Gender and Civic Imagination in Los Angeles ______
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A NEW KIND OF WOMAN: GENDER AND CIVIC IMAGINATION IN LOS ANGELES ____________________________________ A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of California State University, Fullerton ____________________________________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in History ____________________________________ By Jeena Trexler Thesis Committee Approval: Professor Benjamin Cawthra, Chair Professor Allison Varzally, Department of History Professor Elaine Lewinnek, Department of American Studies Fall, 2015 ABSTRACT The first half of the 20th century marked a period of rapid growth in Los Angeles. Across the United States professional city planners attempted to transform major cities. Los Angeles experimented with several plans but many women came to the city armed with their own plans and civic imaginations. By examining the gendered nature of city planning and the way that it collided with the new woman of the 20th century, we are able to understand the various ways that women pursued power through civic participation. Aline Barnsdall, oil heiress and patron of the arts, commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright’s first Southern California design for her home, Hollyhock House. Barnsdall’s tumultuous relationship with Wright and her conflict with city leaders like Harry Chandler of the Los Angeles Times , reveal the limits of women’s power in a conservative environment. Christine Sterling utilized traditional methods of female power as she worked as a historical housekeeper in her preservation of Olvera Street. By courting powerful leaders and utilizing booster images of Los Angeles’s mythic, Spanish Fantasy past, Sterling gained power and transformed the landscape of downtown. Alice Constance Austin worked as an architect for the socialist community of Llano del Rio. The independent, experimental nature of the communal project allowed Austin the freedom to design a city from scratch and to express her feminist beliefs. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................... ii LIST OF FIGURES ....................................................................................................... iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ............................................................................................. v INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1. HISTORICAL HOUSEKEEPING: CHRISTINE STERLING AND THE MYTHICAL PAST............................................................................................... 11 2. A PARLOR BOLSHEVIK: BARNSDALL, WRIGHT AND THE LIMITS OF PUBLIC ART ....................................................................................................... 30 3. THE CITY OF THE FUTURE: ALICE CONSTANCE AUSTIN AND THE SOCIALIST CITY ................................................................................................ 56 CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................. 69 BIBLIOGRAPHY .......................................................................................................... 78 iii LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1. Ramona Themed Citrus Crate.............................................................................. 27 2. Bombing of Los Angeles Times Building ........................................................... 28 3. Harry Chandler Birthday Celebration .................................................................. 28 4. Completed American Tropical ............................................................................. 29 5. Hollyhock House, exterior view .......................................................................... 54 6. Barnsdall with daughter ....................................................................................... 55 7. Cover of Western Comrade ................................................................................. 68 8. Llano del Rio Design ........................................................................................... 68 9. Aurora Vargas ...................................................................................................... 77 10. The Great Wall of Los Angeles ............................................................................ 77 iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thank you to my committee chair, Benjamin Cawthra, for your advice and enthusiasm. Thank you to my children, Elliott and Olive, for being patient with me as I wrote and revised and for encouraging me with your words and smiles. Finally, thank you Sam for your endless support and love. v 1 INTRODUCTION On December 19, 1946, The Los Angeles Times reported the death of Aline Barnsdall, oil heiress. The death notice remarked, “She was a recluse, living alone in her home adjacent to Barnsdall Park at Sunset Blvd. and Vermont Ave.” 1 Barnsdall’s life in Los Angeles began very differently nearly 30 years earlier. She spearheaded the development of a theater company, a successful production, and the purchase of a vast section of land upon which she determined to build a colony for artists, a public park space, a school for children, and an outdoor theater. In her decades as a Los Angeles resident, she helped fund projects such as the building of the Hollywood Bowl, she engaged with important members of the arts and entertainment community, and she donated large portions of her private property, named Hollyhock House, to the city for public use. The story of how Barnsdall transformed from an outspoken proponent of art and politics to a recluse living alone explains the difficulty that women, particularly radical women, faced as they battled for civic power in the often conservative, controlled city of Los Angeles. The stories, successes, and failures of Barnsdall, preservationist Christine Sterling and architect Alice Constance Austin, reveal the way that women looked to the past, present, and future in order to gain access to power and contribute to the 1 “Aline Barnsdall, Oil Heiress, Found Dead,” Los Angeles Times , December 19, 1946, accessed September 22, 2015, http://search.proquest.com/docview/159697186?accountid=9840. 2 development of civic authority in the first half of the twentieth century. City planning and home design remained a highly gendered arena in the first half of the 20th century and these three women respectively rebelled against gendered notions of separate spheres, utilized idealized images of female purity, or disengaged from the system altogether. Attorney and activist, Carey McWilliams complained that Los Angeles was a strange city, lacking form, with no center and no community. 2 By 1929, Los Angeles saw a massive influx of migrants and a huge expansion of populated areas that pushed away from a centralized downtown and into a sprawl of communities. McWilliams described the resulting metropolitan area as “a gigantic improvisation.” 3 Los Angeles grew rapidly, without a centralized city plan at a time when urban planning reached its apex in other major cities across the United States. Among the burgeoning populace dwelt audacious newcomers bearing bold and modern ideas regarding civic identity and organization. Although men made up the majority of city planners, female designers, reformers, and philanthropists pronounced their own ideas for future city developments. In Southern California, Barnsdall, Christine Sterling, and Alice Constance Austin embarked on individual plans for marking their place in the emerging landscape of civic planning and civic art. The three women utilized vastly different methods, yet each reveals the gendered nature of the contest for civic power Los Angeles grew without an overarching development plan but it was not for lack of trying. Many Progressive city plans emerged or were solicited in the first half of the 20th century, but none took hold. The first significant movement in planning 2 Carey McWilliams, Southern California: An Island on the Land (Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith, 1973), x. Carey McWilliams, The Education of Carey McWillams (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979), 45. 3 McWilliams, Southern California , 13. 3 developed out of the Progressive Era City Beautiful movement. Cities ranging from Washington D.C., Chicago, St. Louis, and Brisbane developed City Beautiful plans. An emphasis on moral uplift, organization, cleanliness, and decongestion characterized the movement. Born out of the progressivism of the 1890s, the movement for city reform called for no less than a total social transformation. Condemning contemporary metropolitan areas for their slums, disorder, and social disconnection, progressive reformers like the Reverend Dana Bartlett called for righteousness and morality in the structure of the city, which would lead to the uplifting of its residents. Los Angeles city officials called on urban planner, Charles Mulford Robinson, to prepare a plan for the redevelopment of the city’s civic center. Supported by Bartlett’s exhortation for Los Angeles to “concentrate thought upon the ethical ideal,” so that it might be known for its “righteousness, its morality, its social virtue, its artistic life as for its material resources,” Robinson compiled a report to the Los Angeles Municipal Art Commission. 4 Calling for a new railroad station to anchor the civic center, Robinson promoted the centralization of civic government and the development of a cultural nexus for citizens of the growing city. 5 The commission embraced