Storybook lanes lined with gabled roofs and white picket fences. A rainbow array of architectural styles dating back to the early 1900s. Street parties on the Fourth of July. This is South Beach, four blocks of living history by the sea and site of the Santa Monica Conservancy’s South Beach Tour on October 20.
Explore the eclectic architecture of this historic neighborhood, including American Foursquare, Craftsman, Dutch Colonial, Italian Revival, Mission Revival and other vernacular interpretations. Step inside select houses to see how residents have preserved their homes while updating them for modern use.
Wend your way along avenues named for the district’s early developers: Alexander Fraser, G.A. Hart, Charles Hollister and Thomas Wadsworth— visionaries who saw the promise of comfortable family living a minute or two from the shore.
Constructed largely between 1901 and 1925, the South Beach section of Ocean Park flourished amid a seaside housing boom at the turn of the 20th century, spurred by the extension of a Santa Fe Railroad line to the City.
With much of the district razed in the 1960s by the City’s Redevelopment Agency, the properties that remain today have survived because of successful advocacy by residents. However, encroaching coastal development is threatening the treasured character of South Beach, and a renewed preservation effort is needed to ultimately save the unique neighborhood.
Discover this early Santa Monica neighborhood on The South Beach Tour and learn about its evolution over the last century. After your tour, join us for a separately ticketed reception at Horatio West Court, a modernist masterpiece by Irving Gill. Proceeds will support the Conservancy’s educational programs.
Purchase Tickets:
Tour: $35 members, $45 general public.
Tour + Reception: $100 members, $125 general public.
Reception only: $75 members, $95 general public.
Children 12 and under are free. Advance purchase is required.
Submitted by the Santa Monica Conservancy
