boston, James S. Adams: 1886). Courtesy of Corrine Tomlinson. Hidden Images: 1) Overlay from "COOK'S EXCURSION; Arrived Yesterday, There Weeks from New York," Los Angeles Times, May 25, 1882, p. 3; 2) Detail from Sanborn Fire Insurance Map, Pasadena (1888); 3) detail of "The Rotunda." The Los Angeles Times regularly published lists of guests to the city either staying at the more notable hotels, or arriving with the latest travel excursions. This very public practice of announcing guest arrivals is reflective of the resort culture that developed in and around Los Angeles. While assigning a sign of status to the names listed in the papers, these announcements also served to notify members of “high society” when their acquaintances might be expected in town. Accounts from diaries, scrapbooks and newspapers indicate that the majority of passengers on the Thomas Cook & Sons and Raymond & Whitcomb tours across country were from New England. A newspaper clipping pasted into a tourists’ excursion scrapbook indicates that when the six Wagner coaches of her excursion left Boston in April of 1882, they carried 130 of the total 150 passengers that would make their way to Colorado, New Mexico and California. The other twenty would be picked up at short stops along the way. When the Los Angeles Times reported the arrival of the first party of this Raymond excursion, the list of names and residences the article provided shows that about two-thirds came from Massachusetts, while the rest were from Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, and a few from Michigan. -1- -1- "The Excursionists: They Will Arrive This Evening After the Regular Train." Los Angeles Times, April 27, 1882, 3. This section of an 1888 Sanborn Fire Insurance map demonstrates the measurable effects that resort hotels such as the Raymond, the Maryland and later the Huntington Hotel had on the surrounding built environment. In the case of the Raymond, Henry Douglas Bacon, owner of the Marengo Ranch, sold part of his land to the Raymond Hotel interests, and subdivided the rest in anticipation that the resort would attract both residents and tourists who would build winter homes. By the 1890s, Pasadena had clearly become a resort town for Eastern and Midwestern tourists. Not only did guests remain in the company of those staying at their own hotel, but social networks developed between the guests of a variety of hotels, and guests would make regular outings to visit their acquaintances staying across town. This community acquired a deeper rootedness, however, as several who had made “wintering” in Southern California a yearly habit began to purchase land and built winter cottages or homes. Pasadena became a sort of winter suburb for those who preferred milder winters and the social scene of resort culture. After the turn of the century, the construction of winter cottages or bungalows became a common practice around hotels like the Maryland, the Huntington and the Vista Del Arroyo. The hotels themselves built cottages for guests who preferred them over hotel life, and as guests would stay up to four or five months, they were really secondary residences. A variety of hotel gazettes, such as the Raymond Chit-Chat and the Green Gazette, documented the social networks developing in this resort culture. -1- -1- Section of a Pasadena Sanborn Fire Insurance Map, March 1888 From the birth of the modern hotel, its public spaces have been regulated by sets of social practices or rules, ranging from the separation of business and leisure, to the division of masculine/feminine, and guest/hotel worker spheres. Beginning in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, the rotunda of the modern hotel functioned as a place of business transaction. Over time, as the functions of the hotel rotunda gradually changed, this was the site that became the modern hotel lobby. Originally a primarily masculine space, it was this central location that often provided a gathering space for businessmen, both local and traveling. -1- The entrance and lobby of the hotel posed a problem, then, for women wishing to enter the hotel, since they were gathering spots for men whose gazes and comments were hardly tolerable for the women of status and virtue who were traveling in the early part of the nineteenth century. Women entered the space only when necessary, and when they did, they were sure to conduct themselves with proper etiquette, such as lowering their own gaze rather than making direct eye contact with strangers, which was the sign of a prostitute’s offer for sexual exchange. Often times separate “family” or women’s entrances were intended to keep women out of the public, or rather, masculine sphere of the rotunda or lobby. These side entrances were located close to the more domestic and female spheres of the hotel. In the absence of such a provisional entrance, women could enter the main lobby when escorted by a male companion (a husband, family member, or a man of some other respectable relationship), but only en route to the ladies parlor or some other more suitable location for a respectable lady. -1- Nikolaus Pevsner, "Hotels" in A History of Building Types. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976). 7 What to do in Los Angeles Recreation 07_recreation_a.jpg jpg 600 572 286 471 larger 07_recreation_b.jpg jpg 600 572 286 471 larger 07_recreation_c.jpg jpg 600 572 286 471 larger 07_recreation_d.jpg jpg 600 572 286 471 larger Mt. Lowe Cable Incline (Pasadena Public Library); Hidden Images: 1) "Los Angeles: What to See and How to See it." (ca. 1915). Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, California Tourism Collection, Urban Archives, California State University, Northridge; 2) USC Digital Archives; 3) Tourist Souvenir, (ca. 1895). California Tourism Collection, Urban Archives, California State University, Northridge. The Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce was created in 1888. One of the most successful organizations of its type in the nation, the Chamber has since its inception been a major producer of travel literature and tourist guides of the city and county. A significant off-shoot of the Chamber was its special subcommittee, the All-Year Club. Intent on promoting the region as a tourist destination all year round (rather than just a resort during the winter months), the All-Year Club worked hand in hand with the Southern California Hotel Association to advertise Southern California's diverse attractions and maintain high occupancy rates throughout the year. -1- -1- Leonard Pitt and Dale Pitt. Los Angeles A to Z: An Encyclopedia of the City and County." (University of California Press, Los Angeles, 1997), "Chamber of Commerce," "Los Angeles Visitors and Convention Bureau." Since 1894, the La Fiesta de Las Flores had attracted thousands of tourists each spring in anticipation of a spectacular parade and festively decorated floats, buildings, and storefronts with flags, bunting and thousands of locally grown flowers (even children were costumed with flowers). Historian William Deverell has captured the story of the development of the Fiesta (originally called La Fiesta de Los Angeles) and demonstrated how it was a means by which Anglo Angelenos attempted to control and ironically deemphasize the city's ethnicity while at the same time claiming to celebrate diversity. The entire pageantry essentially "whitewashed" the city's ethnic elements by either displaying "cartoon" characterizations, or by featuring the region's ethnic groups in a progression of historical floats that symbolized a linear chronology from savagery to barbarism to civilization� "literally progress represented by movement and sequence." -1- Eventually the Fiesta lost steam, not only from the awkward glitch that the Spanish-American War presented (many urged it was unpatriotic to celebrate a Spanish tradition), but also from a general dissatisfaction over an event that seemed to fuss over a dead past rather than the city's future. In 1903 the Fiesta changed its name and focus, emphasizing the region's breathtaking flowers rather than its history. The Fiesta was organized by the Merchants and Manufacturing Association, in hopes that the festivities would bolster sales in downtown shops. The shopping, as well as some of the other spectacles of mass entertainment appealed to the young Marie Blanche Quimby, who remarked in her diary, "I forgot to say that on Sunday here they have baseball games, wild west shows and things like that; also a great many of the stores are kept open." -2- -1- Deverell, William. Whitewashed Adobe: The Rise of Los Angeles and the Remaking of its Mexican Past. (University of California Press, 2004), 66. -2- Quimby, Marie Blanche. A Miss and the Shrine: Being a Diary of a Fourteen Year Old and What She though the People and Things on a Pilgrimage to the City of Los Angeles. Concord, New Hampshire: Privately Printed, 1907), 7. Much of tourism to Southern California in the 1880s was organized around excursion trips and tourist groups. As this souvenir from a local railroad trip out to visit some orange groves shows, the tourist expereince was in many ways a collective experience. Amy Bridges was not always thrilled with spending every day of her vacation with a group, however, as she quietly noted to herself in her travel diary that "this train was the first in which we had mingled with other passengers and it did not seem pleasant to me. I'm afraid Pullman cars are making me feel aristocratic." Although by appearances members of tourist groups might have seemed to enjoy one another's company, actual interaction between tourists was often limited. -1- -1- Amy T. Bridges, "Journal kept on 4th Raymond Excursion [from Massachusetts to California and return]." 27 May 1882. 8 What to do in Los Angeles Shopping 08_shopping_a.jpg jpg 523 780 390 261 larger 08_shopping_b.jpg jpg 523 780 390 261 larger 08_shopping_c.jpg jpg 523 780 390 261 larger 08_shopping_d.jpg jpg 523 780 390 261 larger Lithograph depicting Downey Block on the corner of Spring Street and Temple Street, Los Angeles, 1875-1885 (University of Southern California, Digital Archives); Hidden Images: 1) Muddy street in Los Angeles's Old Chinatown, ca.1898 (University of Southern California, Digital Archives); 2) View of the intersection of Commercial Street (later Alameda Street) and Main Street in Sonora Town, ca.1870; photograph by C.C. Pierce. (University of Southern California, Digital Archives); 3) Covered sidewalk looking north along North Broadway from Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, ca.1892 (University of Southern California, Digital Archives). In one turn-of-the-century Los Angeles guidebook, the lengthy and praising descriptions of hotels as "high-class accommodations [and] institutions which reflect more directly [Los Angeles'] progress and prosperity" make a striking contrast to its description of Chinatown to the north: "A short distance along Alameda street and a right-hand turn brings us within the limits of the Chinese quarter. How suddenly everything changes. No longer the modern stores with their plate-glass windows and broad fronts, but instead the dingy shops of the Asiatic, their narrow windows filled with odds and ends of haberdashery, weird drugs and now and then a few curios or trinkets from the far-off Orient. Instead of the bright lamps which turn night into day upon our modern streets, before these shops the lights are shielded by fantastic lanterns of various hues and shapes, bearing legends undecipherable, save to the Celestial. The houses, though of modern construction, seem to crowd and huddle against the narrow streets and it is all strange to us, though interesting in the extreme." -1- The juxtaposition of the "dingy," "narrow," and "undecipherable" Chinatown with the "modern" broad fronted structures and brightly illuminated streets of the rest of downtown gave tourists a framework with which to interpret the multiethnic landscape of Los Angeles. The Anglo-built business section was "modern" and "progressive," whereas Chinatown was "strange�though interesting in the extreme." -1- Douglas White, Los Angeles From an "Auto": An Illustrated Description of The World's Most Beautiful "Auto" Ride On Board the Electric Automobiles of The California Auto-Despatch Co. Los Angeles: The California Auto-Despatch, 1906. In stark contrast to her experience at the Raymond Hotel (where she stayed for two months in 1886), tourist Amy's Bridges description of Los Angeles, after the one afternoon she spent there during her entire visit in Southern California, was that it was the "dirtiest" city she had ever seen. Annoyed by the filthy streets and shops, and by the conspicuous real estate offices erected at every imaginable street corner and fruit stand, the town of Los Angeles was hardly an attraction. After all, she had come for "health and rest," neither of which could be found in the city. Similarly, British tourist Rose Pender said of Los Angeles in 1883: "It is a straggling, ugly place, with wide, unpaved streets, and double lines for steam cars. There are some very good shops; better, indeed, than in New York, and the contents are not nearly so dear. There is a theatre, which, however, we did not visit; a post office, at which we frequently called, but always in vain (our letters here again having somehow gone wrong); and bars and saloons without number." -1- -1- Rose Pender, A Lady's Experiences in the Wild West in 1883, (London: G. Tucker, 1888), 24-7. Tourist Amy Bridges recorded that "the side-walks are mostly of wood and the planks broken and worn in many places - and all covered with dirt in the most disagreeable way. Piazza roofs from the stores project over the sidewalks and from a covered walk where goods are exposed. Altogether it is a quaint-looking city." -1- Her use of the word "quaint" most likely connoted an element of "old-fashioned" � clearly not "modern" � yet with an attractive or charming quality. -2- Amy could reconcile the dirty, worn city as "quaint" perhaps only because it was only a side-trip, a brief sight to be taken in. After having experienced the luxury and grandeur of the tourist hotel nestled in the countryside, Los Angeles the city was now condensed or concentrated into its most recognizable parts (the church, the plaza, the Chinese quarters, and perhaps a familiar hotel or residence), as the intricate details of the rest of the city were discounted and not worth knowing. It was acceptable that the city was dirty and undesirable because it only had to be tolerated momentarily. And so the dusty sidewalks, the monotonous display of trinkets and goods, and particularly the "otherness" of the Chinese quarters exuded a certain "attraction" quality. -1- Amy T. Bridges, "Journal Kept on a Raymond Excursion from Massachusetts to California and Return, Including a 3 Month Stay at the Raymond Hotel in South Pasadena, the Del Monte Hotel and San Francisco, Etc., 1886-1887." see entry for "The Raymond, Feb 16th, 1887." Unpublished manuscript, Huntington Library. -2- The Oxford English Dictionary Online defines "quaint" as "Unusual or uncommon in character or appearance, but at the same time having some attractive or agreeable feature, esp., having an old-fashioned prettiness or daintiness." (see definition 8). 9 What to do in Los Angeles History 09_history_a.jpg jpg 419 646 323 210 larger 09_history_b.jpg jpg 419 646 323 210 larger 09_history_c.jpg jpg 419 646 323 210 larger 09_history_d.jpg jpg 419 646 323 210 larger Detail of Panorama of First Raymond Hotel; Hidden Images: 1) "Los Angeles County, California Today" California Tourism Collection, Urban Archives, California State University, Northridge; 2) "Architectural rendering for Ramona Indian Village," (1900) Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce Collection, USC Digital Archives; 3)"Indian baskets at the Raymond," (ca. 1887-1895, Jarvis Photography, Pasadena). Denver Public Library Monday, Los Angeles, May 22nd, 1882 -- "The San Gabriel Church was of adobe or stone with a chime of six bells. An outer staircase much worn leads up to the gallery in the back fo the church. It is long and narrow, not in the form of a cross. The picture upon the walls were very nice indeed though very old. The high alter was decorated as usual with figures, flowers and candles and a beautiful alter cloth of gold and silver. A lamp burned in one corner and a figure of an angel kneeling stood upon each side of the alter." -1- The romanticized history of the mission at San Gabriel, and the Spanish Colonial period in California in general, appear in the visual representation of the city well into the twentieth century. Alongside symbols of industry and modernity, the crumbling ruins of a mission arcade are featured in this 1929 Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce brochure. -1- Amy T. Bridges. "Journal kept on 4th Raymond Excursion [from Massachusetts to California and return]," 1882. [Huntington Library]. This architectural rendering depicts "Ramona Village," a sort of small-scale theme park built in the late1920s and early 1930s. Founded by Robert E. Callahan, the village took its name from Helen Hunt Jackson's famous 1884 novel, Ramona. Jackson popularized the (romanticized) history of the mission Indians in much the same way that Harriet Beecher Stowe made waves with Uncle Tom's Cabin. Most Americans, however, missed Jackson's intent to reveal the plight of the Indian but instead became enamored with the love story between Ramona and Alessandro. The fictional story came to be accepted as factual, and attractions such as Ramona's birthplace in San Diego encouraged tourism to Southern California. The Ramona Village is one of many examples how the fascination with the Indian and Spanish Colonial periods became inscribed into the built environment in Los Angeles. The village included pueblos, bake ovens, council chambers, a kiva, and even an autocourt with teepees. -1- -1- "Club Designed on Indian Lines." Los Angeles Times, July 13, 1930, p. D3. Also, "Mission Village." Postcard, Loyola Marymount University, Werner Von Boltenstern Worldwide Postcard Collection. Pasadena and South Pasadena were at the epicenter of a loose knit community beginning in the 1890s known as "Arroyo Culture." Writers, artists, craftsmen, architects, printers and others, mostly settling along the Arroyo Seco, implemented into their designs ideas originating from William Morris and Gustav Stickley. Valuing handmade rather than machine-made goods, the Arroyo Culture picked up on elements of Indian and Hispanic cultures, and incorporated these aesthetics into many of their crafts. Artifacts such as these indian baskets, possibly on display at the Raymond Hotel, provided inspiration to these artists and craftsmen. -1- -1- Leonard Pitt and Dale Pitt. Los Angeles A to Z: An Encyclopedia of the City and County." (University of California Press, Los Angeles, 1997), "Arroyo Culture." 10 What to do in Los Angeles Culture 10_culture_a.jpg jpg 483 780 458 283 larger 10_culture_b.jpg jpg 483 780 458 283 larger 10_culture_c.jpg jpg 483 780 458 283 larger 10_culture_d.jpg jpg 483 780 458 283 larger "Buildings in China Town, Los Angeles," (ca. 1885/1889, C.C. Pierce) Title Insurance and Trust, C.C. Pierce Photography, USC Digital Archives; Hidden Images: 1) "Scenes of Altadena, Los Angeles, and Southern California, ca 1890s" (Travel Album, Huntington Library); Los Angeles Times Overlay: "What They Eat Here: 'Help' Describes Some Queer Molluck Fare," Los Angeles Times, Sep 25, 1887, 14. 2) La Times and Sanborn Fire Insurance Map overlay; 3) "Scenes of Altadena, Los Angeles, and Southern California, ca 1890s" (Travel Album, Huntington Library); Los Angeles Times overlay: "Southern California: A Guide-Book to its Manifold Attractions," Los Angeles Times; Feb 23, 1888; 2. Monday, Los Angeles, May 22, 1882 -- "Later in the afternoon we went with a party to the Chinese quarters and into a church and mission school. The church reminded me a great deal of Catholic Churches. Having one great alter and side alters. Behind a screen upon the high alter were Chinese figures in gorgeous attire, the alter surrounded with curtains of paper or cloth in Chinese colors with Chinese letters upon them. In front of this was a long narrow table with poles covered with Chineses papers upon each side. Some unkown articles were upon it. Another table was in fron of this on which were some little cups.. . . A red and white flag waved in front of both buildings. We saw a good many Chinese. There was a woman in the first building at work upon some cloth on the floor her hair was curiously dressed but her feet were the usual size. There was a little boy about with an awkward yellow coat on and a magenta ribbon braided into his pigtail. One of the China men seemed very intelligent. We heard singing near by and asked if we might go to hear it. The man answered. "Anywhere you like go, you go, no matter." We found the songs to be those of Spaniards carousing. The songs were not unmusical. From this point we saw a procession of black robed nuns and white robed and wite veiled girls entering a Catholic School or Convent. We thought there must have been a confirmation. We waled through the pretty little plaza and to the old Church, though the back of which is a bullet hole, reminder of the Mexican war. The church was as most Catholic Churches. . . Continuing our walk upon the summit of a steep hill behind the city we had a beautiful view of the place. It is indeed a city of gardens. . . We visited some cemetaries beyond the hill. They were one mass of beautiful flowers. In one corner we came across the Chinee graveyards. The graves were marked with boards upon which were Chinese figures. A furnace (we judged from ashes) of a pagoda shape, gaily painted stood near by." -1- -1- Amy T. Bridges. "Journal kept on 4th Raymond Excursion [from Massachusetts to California and return]," 1882. [Huntington Library]. Los Angeles' first Chinatown, which originated in the 1870s, was located on the east side of the Plaza on "Calle do los Negros," or "Negro Alley." In 1870, about 200 Chinese (mostly men) lived here, and by 1900 the Chinatown population was in the thousands. Overcrowded tenements, markets, curios shops, temples, Chinese theaters and opium dens lined the streets and alleys in the area, and gambling and prostitution were common activities. -1- This early Los Angeles Chinatown was eventually razed in 1933 to make way for Union Station, however, many Anglos civic boosters had been trying to get rid of the ghetto since the 1880s. -1- Leonard Pitt and Dale Pitt. Los Angeles A to Z: An Encyclopedia of the City and County." (University of California Press, Los Angeles, 1997), "Chinatown." What is so telling about the presence of Chinese subjects in travel albums when considered in the context of a Los Angeles Chinese labor force is that it reveals something about the way tourists appropriated the ethnic "other" as an object of sightseeing. Tourists made meaningful distinctions regarding the "intrigue" or "attraction" quality surrounding the ethnic "other" based on the particular socio-spatial setting in which the encounter was made. Specifically, Chinese residents, carrying on their daily routine in the "Chinese quarters"of Los Angeles, were suitable "sights" of interests because they were socially and spatially located in a place culturally designated for their habitation. The tourists visiting the Chinese quarter were the outsiders, getting a glimpse of life in this strange and intriguing part of Los Angeles. Beyond photographically capturing the "other" in their own "territory," tourists could also capture a bit of the "other" in the form of Chinese material objects or souvenirs. Amy Bridges reflected that on some afternoons: "[They] gathered about some Chinaman who had brought up his odorous wares in two great baskets suspended from a pole across his shoulders. He spread them out in tempting piles - dainty boxes - delicately carved words - soft pale colors in crepe and silk and paper - and the ladies had lively times bargaining with him." -1- Photographs and Chinese souvenirs were interesting and exotic items for tourists to bring back home with them. But they did not represent the complete level of interaction that Chinese, or other minority ethnic groups, had with the high class resort culture that was developing. Chinese laborers were certainly present on the grounds of resort hotels; the extant visual culture would, however, suggest otherwise. -1-Bridges, "Journal Kept on a Raymond Excursion from Massachusetts to California and Return, Including a 3 Month Stay at the Raymond Hotel in South Pasadena, the Del Monte Hotel and San Francisco, Etc., 1886-1887." Unpublished manuscript, Huntington Library. See entry for "The Raymond, February 16, 1887." 11 Where to Stay in Los Angeles Pico House 11_pico_house_a.jpg jpg 539 645 317 270 smaller 11_pico_house_b.swf swf 645 650 325 322 larger 11_pico_house_c.jpg jpg 539 645 1096 840 larger 11_pico_house_d.jpg jpg 539 645 317 270 smaller "Advertisement for Pico House," (ca. 1875) Security Pacific National Bank Collection, Los Angeles Public Library; Hidden Images: 1) "Pico House, Los Angeles," (n.d., Stereo Views of the West by Carleton E. Watkins). Bancroft Library, Online Archive of California 2) "City of Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, Cal," (1871, Koch). UCLA, Online Archive of California. 3) "The Plaza in 1870." Security Pacific National Bank Collection, Los Angeles Public Library. The first hotel in Los Angeles to be considered “first class” was the Pico House, which opened in June of 1870. In an attempt to combat the deterioration of the old plaza neighborhood by introducing a new and vibrant commercial establishment, Pio Pico, the last Mexican governor of California, spent over $80,000 on the construction and furnishing of the hotel. Three stories in height (the first of such height in Los Angeles), the Italianate building featured eighty-two guest rooms, twenty-one with parlors, bathrooms on each floor, fine French cuisine, and stagecoach transportation to and from the port in San Pedro. -1- The calling card of the Pico House encouraged travelers to “VISIT THE LOS ANGELES ORANGE GROVES and THE PICO HOUSE, The only First Class Hotel in Southern California.” -1-Jean Bruce and Tevvy Ball Poole, El Pueblo: The Historic Heart of Los Angeles. (Los Angeles: The Getty Conservation Institute and the J. Paul Getty Museum, 2002), 100-1. "The old Pico House on the Plaza had to us a somewhat foreign look - with its patio in which grew numerous banana plants with vines trellised across from a balcony which ran around the second story of the court and shaded the lower floor. This patio we crossed to get to the dining room. Somewhere at the back end of the balcony there was a window where one could look out into Chinatown and upon the curious and novel sights therein. The business part of the town did not extend much South of First St. I remember how odd it looked to see water running in little open canals they called zanzas along the sides of the residence streets which were not sidewalked and were unpaved and dusty. Along many of the streets grew quantities of castor oil bean plants nearly as large as small trees. Houses were scattered and many of them of one story and covered with vines. . . The Pico House was then kept by Messrs. Charles Sumner & Cuyas. It was there we first met Capt. Hutchinson, and staying in the hotel were the four Lanfranco sisters all in black for their mother. Here we first saw the family of N.R. Vail who was at that time building his fine house in Adams ST., the large grounds of which are now Chester Place. We afterwards formed a warm friendship with them which has endured these many years. Our hotel windows looked out into Main St. and across to the old Plaza Church and the adobe home of Pio Pico Many times a day the bells clanged from the old church befry and very often there were funerals. There had recently been an epidemic of small pox and the doors of some of the adobe dwellings in Sonoratown were placarded with yellow signs showing they were places to avoid." -1- -1- Crank, Mary Agnes (Brigden). "Ranch Life of Fifty Years Ago." 7 December 1925. James Filmore Crank Papers (Huntington Library). By the early 1880s, the three main hotels in town were the Pico House, the Cosmopolitan (once the Lafayette), and the St. Charles (earlier the Bella Union). These hotels catered primarily to men traveling on business or newcomers planning on settling in the area. On December 22, 1881, out of almost 60 guests who registered at these three hotels, only three were women, one of which was accompanied by her husband. -1- The other two were from relatively nearby towns (San Fernando and Orange) and it is likely that they came into Los Angeles for some sort of business as well. If the guests here had been tourists, there would have been a significantly larger percentage of women (and even children) present. The Pico, the Cosmopolitan and the St. Charles did, undoubtedly, board the earliest tourists to the region. But as organized tours began bringing trainloads of pleasure-seekers, it quickly became clear that these houses would be insufficient if Los Angeles wanted to continue attracting excursionists. In 1882, the arrival of the first major tourist excursion to Los Angeles proved to be a turning point in the way Angelenos viewed their hotels and began envisioning their city as a suitable site for resort culture. -1- "At the Hotels." Los Angeles Times, December 22, 1881, 3. 12 Where to Stay in Los Angeles St. Charles Hotel 12_st_charles_hotel_a.jpg jpg 519 643 321 260 larger 12_st_charles_hotel_b.jpg jpg 519 643 321 260 larger 12_st_charles_hotel_c.jpg jpg 519 643 321 260 larger 12_st_charles_hotel_d.jpg jpg 519 643 321 260 larger "Bella Union Hotel," (1876). Security Pacific National Bank Collection, Los Angeles Public Library; Hidden Images: 1) "Bella Union Hotel," (1857). Security Pacific National Bank Collection, Los Angeles Public Library; 2) 1888 Los Angeles Sanborn Fire Insurance Map overlay; 3) "4th of July Parade near Bella Union," (1871 or 1873). Security Pacific National Bank Collection, Los Angeles Public Library; The first hotels in California were not hotels at all. Visitors traveling along routes between pueblos and missions during the Spanish and Mexican periods received hospitality from owners of ranchos and from the missions themselves. The earliest hotel businesses suited for the purpose of housing overnight guests often operated in conjunction with taverns or saloons. In Los Angeles, the St. Charles Hotel, originally the Bella Union Hotel ,is the earliest known of such establishments in the American period. In the fall of 1849, Major William Reynolds opened a saloon in a building on Main Street above Commercial that once served as California’s capitol for a short time, as well as a quartering station for American soldiers. The saloon also boarded travelers as well as locals. Accounts of the atmosphere of the Bella Union during the 1850s present a colorful view of what a stay in a Western hotel was like: “Dr. Edgar found…to his intense disgust, that the entire second story was overcrowded with lodgers. Singing and loud talk were silenced, in turn, by the protests of those who wanted to sleep; but finally a guest, too full for expression but not so drunk that he was unable to breathe hoarsely, staggered in from a Sonora Town ball, tumbled into bed with his boots on, and commenced to snort, much like a pig. Under ordinary circumstances, this infliction would have been grievous enough; but the inner walls of the Bella Union were never overthick, and the rhythmic snoring of the late-comer made itself emphatically audible and proportionately obnoxious.” -1- -1- Harris Newmark. Sixty Years in Southern California, 1853-1915. Containing the Reminiscences of Harris Newmark. New York: The Knickerbocker Press, 1916), 228-9. The actual building of the Bella Union [St. Charles] Hotel had a long history before it was used as a hotel. "The original adobe building was built by Isaac Williams, a trapper and mercantile business owner, with the help of William Wolfskill ("the first Angeleno to raise oranges commercially"), Joseph Paulding and Richard Laughlin. It was finished in April 1835. . . When the Mexican government issued an edict that a suitable place be purchased for a capital, Governor Pico contraced to buy the Williams' adobe from the Colonel [Williams] for the sum of $5,000. The Governor had his home and his office in the adobe; so the original structure on the Bella Union site did serve as Californi'as capital, for a short time." The American government also used it to house American soldiers when Los Angeles came under U.S. territory in 1946. "The Bella Union served as the original county court house until October, 1851. The first meeting of this court opened on June 24, 1850, with Judge Olvera presiding. . . The first real use of the adobe as a hotel begn in October, 1849, when Major William Reynolds (whose father was a sea captain and his mother, a Malayan) started a saloon in the building. In the next month, a Frenchman, named Roland, opened a restaurant on the premises. For a short time, beginning in February, 1950, the hotel, now called the Bella Union was owned by Captain Bob Haley and a Dr. Brent, while George T. Burrell acted as the manager. . . On the north side of the corral were several small rooms, about 6 by 9 feet, and 7 feet high. When the rains came, the adobe walls would disintegrate; then the unhappy lodgers found themselves 'in a sea of mud.' In the second story of the the main part of the hotel, the walls were so thin that noises easily penetrated them, and kept people from sleep. But 'if a very aristrocratic guest came along, a great sacrifice was made in his favor, and he was permitted to sleep on the little billiard table.' " -1- -1- Maymie R. Krythe. "First Hotel of Old Los Angeles: The Romantic Bella Union." The Historical Society of Southern California. V33 (1951). As a major gathering place for weddings, dances, business activity, political discussions, voting, and planning meetings for the “Rangers” (a vigilante committee), the Bella Union [St. Charles] was intricately involved in the social, commercial and political interests of the community. While perhaps not the “centre of refinement and civilization” the Los Angeles Times labeled it in 1881 when reflecting on its former days, it is clear that in such a disconnected part of the country, the main hotel of any frontier city was the link to news and activity of the outside world. -1- -1- "Major Bell's Book: A Review of the First Book of a Ranger's Reminiscences." Los Angeles Times, December 25, 1881, 4. 13 Where to Stay in Los Angeles Hotel Belmont 13_hotel_belmont_a.jpg jpg 400 507 254 200 smaller 13_hotel_belmont_b.jpg jpg 400 507 254 200 smaller 13_hotel_belmont_c.jpg jpg 400 507 254 200 smaller 13_hotel_belmont_d.jpg jpg 400 507 254 200 smaller "Hotel Belmont," Picturesque Los Angeles County, California: Illustrative and Descriptive. (Chicago: The Fred'k Weston Printing Co., 1887); Hidden Images: 1) Los Angeles Times overlay: "THE WEST END," August 12, 1886, 2.; 2) 1888 Los Angeles Sanborn Fire Insurance Map overlay; 3) "Belmont Hotel on Fire," (1887). Security Pacific National Bank Collection, Los Angeles Public Library; 1888 Los Angeles Sanborn Fire Insurance Map overlay. “One of the loveliest situations in all Los Angeles. Turn either way, and from the Belmont a panoramic picture is to be seen; the distant mountains veiled in mist, the intervening valleys and hills-tops, the distant ocean, the busy city - all can be seen from the Belmont. The grounds in the whole enclosure, laid out and decorated with countless flowering and foliage plants, will make this one of the loveliest spots in the whole county. The house is perfect as a home, where the supreme comfort of guests is made a study. The situation, high above the fog that, in certain seasons, pervades points lower down, makes the Belmont the most desirable hotel in the city of Los Angeles.” -1- -1- Picturesque Los Angeles County, California: Illustrative and Descriptive (Chicago: American Photogravure Co., Jas. C. Young, Pres., 1887), 14. The Belmont Hotel was originally built as Ellis College in 1884. Two years later, after a new college building had been erected, the original building was leased as a hotel by proprietors M.E. Clarke and Walter Patrick. -1- The hotel was situated at the west end of a seventeen acre park at the city's western limit or "West End", the end of the Second Street cable line. This "pleasure grounds" located in the Colina Heights residential district catered to Angeleno families through its manicured grounds, attractions such as rare animals (including monkeys, a black bear, and dear), and simply by providing a "pleasant, shady resort from the warm, dusty streets of the city." -2- Described as a family resort hotel, the Belmont was often occupied by Los Angeles residents spending their winter months out in the "suburbs;" however, the resort catered to out-of-town tourists as well.-3- -1- “The Belmont: Fine Tourists’ Hotel Destroyed by Fire.” Los Angeles Times, December 17, 1887, p. 1. -2- "The West End." Los Angeles Times, August 12, 1886, p. 2. -3- "The Belmont." Los Angeles Times, February 24, 1888, p. 8. On the brink of a westward shift in the economic topography of the city, the hilly Colina Heights neighborhood attracted Los Angeles' affluent residents and businessmen. One L.A. Times article prophesied that once the new government building was built in the area, "we shall put on aristocratic airs and look down on our neighbors in the flats below us." -1- "Commoners" in the form of hotel workers, however, were a daily part of making this upper-middle class culture possible. Many hotel workers were undoubtedly Chinese, as indicated by reports of the disastrous fire which consumed the Belmont in late 1887. The fire apparently started in the Chinese quarters, and moved on to destroy the main building. Hotel workers and guests alike scrambled to help save much of the hotel furniture. Dr. Ellis, the owner, never rebuilt the hotel because of insufficient fire insurance. -2- -1- "The West End." Los Angeles Times, August 12, 1886, p. 2. -2- “The Belmont: Fine Tourists’ Hotel Destroyed by Fire.” Los Angeles Times, December 17, 1887, p. 1. 14 Where to Stay in Los Angeles Hotel Bellevue Terrace 14_bellevue_terrace_a.jpg jpg 530 430 215 265 full 14_bellevue_terrace_b.jpg jpg 530 430 215 265 full 14_bellevue_terrace_c.jpg jpg 530 430 215 265 full 14_bellevue_terrace_d.jpg jpg 530 430 215 265 full "Bellevue Terrace Hotel," (ca. 1900). Security Pacific National Bank Collection, Los Angeles Public Library; Hidden Images 1) "Los Angeles, Looking Southwest Towards 6th," (n.d., William Fletcher Henry). Security Pacific National Bank Collection, Peter Antheil Collection, Los Angeles Public Library; 2) "Figueroa South From 6th," (1885), Security Pacific National Bank Collection, Los Angeles Public Library; 3) Los Angeles Times overlay: "Terrace Hop," April 6, 1888, 8. “This hotel gives a commanding view of the city of Los Angeles and surroundings. It is situated far enough away from town to allow one to escape the dust and confusion, but still easily reached by street-cars; a home-like place, gently swaying bannanas, cool verandas - the house, in fact, a perfect retreat from the busy cares of the world, where one can have all the comforts of a perfect home, minus the cares and the perplexities of the same.” -1- -1- Picturesque Los Angeles County, California: Illustrative and Descriptive (Chicago: American Photogravure Co., Jas. C. Young, Pres., 1887), 14. The Bellevue Terrace was located on Pearl Street, which would eventually become Figueroa. This illustration of the Bellevue Terrace emphasizes the boulevard and the view from the hotel, underscoring its proximity to some of the finest residences in the city. -1- -1- Los Angeles Times, November 24, 1887, 5. Balls such as this one described at the Bellevue Terrace Hotel demonstrated the significance of the hotel in realm of urban public places. -1- As early as the Gilded Era the luxury hotel represented a complex social and cultural space wherein the “upper classes moved in parallel with the middle classes.” Historian Molly W. Berger argues that parties thrown by New York’s millionaires’ homes along Park Avenue, during which the public was invited in to the grand social spaces of the mansions, were the precursors to the practice of a type of “interactive theater” in the elegant spaces of the hotel: “The demand for commercial profits requires that entrepreneurs exploit the comings and goings of the social and financial elite, not only for their business, but also to engage the middle class in similar and very profitable rituals of consumption and theatricality. Thus, a history of wildly elaborate and notorious parties set the stage for the transfer of analogous activities to the new generation of modern luxury hotels, of which the Waldorf-Astoria was only the first.” -2- -1- "Terrace Hop." Los Angeles Times, April 6, 1888, p. 8. -2- Molly W. Berger, “The Rich Man's City: Hotels and Mansions of Gilded Age New York.” The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts, issue 25 (2005), 47-71, quote p. 50. 15 Where to Stay in Los Angeles Hotel Melrose 15_hotel_melrose_a.jpg jpg 520 700 350 260 larger 15_hotel_melrose_b.jpg jpg 520 700 350 260 larger 15_hotel_melrose_c.jpg jpg 520 700 350 260 larger 15_hotel_melrose_d.jpg jpg 520 700 350 260 larger "Hotel Melrose," (ca. 1890), Los Angeles Public Library; Hidden Images: 1) Hotel Melrose pamphlet, Courtesy of Tom Tomlinson; 2) USC Regional History Center, Bunker Hill Collection; 3) "Guests on the Melrose verandah." (1890s) Los Angeles Public Library Photo Database. This brochure for the Melrose Hotel its location at the "highest elevation." In Los Angeles of the 1880s, the most desirable real estate was in the hills where one could afford a view of the city below. Ironically, the Melrose was located on Bunker Hill, which was razed in the 1960s parking lots and high rise office towers. What was once the most socially elite residentially area of the city had been labeled "urban blight" and "decay" by the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency. -1- -1- "Los Angeles Redevelopment: How It Got Where It Is." The Community Redeveloment Agency of the City of Los Angeles. (n.d.) USC Regional History Collection. Built in 1888, the Melrose was among several similar Victorian hotels in the Bunker Hill district that mimicked Queen Anne, Eastlake, Shingle or Gingerbread styles common in the residential architecture of Los Angeles. In fact, many hotels or boarding houses were originally built as private homes, but as land prices rose, many homeowners found that housing boarders supplemented living costs. -1- -1- Pat Adler, The Bunker Hill Story (La Siesta Press, 1968) The Melrose Hotel largely operated as a family hotel, which in the late eighteen hundreds meant that it was the primary residence for many permanent Los Angeles residents or for those who stayed several months out of the year. Located on fashionable Bunker Hill, the Melrose originally catered to upper-middle class families. Opting to stay at the hotel under the American plan (meals included), judges, lawyers, doctors and other professionals and their families found the hotel a convenient alternative to the ornate Victorian mansions that lined the streets of the neighborhood. -1- Some of the permanent guests of the Melrose included Judge E. H. Lamme and his new wife, Mr.and Mrs. C.B. Baker and Mr. and MRs. W.T. Bishop, Jr. -2- The Melrose was so known for its high-class clientele, that in 1903, three Denver boys, "for the express purpose of getting into some hotel and stealing jewelry," managed to steal $15,000 of jewelry after securing jobs as bell boys at the hotel. The Los Angeles Times described the victim, Mrs J.D. Webster, as a Brooklyn "society woman" who spent the winter months in Los Angeles and made the Melrose her home. -3- As decades passed and the demographics of Bunker Hill changed, the Melrose eventually served as an apartment hotel to a less affluent clientele that consisted of predominantly elderly single men. -1- The Los Angeles Blue Book: A Fashionable Residential Address Directory, and Ladies’ Visiting and Shopping Guide. (Los Angeles: Fitzgerald Murphy, Compiler and Publisher, 1894-5). -2- Pat Adler, The Bunker Hill Story (La Siesta Press, 1968); and "Married Again," Los Angeles Times, June 30, 1896, p. 3. -3- "Bell Boy Sentenced." Times, November 19, 1903, A2. "Gem Robbers are Caught." Times, June 24, 1903, 10. 16 Where to Stay in Los Angeles The Raymond Hotel 16_the_raymond_hotel_a.jpg jpg 474 780 451 274 larger 16_the_raymond_hotel_b.jpg jpg 474 780 451 274 larger 16_the_raymond_hotel_c.jpg jpg 474 780 451 274 larger 16_the_raymond_hotel_d.jpg jpg 474 780 451 274 larger From W. Raymond and C.H. Merrill. The Raymond and its Surroundings, East Pasadena, California. (Boston: James S. Adams, 1886); Hidden Images: 1) Ibid; 2) "Masons making brick for the construction of the Hotel Raymond on the southeast corner of Raymond Hill, looking north in South Pasadena," (1888). Title Insurance and Trust Company Collection, USC Digital Archives; 3) "Hotel Raymond's four-horse carriage in front of the hotel in South Pasadena," (ca.1890, C.C. Pierce). Title Insurance and Trust Company Collection, USC Digital Archives. The Raymond, December 21, 1886 -- "Within the hotel is large and airy. Great halls and rotunda - beautiful parlors, reading, writing and billiard rooms - and a grand ballroom with piano-organ and stage etc. for theatricals all so very nice. There are flowers on all the mantles and boquets everywhere - on one table there were four roses and all the beautiful kinds. The dining hall is very nice, large and airy - The little tables are so daintily set with lovely silver, glass and china, and a boquet of pepper and flowers on each. Girls in white. . . with little lace caps, wait upon the tables and it is done so beautifully. Everything is very nice. -1- -1- Amy T. Bridges. "Journal kept on a Raymond Excursion from Massachusetts to California and return, including a 3 month stay at the Raymond Hotel in South Pasadena, the Del Monte Hotel and San Francisco, etc.," 1886-7. [Huntington Library] The Raymond was just one of the first among a series of resort hotels built in communities like Arrowhead Hot Springs, Catalina, Echo Mountain, Long Beach, Redondo Beach, Riverside, Santa Monica and elsewhere. Many of these included the Arrowhead Springs Hotel (Lake Arrowhead); Echo Mountain House (Echo Mountain, north of Pasadena); Virginia Hotel (Long Beach); Redondo Beach Hotel (Redondo Beach); and the Hotel Arcadia (Santa Monica). By the 1890s, newspapers, guidebooks, and promotional journals (notably Charles Fletcher Lummis’ Land of Sunshine) describe the region as a network of resort communities easily accessible to the visitor. The development of regional tourism, as explored by Dona Brown in Inventing New England: Regional Tourism in the Nineteenth Century (1995), is a crucial element in the creation of “sense of place.” As local tourist companies and civic boosters in any region tapped into the national culture of tourism, the resulting proliferation of promotional literature, often dominated by visual images, created a situation such that before the tourist even arrived in an area, they knew what they would see. This developmental process was central in the creation of a Southern California regional “sense of place,” and the extant contemporary promotional literature is a testimony to the textual and visual descriptions that tourists carried in their minds as they came to visit. -1- -1- Dona Brown, Inventing New England: Regional Tourism in the Nineteenth Century. (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institute Press, 1995). Accounts from diaries, scrapbooks and newspapers indicate that the majority of passengers on the Raymond & Whitcomb tours across country were from New England. A newspaper clipping pasted into a tourists’ excursion scrapbook indicates that when the six Wagner coaches of her excursion left Boston in April of 1882, they carried 130 of the total 150 passengers that would make their way to Colorado, New Mexico and California. The other twenty would be picked up at short stops along the way. When the Los Angeles Times reported the arrival of the first party of this excursion, the list of names and residences the article provided shows that about two-thirds came from Massachusetts, while the rest were from Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, and a few from Michigan. Excursionists exhibited a range in age and marital status; the nature of the tour made it feasible and acceptable for single women to travel alone, and the mix of those who toured ranged from elderly couples, to honeymooners, and families with small children. -1- -1- Alice D. Perkins. "Scrapbook of trips to Colorado, California, and Mexico" 1882. (Huntington Library). 17 Tour the Raymond Hotel Getting There 17_getting_there_a.swf swf 508 780 465 299 larger 17_getting_there_b.jpg jpg 508 780 465 299 larger 17_getting_there_c.flv flv 240 320 160 120 larger 17_getting_there_d.jpg jpg 508 780 465 299 larger Video created from "Railroad tracks leading to the Hotel Raymond in South Pasadena," (ca. 1890, Charles C. Peirce), Huntington Library; and image from "The Raymond and its Surroundings;" Hidden Images: 1) W. Raymond and C.H. Merrill, The Raymond and its Surroundings, East Pasadena, California. (Boston: James S. Adams, 1886); 2) "Freight Train," (1898, Thomas A. Edison, Inc.), .Library of Congress Moving Image Collection.; 3) "First Los Angeles and Pasadena Railway train at the Raymond Avenue Station in Pasadena," (ca. 1887). California Historical Society Collection, USC Digital Archives Of particular importance to the context of tourism to Los Angeles is a discussion of railroad travel, as this was the primary means of tourist travel to the city until the early decades of the twentieth century. The physical act of riding across country in a train as a new means of transportation implies dramatic changes in the way people perceived and experienced space (distance) and time, and this had a direct influence on peoples’ inclination to travel via train for pleasure. By 1870, tourists could be transported from the East to the West Coast in a week, whereas a decade earlier, the trip could have taken as much as several months. Perhaps even more appealing for tourists than abbreviated length of journey were the luxurious Palace Cars manufactured by George Pullman (as well as others) beginning in the 1860s and 1870s. These extra-fare cars featured plush, upholstered furniture, lavishly ornate décor, comfortable sleeping arrangements and eventually were accompanied by hotel cars, dining cars, parlor cars, glass-enclosed observation cars, and club cars. Staffed by attentive porters (predominantly African American), and exclusive of lower class passengers who could not afford the two dollar surcharge, the Pullman Palace Car provided the refinement, as well as the spatial and social segregation heretofore unavailable to the traveling public, much less the respectable tourist. -1- -1- Cocks, Doing the Town: The Rise of Urban Tourism in the United States, 1850-1915 (2001), especially Chapter 2, "Refining Travel: Railroads and Extra-Fare." The construction of the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Valley Railroad was influential in the region in more ways than one. Not only was it a generous inducement to Walter Raymond to build his hotel close to Los Angeles, it was also a major stepping stone for the completion of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe transcontinental route to Los Angeles. Crank became more convinced of the profitability of the Los Angeles and San Gabriel railroad, and after consulting with the Santa Fe about optimal track routes through the valley so as to effectively prevent the Southern Pacific from gaining a presence in the valley, he sold his line to the company in February 1887, and became one of its board of directors. The Santa Fe was eager to capitalize on not only the traffic that the Raymond Hotel would encourage, but on this convenient means of entering the city of Los Angeles through an already lucrative local line. -1- This was a pivotal moment in Los Angeles history as it broke the Southern Pacific’s monopoly on transcontinental railway traffic. Los Angeles had been connected to San Francisco via the SP since 1876. But with this new competition, rates plummeted to as low as $1 for a ticket from Chicago. The resulting boom significantly altered Southern California’s business, real estate and social landscape as the county population rose from just over 30,000 in 1880 to over 100,000 in 1890. The Santa Fe was assured of a successful link to Los Angeles because the Raymond was already a major destination. -1- "Papers of Henry Douglas Bacon, ca. 1766-1906," Huntington Library. Glenn S. Dumke. "The Career of James F. Crank: A Chapter in the History of Western Transportation," Huntington Library Quarterly 6, no. 3 (1942): 313. Dear Sir - Have not heard any thing from you since I returned except through Mr. Crank. He tells me that he don't think there is money enough in it to purchase the rancho. He is interested in R.R to Pasadena and if he cannot help the sale of place I don't know who can. Three routes are surveyed to Pasadena & parties are working to get it to run west side of Arroyo Seco. I know if right inducements were offered R.R. Co. to run through your ranch they would do it - and make a town there. Why not cut the ranch up - pipe it, give them some town lots - (alternate ones.) and put it on the market this winter? The R.R. will be built within 8 months to Pasadena. I will agree to pipe & subdivide - will pay all expenses of the same, sell & advertise on commission and will take land enough for expenses & com. I expect to start East first of week to be gone six weeks inducing immigration to this state. Would like to work the thing up for you & think I can put a large Hotel on the hill. Will be happy to hear from you soon. Address me here, yours to N C Carter -1- -1- "Letter to H.D. Bacon from Nathaniel Coburn Carter," 24 August 1883. H.D. Bacon Papers (Huntington Library). 18 Tour the Raymond Hotel The Architecture 18_the_architecture_a.jpg jpg 485 780 639 398 larger 18_the_architecture_b.swf swf 485 780 639 398 larger 18_the_architecture_c.jpg jpg 485 780 639 398 larger 18_the_architecture_d.jpg jpg 485 780 639 398 larger "The Raymond," (ca. 1890, Jarvis Photography). Courtesy of Corrine Tomlinson; Hidden Images: 1) Floor plans from W. Raymond and C.H. Merrill, The Raymond and its Surroundings, East Pasadena, California. (Boston: James S. Adams, 1886); 2) "Exterior view of the newly opened Raymond Hotel, South Pasadena, (ca.1901-1902). Title Insurance and Trust Collection, USC Digital Archives; 3) Little is known about the architect of the Raymond Hotel; one source attributes the design of the hotel to a "Mr. Littlefield." -1- The building itself stood four stories tall (a center and two corner towers rose an additional two stories), and was laid out in an "E" shaped floor plan. Contemporary texts referred to the hotel's style as "modern Eastlake," and prominent straight and convex mansard roofs topped the corner and central towers, respectively, of the structure, evidence of a Second Empire influence. -2- Aside from the distinctive roof, in general, the long bedroom windows and exterior facade were of a simple, unadorned style. A covered veranda wrapped around the main axis of the hotel and its two flanking wings. -1- It is likely that this was the architect Josiah M. Littlefield of Boston, as this indicates a connection with the Boston-based Raymond & Whitcomb tour company. Josiah M. Littlefield is listed as the architect for the Haverhill Public Library in Proceedings at the Dedication of the Haverhill Public Library, November 11, 1875 and Report of the Trustees to the City of Haverhill, January 1, 1876. (C.C. Morse & Son, 1876). -2- "A Mammoth Hotel: Eastern Capital to be Invested in Pasadena." Los Angeles Times, November 21, 1883, 4. The "Eastlake" style was a variation of late nineteenth century Victorian architecture, known for its "exaggerated, almost Modernistic, angularity." Walter C. Kidney, The Architecture of Choice: Eclecticism in America, 1880-1930. (New York: George Brazillier, 1976), 6. Both in architectural style and in hotel management, the Raymond followed, or rather kept in step with Eastern precedents and contemporary resort hotels. The building was in fact fairly similar to the design of the Seminole Hotel in Winter Park, Florida, a town envisioned by its founders as a “community of wealthy and enlightened Northerners.” Florida too, was becoming a resort spot for wealthy Northeasterners, and the luxurious Gilded Age winter resort hotels of railroad magnates Henry Flagler and Henry Plant were harbingers of the tropical fantasy that became so associated with the state. The Seminole Hotel, which incidentally, like the Raymond, was constructed during 1885 and 1886, owed much of its woodwork style to the Stick-style architecture of the 1870s. The hotel also had a wrapping covered veranda, and a prominent, if less pronounced than the Raymond’s, mansard roof. The construction of the Seminole and the Raymond were on the cusp of the trend in the 1890s and 1910s toward associational architecture in resort hotels. The practice of referencing historical styles and eccentric motifs applied to these later hotels (including Spanish, Moorish, Neo-Georgian, and Swiss Chalet styles) can only be understood within the context of the “conspicuous consumption” (borrowing Thorstein Veblen’s term) and “conspicuous luxury” of the Gilded Age. Allusions to historical and exotic styles targeted the nation’s elite and their taste for picturesque and fantastic displays of monumentality and grandeur. -1- -1- Susan R. Braden, The Architecture of Leisure: The Florida Resort Hotels of Henry Flagler and Henry Plant. (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002). According to a letter written during the Raymond Hotel's construction, there was some concern on the part of Henry Bacon (original owner of the Raymond land), that the hotel would not be completed. Here Bacon's business manager reassures him that serious progress has been made in the construction of the hotel, but this and other correspondence between Hughes and Bacon reveal a struggle between the land, hotel, and railroad interests. Each of the backers of these three aspects of the Raymond project wanted to ensure that they would not lose on their investments, and therefore each of them held out on construction/improvements as long as possible to make sure the others would come through on their word. "Dear Mr. Bacon: I went out to Pasadena this morning and saw Mr. Littlefield, the architect of the hotel & telegraphed you the gist of his report as to expenditures to date, ciz: $45,000 on excavation, bricks, labor, gardening etc. etc. and $10,000 for lumber now actually on the ground. He said further that within the next two weeks the sum total would exceed $75,000 as the lumber was being used very fast. Mr. Crank told me to-day that he knew they had bought a $42,000 [gin] of lumber so I expect you are safe in giving them the deed, unless there is something to prevent the fullfillment of their contract which is now concealed from you. Apparently the thing is being pushed as rapidly as possible and I don’t' see why they would have out all the lumber did they not mean business. . . Sincerely, Walton G. Hughes" "Papers of Henry Douglas Bacon, ca. 1766-1906," Huntington Library 19 Tour the Raymond Hotel The Hotel Grounds 19_the_hotel_grounds_a.jpg jpg 600 772 450 350 larger 19_the_hotel_grounds_b.swf swf 600 772 450 350 larger 19_the_hotel_grounds_c.jpg jpg 600 772 450 350 larger 19_the_hotel_grounds_d.jpg jpg 600 772 450 350 larger "Pasadena, Los Angeles County," (1893, Wood & Church); Hidden Images: 1) Video made from "Panorama of Raymond Hotel," (ca. 1887), Huntington Library; 2) Detail from 1884 Pasadena Sanborn Fire Insurance Map; 3) "View of south Pasadena from the grounds of the Raymond Hotel (Raymond Hill) looking southeast," (ca. 1890), Title Insurance and Trust Company Collection, USC Digital Archives The Raymond Hotel grounds were fifty-five acres of landscaped gardens and recreational facilities. At its opening, the owners claimed that the hotel would soon boast ornamental and drinking fountains, a variety of gardens, tennis courts, children’s playgrounds, croquetgrounds, swings, rustic houses, bowling alleys, and artificial lake with islands, a rock cavern, a maze, an orange grove and a generous lawn. -1- -1- W. Raymond and C.H. Merrill, The Raymond and its Surroundings, East Pasadena, California. (Boston: James S. Adams, 1886); The Raymond, December 21, 1886 -- "So here we are at the Raymond and I wish I could describe its glories for it certainly has them. The hotel is one of the finest in interiors I ever was in, though the exterior is very plain except for the broad piazza which surrounds the three sides of it. The grounds do not amount to much as yet but are being nicely laid out and will be beautiful sometime. Close about the piazza are beds planted with heliotrope shrubs, very fragrant, fantanas ?, roses, pansies and other lovely flowers. But they are hardly more that started now. Then a broad drive comes next. They are at work now upon a grand central plot of flowers and shrubs which will be beautiful. The side slopes are covered with orange trees just started and I suppose the hotel will sometime be surrounded with orange groves." -1- -1- Amy T. Bridges. "Journal kept on a Raymond Excursion from Massachusetts to California and return, including a 3 month stay at the Raymond Hotel in South Pasadena, the Del Monte Hotel and San Francisco, etc.," 1886-7. [Huntington Library] The Raymond, December 21, 1886 -- "We hoped to reach the Raymond early as it was not fary away, but there was some trouble with the management and we were switched up and down the tracks vexed between hope and disappointment for the whole morning until we fearerd we were never to reach our destination. But on paying $25 extra dollars by Mr. Hardy of Raymond & Whitcomb - we finally steamed up the San Gabriel Valley. There was the lovliest air - our winter clothes were very oppressive. It seemed like summer. However the vegetation was a disappoinment to me, especially at first for the country looked browned and dry and many trees were with out leaves as at home. But as we came further up the valley it was far pleasanter, and we rode through the shade of green trees and saw some green grass - beautiful flowers grew about the pretty little homes - surrounded with their patches of cultivated ground. It grew much prettier and we went on and we saw aorange trees with fruits hanging thick upon them - and nice yards. Finally we came in sight of the Raymond and saw the first Raymond Party upon the piazzas waving their hankerchieves in greeting. It seemed so good to us, so tired, so hungry. We steamed through a little cut in the hills and were here - at Raymond Station. Some rode up to the house but as it was only a little way, but up a steep hill, I walked and we came right into the midle of summer. Ladies in white sat upon the braod piazza shading their faces with sun-shades or fans and men wore straw hats." -1- Amy T. Bridges. "Journal kept on a Raymond Excursion from Massachusetts to California and return, including a 3 month stay at the Raymond Hotel in South Pasadena, the Del Monte Hotel and San Francisco, etc.," 1886-7. [Huntington Library] 20 Tour the Raymond Hotel The Floor Plan 20_the_floor_plan_a.jpg jpg 499 780 540 345 larger 20_the_floor_plan_b.jpg jpg 499 780 540 345 larger 20_the_floor_plan_c.jpg jpg 499 780 540 345 larger 20_the_floor_plan_d.jpg jpg 499 780 540 345 larger Floor plans from W. Raymond and C.H. Merrill, The Raymond and its Surroundings, East Pasadena, California. (Boston: James S. Adams, 1886); Hidden Images: 1) Dining Room of the Raymond Hotel, Huntington Library; overlay from The Raymond and its Surroundings; 2) Parlor of the Raymond Hotel, Huntington Library; 3) Dining Room Staff of the Raymond Hotel, Huntington Library. The hotel had 201 guest rooms (which could be rented as singles or as suites), 40 bathrooms and 43 water closets. A variety of public rooms were spaced out along the first floor, including a rotunda, a grand ball room, a grand dining room, a reception room, news room, ladies’ parlor, reading and billiard rooms, and gentlemen’s reading room and billiard hall. Just as the hotel opened even before its landscaping was completely planted, early images of the hotel’s interior reveals a strikingly plain, yet tasteful interior décor. In lieu of gaudy furniture and overcrowded Victorian parlor accessories (which would come to dominate hotel interiors in the coming decades), bouquets of fresh flowers (more colorful and fragrant than Amy Bridges had ever witnessed), and "daintily set" dining tables made the hotel’s spaces inviting. Amy T. Bridges. "Journal kept on a Raymond Excursion from Massachusetts to California and return, including a 3 month stay at the Raymond Hotel in South Pasadena, the Del Monte Hotel and San Francisco, etc.," 1886-7. [Huntington Library] The floor plan of the Raymond demonstrates an architectural feature common in nineteenth century hotels. The gendering of certain public spaces, such as the "ladies parlor" and the "gent's billiard room," mirrored broader social practices regarding separate "spheres." Interestingly, however, divisions along gender lines within the social space of the Raymond hotel were not as strict as they may appear on this floor plan. Amy Bridges recounted in her diary socializing with variety of guests, men and women alike; and she never indicated, either directly or indirectly, that her interactions were restricted along gender lines. Amy T. Bridges. "Journal kept on a Raymond Excursion from Massachusetts to California and return, including a 3 month stay at the Raymond Hotel in South Pasadena, the Del Monte Hotel and San Francisco, etc.," 1886-7. [Huntington Library] The modern hotel exhibits a peculiar combination of public and private space. In this respect, the hotel is similar to the modern apartment building, wherein lies the potential for interaction between strangers in somewhat domestic spaces. In "Apartment Stories: City and Home in Nineteenth-Century Paris and London" (1999), Sharon Marcus complicates the classification of hotel space (or apartment space) as either wholly public or private space. Marcus compares conflicting notions of acceptable domestic space in Paris, dominated by the apartment building, and London, dominated by the single-family house. The social interaction allowed by the architectural layouts of apartment buildings, such as in entryways, lobbies, hallways and stairways, causes a blurring between the distinction of public and private realms. Additionally the fluidity provided by the architecture between the street and the apartment building brings this vagueness out further, carrying elements of private space into the public realm. -1- -1- Sharon Marcus. Apartment Stories: City and Home in Nineteenth-Century Paris and London. (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1999) 21 Tour the Raymond Hotel View from the Raymond 21_view_from_the_raymond_a.jpg jpg 430 1336 668 215 larger 21_view_from_the_raymond_b.jpg jpg 430 1336 668 215 larger 21_view_from_the_raymond_c.jpg jpg 430 1336 668 215 larger 21_view_from_the_raymond_d.swf swf 430 1336 668 215 larger "View from the Raymond Veranda. 'Las Casitas over top of electric pole' and 'The Sierra Madre Range. 'Old Baldy' or San Antonio.'" (ca. 1890s, Views from a Trip to California). The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.; Hidden Images: 1) "Pasadena from the Raymond," (ca. 1890, Jarvis Photography). Corrine Tomlinson Collection; 2) "View of the porch of the Hotel Raymond in South Pasadena," (ca. 1905), Title Insurance and Trust Collection, USC Digital Archives; 3) "Panorama of Raymond Hotel," (ca. 1887), Huntington Library. In a personal travel album owned by Harriet S. Tolman, two commercial prints depict different views from the veranda of the Raymond Hotel. That these views were included in the stock of souvenir prints available to tourists reveals something significant about the way the guests experienced the space of the hotel as a contextual frame for the surrounding landscape. Formally arranged the same way, the two prints frame the outlying countryside, growing town of Pasadena, and the mountains beyond it. The vantage point is similar to that of the hotel guest, reclining for an afternoon rest on one of the veranda’s chairs. This common practice of relaxing outdoors and taking in the view fashioned the tourist’s “reading” of the landscape. The image that resulted was one that portrayed the town of Pasadena as distant, yet in scale with the overwhelmingly green and cultivated streetscapes and private grounds; and one that privileged the expanse of the mountain range and the way the light played on its distinct features. "View from the Raymond Veranda. 'Las Casitas over top of electric pole' and 'The Sierra Madre Range. 'Old Baldy' or San Antonio.'" (ca. 1890s, Views from a Trip to California). The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. The Raymond, December 21, 1886 -- "Our rooms are very pleasant and nicely furnished in red. We have two long windows in each room and the view is magnificent. The hotel is on a hill and we look down over the valleys, with their orange groves and vineyards and cultivated fields." -1- -1- Amy T. Bridges. "Journal kept on a Raymond Excursion from Massachusetts to California and return, including a 3 month stay at the Raymond Hotel in South Pasadena, the Del Monte Hotel and San Francisco, etc.," 1886-7. [Huntington Library] "An afternoon on the western piazza at the Raymond --- I wish you could be with me some afternoon on the western piazza - my favorite one. Sitting in the big easy rocking chair they have on the piazzas...The hotel sits at the summit of a little hill, below us then is the lovely valley. The town of Pasadena spread out amid its trees and greenery - the cultivated grounds and scattered houses; or sloping hillsides - as beautiful. The the ground rises. There are little hills like our own - rising higher and higher behind each other. Then come the wonderful mountains, rising so abruptly from the valley you think you could put your finger on the very line from which they rise. Wrinkled. Jagged. Broken. Some summits with traces of snow. Shadowy canons - bleak over-hanging rocks. The light and shade are wonderful upon them. There is so much awe - authority about them - "the everlasting hills"! I take long breaths as I look up at them - so sure - so grand...The wonderful, wonderful power of God speaks from them - so silently, so overwhelmingly. "From everlasting to everlasting I am God." They bring such peace and rest to me I cannot tell. All this wonderful scene rises apparently so near to you - so very distinctly before you - because of the clear air - that I often think It is painted upon a canvas - as some immense drop curtain at a theatre. You know how often they are painted with tropical scenes and grand mountains. Only this is more lovely than human hand could paint.-1- -1- Amy T. Bridges. "Journal kept on a Raymond Excursion from Massachusetts to California and return, including a 3 month stay at the Raymond Hotel in South Pasadena, the Del Monte Hotel and San Francisco, etc.," 1886-7. [Huntington Library] 22 Your Personal Profile Amy T. Bridges 22_amy_bridges_a.jpg 0 500 307 215 265 full 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Personal Travel Album, Huntington Library In late April of 1882, Amy Bridges along with her father, mother and younger sister Lily, set out from their home in Massachusetts on a two month, cross-country Raymond & Whitcomb Excursion. Throughout the pages of the meticulous travel diary she kept, Amy recorded her response to riding in luxury extra-fare railway cars, dramatic new landscapes, extremes of differing climates, and first impressions of western towns along the route. Upon reaching the West Coast, she describes a brief visit to Los Angeles wherein she is overcome by the beauty of the flowers and vegetation, the perfume of orange and lemon groves, and the thrill of standing before the Pacific Ocean (a sight which taken in together with the sky and the surrounding mountains painted a palate of turquoise blue, lavender, pink and purple, “hues [she] never thought natural when as combined before”). For three nights the Bridges stayed in the Cosmopolitan Hotel on Main, yet they only spent one afternoon downtown, where they visited the “Chinese quarters,” strolled through the old plaza, and walked up a steep hill “behind the city” to gain a view of the homes and buildings below. After an only two day visit, they were off to San Francisco to the “grand Palace Hotel we had so much anticipated.” Four years later, the Bridges set out on another excursion with the Raymond & Whitcomb tour company, this time via a much accelerated trip across country, and a two months stay in the Raymond Hotel in East Pasadena (present day South Pasadena). Again, Amy kept a journal of their trip, and while not detailing a day-by-day itinerary, she thoughtfully described the way she, her family and the other excursionists “lazily” spent their days in the hotel. They took outings occasionally (although still only one afternoon trip to Los Angeles), but in general, the guests of the Raymond spent their entire days together at the hotel, following a loose schedule of meals in the dining room, promenades through the corridor and rotunda, afternoon concerts on the veranda, and cards, billiards and dancing. Amy and her family became well acquainted with many of the guests, as well as with the personal details of their lives, as her diary reveals several interesting rumors and tidbits of gossip. Amy’s favorite spot was on the “western piazza,” where she often sat at sunset, watching the play of light and shadow on the steadfast Sierra Madre Mountains. 0 0 0 0 0 23 Your Personal Profile Catharine Cascarat 23_catharine_cascarat_a.jpg 0 500 307 215 265 full 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Huntington Library, phot 5381 Catharine Cascarat was a chambermaid whoThe work force of the Raymond Hotel, as evidenced in extant photographs taken either in front of the hotel or in the hotel’s dining hall, appeared to be overwhelmingly "white." This was because the management of the Raymond Hotel possessed a strong link to Eastern hotels and the tourist industry. Owners Walter Raymond and Emmons Raymond employed the management services of C.H. Merrill of the prestigious firm of hotel proprietors, Messrs. Barron, Merrill & Barron. Merrill was the manager of the Crawford House in the White Mountain resort area of Vermont. As the Raymond was a winter resort hotel, and stayed open only from November to May, its schedule fit perfectly with the summer resort season of the White Mountains. Merrill and the entire staff of the Crawford House came out after the summer season to staff the Raymond for the winter. 0 0 0 0 0 24 Your Personal Profile Walton G. Hughes 24_walton_g_hughes_a.jpg 0 500 307 215 265 full 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Huntington Library, [Marengo Map or Who's Who] Walton G. Hughes was secretary to Henry D. Bacon, owner of the land that became the site of the Raymond Hotel. Hughes was intricately involved in all aspects of the real estate transactions concerning the hotel and surrounding neighborhood, including negotiating with James Filmore Crank of the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Valley Railway, and personally undertaking the task of selling the residential lots south of the hotel. The meticulous correspondance between Hughes and Bacon over the matters involving the cooperation of the hotel and railroad interests, as well as the sale of of the subdivided land, reveals a not often illuminated perspective of the tourist landscape: the constructed tourist landscape. 0 0 0 0 0 25 Your Personal Profile Mow Ton 25_mow_ton_a.jpg jpg 500 307 215 265 full 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Huntington Library, photCL 403(2) Mow Ton was a hotel cook working in the St. Nicholas hotel on Alameda Street. The decade of the 1880s was both a time of economic opportunity for Chinese Americans in Los Angeles, as well as a time when severe racism and discrimination threatened the stability of their physical neighborhood and their jobs. The strong presence of Chinese workers in the hotels, boardinghouses, restaurants, laundries and surrounding farms of the city threatened Anglo laborers who claimed they were being "undersold" by cheap labor. In 1886, an attempted boycott of establishments which employed Chinese workers, organized by the Los Angeles Trades and Labor Council, failed when it became increasingly clear that these businesses could not support the level and quality of service that they could with their Chinese employees. The sentiment to replace Chinese hotel and restaurant workers with local girls or even trained servants imported from England was often frustrated by the realization that "Oh! Wait a minute, we cannot spare you yet, John [Chinaman], we haven’t any one to take your place." Ultimately, owners of many establishments simply refused to let go of their Chinese employees, particularly chefs, because they knew the quality of their business’ service, and consequently its patronage, would decline. While many would continue to post signs outside their doors stating "No Chinese employed here," it is unclear how many continued to employ "whom[ever] they pleased." What the failed boycott demonstrated above all was that the integration of the Chinese American population in the various industries of the city was by the mid 1880s a stable and unshakable pattern in the city’s economy. 0 0 0 0 0 1 Why Visit Los Angeles Health 01_health_a.jpg jpg 483 780 530 328 larger 01_health_b.jpg jpg 483 780 530 328 larger 01_health_c.jpg jpg 483 780 530 328 larger 01_health_d.jpg jpg 483 780 530 328 larger "Sierra Madre Villa," (Jarvis Photography, ca. 1885). California Tourism Collection, California State University Northridge. Hidden Images: 1) "The California Hospital, Los Angeles" (Reider, ca. 1907). Courtesy of Tom Tomlinson; 2) Detail of "Sierra Madre Villa"; 3) "HELL'S HALF ACRE.; A Report of a Tour Through Chinatown Yesterday." Los Angeles Times, April 14, 1882, p.3. In the late nineteenth century, sanitariums did not have the negative stigmatism associated with mental illness that they carry today; rather, they catered to those ailing from physical illness (most often those with tuberculosis or other infections of the respiratory system) who were wealthy enough to pay room and board. Migration to Southern California was heavily prompted by the medical opinion of professionals that the climate of the region was conducive to improving the health of tuberculars and other invalids. -1- Beginning in the late 1880s, sanitariums began to appear and offer services of hospitality and treatment. “Invalids” with adequate economic means would stay at these institutions in order to receive the benefits of “pleasant summers, ideal winters, physiological methods of treatment, [and] a scientific dietary,” as its postcard advertised. -2- While many invalids’ health did indeed improve during their stay in the Los Angeles area, much of the literature describing the region’s benefits and “scientific” treatments was less than accurate. Regardless, thousands flocked to seek cures for their ailments. Often the distinction between tourist and invalid was blurred, as many tourists claimed their intentions for visiting were health related. Likewise, “resort hotel,” “health resort” and “sanitarium” were names often interchangeably used to describe the type of institution that developed. -1- John E. Baur. The Health Seekers of Southern California, 1870-1900. San Marino, California: The Huntington Library (1959), vii, viii. -2- “Glendale Sanitarium, Glendale, California. A Southern California Health Resort.” (n.d.). Werner Von Boltenstern Worldwide Postcard Collection, Loyola Marymount University. Perhaps the earliest version of a resort hotel close to Los Angeles was the Sierra Madre Villa in the San Gabriel foothills, although it did not begin as a hotel. William Porter Rhoades, along with his wife and two children, arrived in Los Angeles in 1874 intent on entering some type of “mercantile business.” Rhoades and his father-in-law, Williams Cogswell, eventually bought some land in the eastern San Gabriel valley, and began planting orange and lemon groves, as well as grape vineyards and other trees. By the late 1870s, Rhoades was able to make a nice profit by selling his citrus to markets in San Francisco and the East. Around this time, the family began boarding a family, James Filmore Crank and his wife and son, who had moved out from Colorado for health reasons. The Cranks had been lodging in the Pico House for some time, and became tired of the accommodations there. After a short stay at the Villa, Crank got “ranch fever” of his own and purchased a large ranch in Pasadena. Crank later played a pivotal role in the construction of the region’s landmark hotel, the Raymond. Already famous now for its citrus, the Sierra Madre Villa began to attract the attention of several businessmen in Los Angeles who felt the Villa would be a successful resort for tourists. With their encouragement, Rhoades constructed a building of twenty additional rooms. Not long after this, he would add fifty more to accommodate the flocking tourists. Rhoades’ son later recalled: “As the word got about in the leading clubs and resorts in America, so it spread to Europe that to visit Southern California and not go to the Sierra Madre Villa was not seeing California. So it came about that people worth while gathered at the portals of the Villa to spend a few weeks or the entire winter, enjoying the society of the guests and the climate and surroundings, and they always returned and so it got to be a habit to spend the winters among the orange groves of the San Gabriel Valley and sojourn at the Villa.” -1- The earliest Raymond & Whitcomb Excursion tours to Southern California in 1882 would even bring their tourists to the Villa as a whole day’s entertainment, where the guests would eat lunch and mingle with those staying at the hotel. -1- William Lauren Rhoades, "The History of the Famous Sierra Madre Villa Hotel," (Pasadena Public Library, ca. 1930). Los Angeles boosters capitalized upon the notion of "health" to attract visitors, yet they ironically used it as a weapon against the city's Chinese population, many of whom made the tourist industry possible. The cutting and blatantly racist words of this Los Angeles Times article were intended to create panic about the small, contained Chinatown in the heart of the city. In describing a tour through Chinatown taken by a police caption, a physician, and two reporters, the writer describes various portions of the neighborhood as "filthy," "putrifying," and "death-laden." In contrast to the spacious, comfortable and ventilated sanitariums and resorts throughout the surrounding area, a Chinese "lodging house was shown where the sleepers were piled in so thick that 'bugs in the rugs' were no comparison. . . In some places where the doors were opened, little cubby holes could be seen opening into garrets where the occupants crawl in of nights, perfect rat holes." The reporter concludes that, "after a wearisome tramp through the labyrinth of dens and rookeries, reeking with the foul air, the opium smoke and filth of the moon-eyed lepers the party, oppressed, suppressed and depressed, emerged on Los Angeles Street, into the pure air and sunshine of heaven, and as they walked up Aliso Street onto Spring Street, it seemed like they were treading on the very boundaries of Paradise, so great was the contrast with the place they had just left." The crowded conditions, cesspools, seedy opium dens, and evidence of disease were cited as reasons why the "unmitigated nuisance of Chinatown" should be removed from city limits. While Chinatown of the 1880s could undoubtedly be characterized as an urban slum based on the sheer number of residents packed into such a small area, articles such as this were really part of a larger informal effort to "racially sanitize" the city. -1- -1- "Hell's Half Acre. A Report of a Tour Through Chinatown Yesterday." Los Angeles Times, April 14, 1882, p.3. Introduction This digital project, titled “Virtual Tourisms,” is an extension of my dissertation on hotels and the making of Los Angeles. Hotels provide the nexus between the tangible, lived experience of the city and the imagined landscape that tourists carry with them when they visit a city. They are objects of circulation, they are monuments to the city, and as Kracauer observed, they are sites of spectacle and display. My dissertation explores the role of hotels in the shaping of Los Angeles. I seek to understand how their representation in visual culture reflects their particular stories in the urban planning of the city. I argue that the hotel served as a vanguard in the shaping and imaging of the city. Throughout different phases of urban planning history, influenced by distinct systems of transportation, hotels have played a leading role in the way Los Angeles has been planned, formed, and imagined. In this context, “Virtual Tourisms” brings new meaning to the concept of a digital “virtual tour” by making visible the urban planning context and socio-spatial relationships involved in the historical and cultural practice of a tourist’s stay at a landmark Los Angeles hotel. The digital project takes shape in the form of a nineteenth century travel album. Within the pages of the album, the digital tourist visits a number of sites and attractions in the greater Los Angeles area of the 1880s and 1890s. “Virtual Tourisms” comes out of a Digital Dissertation Fellowship I received through the Annenberg School of Communications at USC. The goal of the project is to exhibit existing ideas, arguments and scholarly content present in the dissertation that cannot be fully expressed or demonstrated in a solely written format. In a sense, I am taking my research into a new, but highly related area: from city space to cyberspace, and attempting to put the analysis of both realms into conversation. It is not, therefore, merely an adaptation of my dissertation to the web, but an investigation of the very concept of a digital tour. The multimedia application I propose to develop can only be conceived through digital technology, rather than textual or written formats, in that its objectives are only possible only through the use of digital media. These objectives include: 1) Interactivity – granting the user the ability to place oneself in the position of controlling their experience amidst a variety of options, including virtually maneuvering through space, referencing primary source documents, and engaging in scholarly commentary about the subject at hand. The degree of interactivity will be limited, however. Historically relevant social and cultural constraints will govern the experience of the virtual tourist, based on the dissertation’s arguments about the changing socio-spatial practices of tourism. 2) Perspective – bringing substance to the “New Social History” pursuit of writing history “from the bottom up,” which preferences an understanding of social experiences from the position of everyday participants. 3) Visuality – exploring the complex relationships between visual media and objects, how they are produced, and how they are consumed (specifically in reference to the intersection of tourist culture and promotional literature/material). 4) Spatiality – contributing to a historical literature that identifies “shapes on the ground” as constitutive of, and constituted by, “shapes in society.” Social and cultural practices “took place” in history, so those places (in this case, hotels and Los Angeles) both reflected and affected those practices. “Virtual Tourisms” is programmed using Macromedia Flash software, and is structured dynamically so that I can expand its depth and scope by simply editing my database. The project is flexible enough such that I can feasibly add other “eras” through which to explore Los Angeles from the tourist perspective. In corresponding more closely to my dissertation, I would like to create a similar “virtual tour” for the Los Angeles Biltmore Hotel in the 1920s, and the Statler Hotel in the 1950s. Character Selection Upon entering the site, the user is asked to select from one of four historical characters. The names of these characters are taken from actual historical figures, however, some of the information in their biographical sketches is culled from historical evidence that may not necessarily pertain to them directly. In this version of the project, the goal of the character selection feature is to underscore the social history at stake. The characters represent four different social perspectives that were tied in some way or another to the tourist industry in Southern California. The options include a Los Angeles booster (Walton G. Hughes), a traveling hotel maid (Catharine Cascarat), an upper class tourist (Amy T. Bridges), and a Chinese-American hotel cook (Mow Ton). As I further develop the project in the future, the characters will play a more pivotal role in the way the site is experienced. Based on the user’s selection, the user will encounter a very specific set of experiences during their virtual tour. These experiences will indicate what freedoms, restrictions or encounters the user would have during their stay based on the cultural and socio-spatial practices of tourism during the late nineteenth century. These freedoms and restrictions would range from being able to enjoy all the amenities of the hotel on the one hand, to not being able to make a reservation as a guest, but perhaps being able to apply for a job there. Issues of gender, class, age and ethnicity all influenced an individuals’ potential for interaction at the hotel. As the project is currently constructed, the characters are featured later as a means of tracking the user’s progress, and also as a tool for mapping the city and its attractions. I will explain this in more detail this in a short while. Tourist Brochures & Travel Album Once the user has selected an identity, they will be presented with a set of brochures which serves as a table of contents to access the travel album. These brochures are “Why Visit Los Angeles,” “What to do in Los Angeles,” “Where to Stay in Los Angeles,” and “Tour the Raymond Hotel.” Within each of these four brochures, a set of subcategories or topics appears. For instance, inside “Where to Stay in Los Angeles” is a list of six major Los Angeles hotels of the 1880s. When the user selects any one of these topics within the brochures, and thereby opts to “visit” that particular attraction, a new interface appears which resembles a page in a travel album or scrapbook. Here, sets of images or media, as well as my written commentary or contemporary texts relating to the specific topics, constitute the core content matter of the site. To demonstrate, let us take a look at “The Ocean” under “Why Visit Los Angeles.” Once the media corresponding to this section has completely loaded, we notice that the three magnifying glasses become hidden away in a drawer. The image we see is of the Redondo Beach Hotel, with visitors on the beach and a train stopped just in front of the hotel. If we move the cursor over the title at the bottom, a sheet of paper appears and we can read the caption for the image, as well as the caption for any “hidden” media. This hidden media is revealed when we utilize the magnifying glasses, or lenses. This “lens” function of the website provides the means with which users experience an unexpected vision of the city. Here, images which at first may seem benign can be dissected within a broader context of city boosterism, urban planning, and socio-spatial practices, such that the idealized version of the city is undermined and the reality of the less-glamorous historical account is brought into focus. The first lens reveals knowledge about the “Advertising and Promotion” aspect of tourism in Los Angeles and illuminates something about the constructed visual imagery involved in “booster” literature/materials. The second emphasizes the history of the “Built Environment” as it was affected by the tourist industry. The third highlights “Socio-Spatial Practices”: how “shapes on the ground” are constitutive of, and constituted by, “shapes in society.” Social and cultural practices “took place” in history, so those places (in this case, hotels, tourist spaces and Los Angeles in general) both reflected and affected those practices. We must select at least one lens to apply to the asset in order to begin the process of deconstructing the ideal image of Los Angeles. Clicking and dragging one of the lenses onto the asset brings into view the corresponding perspective of seeing this aspect of tourism history. The content of the text box will also change to reflect the new perspective of the asset. When we click on the “Advertising and Promotion” lens, we get a glimpse of a rendering of the Mirimar Hotel, a million dollar hotel planned for the beachfront in Redondo Beach. The Mirimar was never built (at least under this name), most likely one of thousands of failed ventures after the speculative land boom of the 1880s burst. The advertisement for the Mirimar in the Los Angeles Times, much of which appears through the lens when we take a closer look at the caption, is reflective of the promotion of satellite communities throughout the region. Clicking on the “Built Environment” lens further underscores the central role of the hotel, and in this case, the oceanfront hotel, in the development of the Southern California landscape. Here another Los Angeles Times article praises the progress already made in Redondo Beach, and also highlights the crucial issue of a harbor. Many of these seaside communities started (and many failed) with the construction of a hotel. The caption for this image is taken from an actual 1893 travel journal, written by an attorney from Buffalo, New York. He comments on the fine hotel and grounds, yet notices that hills behind the hotel had “streets laid out and named, but [with] no buildings.” Finally, the “Socio-Spatial Practices” lens reveals footage from the beach near the Cliff House just south of San Francisco. While not of the Los Angeles area, this film is particularly appropriate for the way it captures the social scene of tourists at a seaside resort at the turn of the century. Far different from typical beach behavior we are accustomed to today (swimming, sun-tanning), the beach and ocean were rather objects of “sightseeing.” The caption provides yet another contemporary tourist account of a young woman’s first visit to the Pacific Ocean, and offers in descriptive language how the sight of the Pacific Ocean conjured up in her imagination a colorful visit to the past. Another insightful example of the functionality of the travel album can be seen in the “Resort Culture” attraction under “What to do in Los Angeles.” At first we see an engraving of the “Rotunda” of the Raymond Hotel in South Pasadena. This image was featured in an 1886 Raymond Hotel brochure. The “advertising and promotion” lens presents a detailed roster of a Thomas Cook Excursion to Los Angeles in the early 1880s. These lists were published in local newspapers as a means of assigning “society” status to the listed names, as well as an announcement to family and acquaintances in town of travelers’ arrivals. The “built environment” lens exposes a map of South Pasadena, with the Raymond Hotel visible in the center. This and other resort hotels had a direct influence on many upper class (Eastern, mostly) immigrants to the city during the 1880s. The subdivision of the Marengo Tract, which along with the Raymond property, was owned by Henry Bacon of San Francisco, and purposefully laid out and advertised to many of the Raymond excursionists. The “socio-spatial practices” lens enlarges a portion of the original engraving, thereby highlighting the topic of gender within the spaces of the hotel, and within other spaces associated with travel. Despite a long history restricting women (and particularly women traveling alone) from entering certain “masculine” spaces (such as the lobby or rotunda), Raymond Excursions and the Raymond Hotel offered single women much more freedom in their travel experiences. Throughout the “attractions” in the album, traditional narratives about the tourist landscape in Los Angeles are challenged through image and text. Whether in the ironic way Chinatown is described by Anglo city boosters as a den of filth and disease under the “Health” attraction, or in the description of Los Angeles as the “dirtiest city” one tourist had ever seen under the “Recreation” attraction, the pristine image of the city is continually juxtaposed against a more realistic representation. Mapping Tourist Los Angeles At any point after the user has browsed through some of the brochures and visited some of the “attractions,” he/she can “map” their progress by clicking on their character’s icon which will take them to a series of Southern California maps. Here each of the attractions is identified spatially on the Los Angeles landscape, and a legend will allow the user to keep track of where in the city they have been. (In a future version, the user will be able to change identities during their stay, which will not only provide them with different social experiences, but carry them one level further in this mapping feature by keeping track of several identities and their tourist itineraries.) A Tourist Souvenir Part of the experiential argument that “Virtual Tourisms” seeks to embody is that narratives about the promotion, planning and experience of the Raymond Hotel, when visually and spatially acted out, can help us understand how hotels are critical agents in the creation of cultural myth and city representation. One final aspect of the website will underscore this by drawing upon the explorations of the user throughout the site in order to create an “image of the city.” Providing the user with a account of their journey through the site, a Southern California postcard features crops of the images and media visited. Using a magnifying glass, the user is able to switch between two views or representations of the city: between “image” and “reality.” The “image” version is largely a combination of visual elements common in promotional literature of the region, and the “reality” version (beneath the lens) expose in a glimpse all that lies beneath this in the history of the built environment and socio-spatial practices. This is the user’s final “souvenir” of their virtual tour. The souvenir can be enhanced as the user returns to visit more attractions. Conclusion “Virtual Tourisms” does not seek to capture any totalizing narrative of Los Angeles history, but rather is an exercise in digital scholarship that calls into question the ways cities, and Los Angeles specifically, have been imagined and experienced because of changing visual and spatial practices, including promotional literature, photography, modes of transportation, and socio-spatial arrangements. The space of the tourist hotel can be used as a laboratory for uncovering what we know about how tourism and its “visual narratives” affect this process. Resort and tourist hotels themselves, as my dissertation research shows, are virtual environments in the sense that they are carefully separated from the “real” city and its troublesome social contexts. This project seeks to lay bare the historical processes behind the particular images and experiences offered to tourists. It attempts this from within the setting of a virtual environment that allows users to tour through some of Los Angeles’ landmark hotels and surrounding tourist landscapes. Inasmuch as the project acts as a tourist site in itself, it seeks to be a critical agent of virtual environments rather than a glorified history video game. Calling into question the spatiality and visuality of digital media, the website trespasses traditional norms of history writing by embodying the notion that the visual and the spatial informs what we experience about a new place, but that this experience has been historically and culturally constructed. “Virtual Tourisms” seeks to bring new meaning to the concept of a digital “virtual tour” by making visible the urban planning context and socio-spatial relationships involved in the historical and cultural practice of a tourist’s stay at a landmark Los Angeles hotel. The conceptual framework of the “virtual tour” serves as an effective tool for reinforcing preconceived notions about the city, while at the same time allowing for unexpected ruptures. The digital format of “Virtual Tourisms” resembles a nineteenth century travel album or scrapbook, thereby blurring the boundaries between historical visual genres, yet enabling a rich layering, juxtaposing, or superimposition of often contradictory or surprising materials. While browsing through photographs, souvenirs and ephemera related to tourism in Los Angeles from the period of the 1880s and 1890s, the user is able to fluidly change between the “lenses” of “image” and “reality.” The literal metaphor of the lens is particularly useful because of the role of photography in the specific history of Los Angeles myth and identity. Throughout the tour, pristine representations of Los Angeles and the hotel, as common in traditional tourist brochures and current online tours alike, are complicated by the juxtaposition or unexpected presence of a more realistic and less glamorous version of Los Angeles: gendered spaces, workers, the racially excluded, etc. The experiential argument that “Virtual Tourisms” seeks to embody is that narratives about the promotion, planning and experience of the Raymond Hotel, when visually and spatially analyzed, can help us understand how hotels are critical agents in the creation of cultural myth and city representation. Browse through these "promotional guidebooks" to uncover both visual and written descriptions of Southern California's early tourist landscape. Within each of these four brochures, a set of subcategories or topics appears. For instance, inside "Where to Stay in Los Angeles" is a list of six major Los Angeles hotels of the 1880s. When you select any one of these topics within the brochures, and thereby opt to "visit" that particular attraction, a new interface appears which resembles a page in a travel album or scrapbook. Here, sets of images or media, as well as my written commentary or contemporary texts relating to the specific topics, constitute the core content matter of the site. Throughout the "attractions" in the album, traditional narratives about the tourist landscape in Los Angeles are challenged through image and text. Whether in the ironic way Chinatown is described as a den of filth and disease under the "Health" attraction, or in the description of Los Angeles as the "dirtiest city" one tourist had ever seen under the "Recreation" attraction, the pristine image of the city is continually juxtaposed against a more realistic representation. The historical city map, in its various forms, offers insights into how the city was envisioned by its contemporaries. The series of maps represented here highlight some of the major locations and attractions of the tourist industry in Southern California. At any point after the user has browsed through some of the brochures and visited some of the "attractions," he/she can "map" their progress by clicking on their character's icon, which will take them to a series of Southern California maps. Here each of the attractions is identified spatially on the Los Angeles landscape, and a legend will allow the user to keep track of where in the city they have been. Postcards became popular in the United States immediately following the 1893 World's Columbian Fair due the circulation of "souvenir cards" featuring the fair grounds buildings. The development of postcards and postcard collecting introduced a brand new genre of visual culture that, among a multitude of other purposes, served as a vehicle for hotel advertising. Postcards distilled specific images of hotels that came to represent or symbolize the city as a whole. Your souvenir postcard symbolizes this process by creating an "image of the city" based on your particular journey through Los Angeles's past. Use the magnifying glass to switch between two views or representations of the city: between "image" and "reality." The "image" version is largely a combination of visual elements common in promotional literature of the region, and the "reality" version (beneath the lens) expose in a glimpse all that lies beneath this in the history of the built environment and socio-spatial practices. This is the user's final "souvenir" of their virtual tour. Your postcard will become more complete as you visit more attractions. The "lens" function of the website provides the means with which users experience an unexpected vision of the city. Here, images which at first may seem benign can be dissected within a broader context of city boosterism, urban planning, and socio-spatial practices, such that the idealized version of the city is undermined and the reality of the less-glamorous historical account is brought into focus. The first lens reveals knowledge about the "Advertising and Promotion" aspect of tourism in Los Angeles and illuminates something about the constructed visual imagery involved in "booster" literature/materials. The second emphasizes the history of the "Built Environment" as it was affected by the tourist industry. The third highlights "Socio-Spatial Practices": how "shapes on the ground" are constitutive of, and constituted by, "shapes in society." Social and cultural practices "took place" in history, so those places (in this case, hotels, tourist spaces and Los Angeles in general) both reflected and affected those practices.