On July 25, , he announced his new town to a group of investors gathered inside the California Club. But Culver carefully chose the location for his city at the junction of several important transportation routes. Culver Co. The town officially opened in October , and Culver City quickly outgrew its original 93 acres and residential lots. When it celebrated its one-year anniversary in , the town had parried an annexation attempt by Los Angeles and already boasted a Pacific Electric depot, a cyclecar plant, and a macaroni factory.
By the time it incorporated on September 17, , Culver City had grown to acres. Macaroni may have sustained Culver City in its early years, but the film industry soon became the city's economic foundation.
According to local legend , an encounter with a local film shoot inspired Harry Culver to turn his growing settlement into a movie town. Culver watched as filmmaker Thomas Ince shot a silent western, complete with painted Indians in canoes, along the banks of Ballona Creek.
After the shoot, the story goes, Culver approached Ince and persuaded him to move his studio to a acre parcel between Washington and Culver boulevards. The site, which Ince named Triangle Studios, opened in Eventually sprawling over several city blocks and encompassing several distinct movie lots, the MGM Studios featured soundstages, false streets, and an artificial lake.
Meanwhile, Ince had opened another studio a few blocks down Washington Blvd. After the filmmaker's mysterious death in , the Thomas H. Ince Studio property passed through several owners, including Cecil B. David O. Today, the historic studio continues to operate as an independent production facility. During World War II the military used the facility to produce training films. Other industries joined the film business in Culver City.
Western Stove opened its factory in next to the present-day Hayden Industrial Tract. Beginning in , a fleet of coaches departed daily from the Helms Bakery , delivering loaves of Olympic Bread and other baked goods to households across Southern California. The Culver City Airport and Hughes Aircraft plant, technically outside the city limits, brought jobs if not tax revenue to the city.
Culver City also took advantage of its independence from the city of Los Angeles by permitting -- or at least tolerating -- activities banned in the metropolis. Throughout the s lax enforcement of Prohibition drew thirsty Angelenos to the night clubs and bootlegger outfits of Culver City, and in a greyhound racing track opened at the city's western extreme, at the present-day site of a Costco discount store. Just as Harry Culver predicted, the "Heart of Screenland" became a thriving residential suburb, promoted by real estate developers as a "seaward" community with proximity to beaches, jobs, and universities.
The city's population swelled from residents in to nearly 9, in The city's boundaries grew, too, through a series of 42 annexations that gave Culver City its odd shape. Out of gratitude, he decided not to start Baldwinville, and Vineland took on the name Baldwin Park. Immortalized by The Fresh Prince of Bel Air , the wealthy neighborhood was named by the wife of rancher Alphonso Bell, who founded the community in Their former home, the Bell House, is now a historic landmark.
Bellflower came out of a bit of a controversy. The name Somerset was already taken by a town in Colorado, and the U. Burton E. Green acquired the land in the early s in order to look for oil. Instead, he found water, and he named the city after a farm he loved in Massachusetts.
Kristy Plaza , Flickr. Boyle planted vineyards and lived on the land in the mid-to-late s. Wikimedia Commons. The name of Carthay is an Anglicized derivation of J. The neighborhood is often referred to now as Carthay Circle. But as the price of land changed, the city shifted its focus from agriculture to development, and the name changed along with it. Long before N. Cudahy is named after a meatpacker named Michael Cudahy who used the area to raise sheep and hogs in the late s. One of the major parts of Los Angeles that is actually its own city, Culver City was named after Harry Culver, who founded the city in John Gately Downey has a few different distinctions.
Thirty three years old at the time of his election, he remains the youngest man to ever be elected Governor of California, and prior to the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger, he was the only one to have been born outside the United States. An Irishman, Downey founded the town of Downey, which became a common place for Irish immigrants to settle.
Eagle Rock is named for a large rock near the neighborhood that—surprise! AndrewGorden , Flickr. Green Meadows is notorious for being very different than its name might suggest—no meadows, not green. But it received the name in from the 8th District Empowerment Congress , which was attempting to connect neighborhoods in South L. He established the city in a temperate zone, along a transportation route, alongside railroad tracks, halfway between the growing pueblo of Los Angeles and Abbot Kinney's resort of Venice.
Culver City began to do the business of developing itself, as a 1. In the early days of the city, the trustees concentrated on the actions necessary to form the city. City tracts and streets were named and paved, a numbering system was adopted, and employees hired to take care of the business of the city. The Fire and Police Departments were established. The economic balance had begun, with the studios forming the early economic base.
Industry came in the form of Western Stove in , then the Helms Bakeries in , and then the Hayden Industrial Tract was established in the s. Prohibition spawned a plethora of night spots and bootlegging in the s and s, with World War II stalling growth in the s. Car Dealerships replaced the night spots on Washington Boulevard in the s. Over the years, more than forty annexations increased city size to about five square miles. Culver City transitioned from a general law city to a charter city in In addition to city government, schools became a part of the community, and by , Culver City had its own Unified School District, meaning that education was available through secondary school.
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