Walking Tours

"Historic Palms and Downtown Culver City: A Lot of Landmarks"

Time: 10–11:30 a.m., followed by optional vegetarian lunch
March 7, 2009
Meeting Place: Entrance of Ivy Substation within Media Park, southwest corner Venice and Culver boulevards. Blue Bus 12 or MTA 33 bus lines.

Guided by Resident Storyteller George Garrigues, Palms is the oldest suburb of Los Angeles, founded in 1886 halfway between L.A. and the beach on a steam railroad line. By 1925 it was advertised as an “ideal city of home dwellers restricted for the white race.” Culver City was founded in 1915 by Harry Culver and for a time had no churches because Palms had so many of them.

Among other sights will be:

* The Mission Revival-style Ivy Substation, which provided electricity for the Pacific Electric streetcars. It is now a legitimate theater.
* The mansion of the former Selznik Studios, used as a backdrop for the credits of the movie Gone With the Wind.
* The rejuvenated Culver City downtown, with its unusual streetscapes, art deco buildings and flatiron-shaped Culver Hotel. where the cast of the movie Freaks stayed in 1931. Murals portray Laurel and Hardy and Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.
* St. Augustine Catholic Church, the “offspring” of Santa Monica.
* The Colonnade gate to the MGM Studios.
* The quirky Museum of Jurassic Technology and its neighbor, the Center for Land Use Interpretation.
* The Palms temple of the International Society of Krishna Consciousness, with its Indian-themed shop and vegetarian restaurant, where we’ll end our tour.

George Garrigues worked in Palms as a technical copy editor after leaving UCLA in 1953. He then became a newspaper journalist and a university journalism professor. Decades later he returned to Palms and began a Web site about the community, www.PalmsVillageSun.info. He was the president of the Palms Neighborhood Council. His 128-page book, Los Angeles’s The Palms Neighborhood, was released on February 1, 2009, by Arcadia Publications.