In the spring of 1926 the voters of Los Angeles were asked to decide whether to accept a modern rapid transit system for their metropolis. The referendum campaign, a watershed moment in American urban history, forced citizens to choose whether their rapidly growing city should develop into a centralized conurbation of skyscrapers linked by an extensive transit infrastructure, like New York and Chicago, or become a metropolis dominated by low-density development. Crucially, the campaign—charged with vivid rhetoric and metaphor, mobilized primarily by local newspapers—ultimately turned on Angelenos' conceptions of race and class and on their notions of what cosmopolitan urbanism entailed. By election day, urbanity no longer connoted for Angelenos towering skyscrapers and unlimited progress, but the specter of slums, ghettoes, and darkness, both metaphorical and literal, as Southern Californians chose to abandon Jazz Age modernity for a mythology of whiteness and suburban sunshine.
The photograph is impressive, but also a bit deceptive. It catches the buildings on an angle, instead of along the street grid, thus portraying each building on two sides instead of one, making it appear as if there are more structures in the picture than there actually are and making those shown seem larger. This perspectival trick also enhances the apparent size of the buildings by showing their rooflines receding into the background at a rakish downward angle from the particularly eye-catching and sharp leading edges of the rectangular buildings. The lighting in the shot further accentuates the sharpness of these edges by starkly casting one of the two visible sides of each structure in shadow and the other in light. Furthermore, the camera's position reinforces the impression that the buildings are much taller than they in fact are. The “skyscrapers” in the foreground are actually only six or seven stories high, which—combined with the foreshortening effects of the perspective—makes the second tier of structures seem much taller than their actual twelve- or thirteen-story height. Perhaps most deceptive is that we are actually seeing buildings rise up the side of a hill, making the array of buildings in the background of the shot seem taller and reinforcing the impression given by the entire tableau that the structures rise into the distance. In actuality, the buildings are fairly uniformly of modest (150 feet) height—not small structures, but certainly not skyscrapers in the sense that the 1,000-foot towers rising in New York or Chicago were at that time.
2.
Most well known for his Southern Californian residential architectural projects of later years, F. L. Wright, Jr., had extensive professional experience by 1926, not only through his own commissions, but also from working for his father's firm and, interestingly, that of the Olmsteds. See
Charles Moore
,
Peter Becker
, and
Regula Campbell
, The City Observed: Los Angeles. A Guide to Its Architecture and Landscapes (
New York
, 1984), 250.
3.
The first image was splashed across the cover of the working-class Los Angeles Record's “Anniversary Edition,” and the second appeared, at about the same time, in the solidly conservative Los Angeles Examiner.
4.
Spencer Crump
, Ride the Big Red Cars: How Trolleys Helped Build Southern California (
Los Angeles
, 1962), 165.
5.
Of the two, which were only tangentially interconnected during this period, the Los Angeles Railway (LARY) was harder hit. The yellow cars shared the streets with automobiles throughout their entire network. The Pacific Electric (PE), on the other hand, relied on its own rights-of-way in the outlying suburban areas where it dominated. Near its busy downtown hub, however, the PE shared the plight of the LARY, relying on the overburdened local street grid to accommodate its crowded interurban trains.
6.
For more on the importance of the automobile in Los Angeles's urban transformation during the 1920s, see
Martin Wachs
, “
Autos, Transit, and the Sprawl of Los Angeles
,” Journal of the American Planning Association50, no. 3 (1984), among other works;
Mark Foster
, “
The Decentralization of Los Angeles during the 1920's
” (PhD dissertation,
University of Southern California
, 1971);
Mark Foster
, “
The Model-T, the Hard Sell, and Los Angeles's Urban Growth
,” Pacific Historical Review44, no. 4 (1975);
Mark Foster
,
From Streetcar to Superhighway
(
Philadelphia
, 1981);
Scott Bottles
,
Los Angeles and the Automobile
(
Berkeley
, 1987);
Robert Fogelson
,
Fragmented Metropolis
(
Berkeley
, 1967);
Richard Longstreth
,
City Center to Regional Mall
(
Cambridge, MA
, 1997 ); and my own Toward Autopia: Envisioning the Modern Metropolis in Jazz Age Southern California (forthcoming publication from
University of California Press
).
7.
Harvey Wiley Corbett
, “
Up with the Skyscraper
,” National Municipal Review16, no. 2 (1927):
202
.
8.
Both Corbett and Ferriss were fully within the mainstream of New York planning thought during the 1920s. Corbett was himself a successful builder of skyscrapers and an innovator behind Manhattan's distinctive building set-back zoning laws, and Ferriss, aside from being the greatest architectural renderer of his age, was also the official illustrator for the Regional Plan Association of New York. See
Merrill Schleier
, The Skyscraper in American Art, 1890–1931 (
New York
, 1986);
Carol Willis
, “The Titan City: Forgotten Episodes in American Architecture,” Skyline (October 1982);
David E. Nye
, American Technological Sublime (
Cambridge, MA
, 1994); and
Thomas A. P.van Leeuwen
, The Skyward Trend of Thought: The Metaphysics of the American Skyscraper (
Cambridge, MA
, 1988).
9.
Nye notes that the “geometrical sublime came to be a dominant way of seeing and understanding the city after the First World War” in American Technological Sublime, 100.
10.
Longstreth, CityCenter to Regional Mall, 105. According to Longstreth, the Wilshire Boulevard Development Association also compared the prospective development of their thoroughfare with Chicago's North Michigan Avenue. Implying that Los Angeles could never hope to compete with these modern metropolises without an equivalent skyscraper corridor, members of the Association hoped to tie the economic health of the city to their cause. See, for instance, “Urge Wilshire as L.A.'s Fifth Avenue
,” Herald, April 6, 1926, 1:
13
.
11.
“
Artery Seen as Busy Hub by Backers
,” Examiner, April 25, 1926, 4:
2
. In a rare show of unanimity, the rival Times joined the Examiner in admiring speculations about the prospects for “imposing business and apartment buildings” along the boulevard. Here, the Times was actually quoting Loren C. Barton of the Wilshire Boulevard Development Association. See “
Urges Yes Votes for Zone Plan
,” Times, April 29, 1926, 2:
3
.
12.
Longstreth, City Center to Regional Mall, 21.
13.
Irving Hellman
, “
The Skyscraper's Influence on Municipal Progress
,” The Skyscraper1, no. 2 (1925):
6
.
14.
Crump, Ride the Big Red Cars, 151.
15.
Crump, Ride the Big Red Cars, 152.
16.
Crump, Ride the Big Red Cars, 151—52. A measure of the confidence in future subway expansion is the statement D. W. Pontius, president of the PE, made at the opening of the Hollywood tunnel: “Los Angeles will have more subways. They are the logical answer to traffic congestion, rapid transit of passengers, grade crossing menaces and other problems which face transportation officials across the country. The bore of the PE is the first in Los Angeles. Its use, ultimately, will become a habit.... Others are sure to come.” See “
P.E. Subway Stimulates Commuter Travel
,” Examiner, March 28, 1926, 2:
16
.
17.
Quoted in Robert Fogelson, The Fragmented Metropolis, 248-49.
18.
Ebenezer Howard
, Garden Cities of To-morrow (
London
, 1902).
19.
George A. Damon
, “
Relation of the Motor Bus to Other Methods of Transportation
” (paper presented at the Sixteenth National Conference on City Planning, Philadelphia, April 1924), 80.
20.
C.A. Dykstra
, “
Congestion DeLuxe—Do We Want It?
” National Municipal Review15, no. 7 (1926):
398
.
21.
C.A. Dykstra
, “
Report on Rapid Transit,” City ClubBulletin, January 30, 1926, 4.
22.
Rob Kling
,
Spencer Olin
, and
Mark Poster
, “ The Emergence of Postsuburbia: An Introduction,” in Postsuburban California (
Berkeley
, 1991 ), 6.
23.
Dykstra
, “Congestion DeLuxe,” 398.
24.
Kevin Lynch emphasizes the importance of urban legibility to all urbanites. The concept would have particular importance for Progressive Era urban planning professionals. See
Kevin Lynch
, The Image of the City (
Cambridge, MA
, 1960).
25.
Zoning had been introduced in California as early as the 1870s. In the 1910s and 1920s, a new wave of “scientific” zoning hit America's cities; for an excellent brief summary of this early use, see
Sam Bass Warner
, The Urban Wilderness (
Berkeley: University of CA Press
, 1995), 28-29. Los Angeles was a pioneer in this effort, as the first major city in the country to enact a zoning ordinance, a law that is “now accepted by many urban historians as the beginning of modern zoning in the United States, preceding the better known New York statute by eight years.” See
Mansel G. Blackford
, The Lost Dream: Businessmen and City Planning on the Pacific Coast, 1890–1920 (
Columbus, OH: State University Press
, 1993), 92. Indeed, in 1908 the City of Los Angeles “adopted two ordinances dividing the city into residential and industrial zones, seeking thereby to keep industry out of residential areas,” according to
Mel Scott
, Metropolitan Los Angeles: One Community (
Los Angeles: The John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation
, 1949), 37. Robert M. Glendinning cites the date (most commonly identified by scholars) of 1909 for the birth of zoning in the region. His article “Zoning: Past, Present and Future” in the influential 1941 planning manifesto Los Angeles: Preface to a Master Plan also notes that zoning efforts in the state of California date back to 1861. See
George W. Robbins
and
L. Deming Tilton
, eds., Los Angeles: Preface to a Master Plan (
Los Angeles: Pacific Southwest Academy
, 1941). Mark Foster, alone among historians, claims in his dissertation, “The Decentralization of Los Angeles During the 1920's,” that Los Angeles's “City Council enacted the first zoning ordinance in 1904” (p. 229). He gets this date, however, from the city's own planning history: Philip J. Ouellet, City Planning in Los Angeles: A History (Los Angeles: Department of City Planning, 1964). Whatever the date of the city's first zoning attempts, it was clearly not until the 1920s that zoning in Southern California was actually enacted with the degree of precision, sophistication, and thoroughness for which professional expert planners called. After 1920, the Los Angeles City Planning Commission and the County Regional Planning Commission began programs of comprehensive city and regional zoning, modeled after the refined zoning ordinance enacted by New York City's planners in 1916 (Scott, Metropolitan Los Angeles, 86).
26.
See
M. Christine Boyer
,
Dreaming the Rational City: The Myth of AmericanCity Planning (
Cambridge, MA
, 1983).
27.
Prior to the new zoning ordinances, developers had actually favored multiunit construction, as they saw such buildings to be more profitable to sell. See
Leonard Pitt
and
Dale Pitt
, Los Angeles, A to Z (
Berkeley
, 1997), 570-71.
28.
Pitt
and
Pitt
, Los Angeles, A to Z, 209.
29.
“
The Open Forum
,” City Club Bulletin8, no. 435 (1925):
4
.
30.
See Foster, “The Decentralization of Los Angeles during the 1920's”;
James McFarline Ervin
, “The Participation of the Negro in the Community Life of Los Angeles” (MA thesis,
University of Southern California
, 1931);
Lonnie G. Bunch, III
, Black Angelenos: The Afro-American in Los Angeles, 1850–1950 (
Los Angeles
, 1988); and
J. Max Bond
, “ The Negro in Los Angeles” (PhD dissertation,
University of Southern California
, 1972).
31.
Planners, of course, had no real short-term solution to the downtown traffic crisis. In the long term, the automobile seemed more of a solution than a problem. For their dream of a deconcentrated Southern California—really a cluster of quasi-autonomous garden cities—to work, people would need to be able to easily travel to their local business districts, and there was no indication that Angelenos would be willing to walk several miles to run an errand or even go to work. Here is where the metropolis's great problem—the proliferation of automobiles—could be transformed into a benefit. With the private car, families could easily be able to transact their business near their home, and, because the automobile was flexible, these businesses could now be located anywhere within a few miles of the residential areas. There would be, these planners believed, no longer any real logistical need for a centralized downtown for an entire metropolitan region, as there had been in an earlier rail-bound age, as citizens would no longer be tied to these centralizing mass transit routes. Now they could move freely about their own home districts for their everyday needs, thus eliminating the need to travel downtown for everyday tasks. Gone too would be both onerous and lengthy commutes and the traffic congestion these unnecessary trips inevitably produce. As Dykstra wrote in 1926, “The great city of the future will be a harmoniously developed community of local centers and garden cities, a district in which the need for transportation over long distances at a rapid rate will be reduced to a minimum.” Thus, the inherent technological flexibility of the private automobile would do the planners' work for them, almost automatically. If the city were prevented from making the mistakes of American metropolises of the East, then, over time, the downtown central business district would simply wither away and with it would go the problem of congestion—of both automobiles and population. See Dykstra, “Report on Rapid Transit.”
32.
R.F. Kelker, Jr.
, and
C. F.De Leuw, Report and Recommendations on a Comprehensive Rapid Transit Plan for the City and County of Los Angeles (
Chicago
, 1925), 25.
33.
Kelker and De Leuw, Report and Recommendations, 89.
34.
See
Marshall Stimson
, “
The Battle for a Union Station at Los Angeles
,” Historical Society of Southern California Quarterly21, no. 1 (1939).
35.
This advertisement appeared in the newspapers on the following dates
: Record, January 16, 1926,
6-7
; Times , January 17, 1926, 1:
12-13
; Examiner, January 17, 1926, 1:
6-7
; and Herald, January 18, 1926, 1:
8-9
.
36.
William Sproule
, “
Every Dot a Grade Crossing
,” Times, January 17, 1926, 1:
13
.
37.
Although the proposal to abandon the official Union Station plan and instead accept the railroads' offer was the core of the urban modernization special election ballot, there were actually two other related measures put before the voters in the election. One was a proposal to lift the long-standing city building height limit to allow the construction of the metropolis's first skyscraper, an ultramodern new City Hall— which was heralded by downtown interests as the first of many such tall buildings. The second was to override the restrictive residential zoning city planners had earlier imposed on Wilshire Boulevard. Thus, all these interconnected measures amounted to a referendum on the future of Los Angeles and Southern California for the remainder of the twentieth century. For a detailed discussion of these other measures and how they intersected the Union Station debate, see my Toward Autopia, chap. 4.
38.
A number of historians, such as Spencer Crump and Scott Bottles, echo the Times's own assertion that the newspaper stood alone against the other local dailies in its opposition to the carriers' rapid transit plan. See, for instance, “Straw Vote on Depot Question,” Times, February 26, 1926, 2:2; Crump, Ride the Big Red Cars, 165—66; and Bottles, Los Angeles and the Automobile, 139. Actually, the situation was a bit more complex. The Examiner, which had a greater circulation than its rivals, certainly opposed Chandler's Times at every step. The working-class Record, which did denounce the Plaza site as “Harry's `Onion' Station” or “Harry's `Plaza' Scheme,” nevertheless expressed considerable ambivalence about terminal unification (“Record Recommendations,” Record, April 29, 1926, 9). Although it made clear that it had no objection to a union station per se and went so far as to state explicitly its endorsement of such “beautification” efforts in principle, it certainly did not approve of the specific Plaza site, which it saw as a Chandler-inspired real estate speculation plot. Even more split was the Herald, which ultimately refused to take any position on the Plaza question. The Evening Express did run a number of mildly critical articles about the Union Station plan, but at the time of the election ran only timid and ambivalent editorials. Despite this variety of press opinion, all papers except the Examiner became less and less enthusiastic about the rapid transit plan as the election progressed—this undoubtedly reflects the effectiveness of the Times's vigorous opposition campaign.
39.
These attacks were accompanied by advertisements (placed in all the major papers, but particularly in the Times) by an organization calling itself the “Anti-Elevated Association of Los Angeles.” Spots such as these continued the assault on the elevated railroads through ominous descriptions of the offending structures and by juxtaposing cartoons of bucolic bungalows with dark steel monstrosities.
40.
For a few examples of these train wrecks, see “
Keep the `L' Out of Los Angeles
,” Times, March 29, 1926, 1:
1
;
W.A. Lyon
, “
City Warned by Expert of Menace in `L' Plan
,” Times , April 25, 1926, 1:
1-2
; and
J.P. Gallagher
, “
Experts Call Building of 'L' Tragic Error
,” Times, April 18, 1926, 1:
3
. Occasionally, the paper would feature photos of various elevated railway accidents around the nation without commentary—in the photogravure section, for instance, or as a simple dispatch—assuming that, by this point, readers would be able on their own to connect these horrors to the contemporary campaign. See “
Cause of Car Plunge Still Unfixed
,” Times, March 23, 1926, 1:
8
; and “
Luckily, No One Was Killed
,” Times, April 29, 1926, 1:
12
.
41.
W.A. Lyon
,
"Foul Dirt, Darkness and Bedlam Curse of 'L'"
,Times , April 23, 1926, 1:
1-2
. This series amounted to something of a travelogue, as the paper reported sequentially from Chicago, on the 14th through 18th of April (
J.P. Gallagher
, “
Elevated Held Curse to Progress of Chicago
,” Times, April 14, 1926, 1:
1+
;
J.P. Gallagher
, “
Chicago Takes Up Gage in Opposition to 'L' Railroad
,” Times, April 15, 1926 , 1:
1+
;
J.P. Gallagher
, “
Elevated Railroad Magnate Condemns Chicago 'L,' Joins in Fight to Provide Subway
,” Times, April 16, 1926, 1:
1+
;
J.P. Gallagher
, “
Experts Calls Building of 'L' Tragic Error
,” Times, April 18, 1926, 1:
1+
); followed by Boston, on the 19th and 20th (“
Just What This 'L' Means
,” Times , April 19, 1926, 1:
1+
; “
Values Fall Due to `L
,'” Times, April 20, 1926, 1:
1+
); New York City, from the 21st through the 25th (
W.A. Lyon
, “
New York Pays Piper for Dance that Opened `L
,'” Times, April 21, 1926, 1:
1+
;
W.A. Lyon
, “
Property Values Soar When New York City Street Bans `L
,'” Times, April 22, 1926, 1:
1-2
;
W.A. Lyon
, “
Foul Dirt, Darkness and Bedlam Curse of `L
'”;
W.A. Lyon
, “
Effect of New York `L' on Health Disastrous
,” Times, April 24, 1926, 1:
1-2
;
W.A. Lyon
, “
City Warned by Expert of Menace in `L' Plan
,” Times, April 25, 1926, 1:
1-2
); and finally Philadelphia, on the 26th of the month (
Carroll Shelton
, “
Philadelphia Bans `L' as Dirty, Noisy, Inartistic
,” Times, April 26, 1926, 1:
1-2
).
42.
Harry Bowling
,
"The Song of the 'L'"
, Times, April 29, 1926, 2:
4
. The allusion to the beggar Lazarus and the wealthy Dives, referencing the New Testament Book of Luke (16:19—31), testified to the impression that the elevated was a blight on the poor in service of the wealthy and the elite.
43.
Lyon, “Effect of New York `L' on Health Disastrous.” Reference to the sun was a common theme in these articles. Headlines such as “The Sun Shines Bright—But Not In This Street” continually reinforced the association between vertical urbanism and shadowy darkness. This discourse was particularly effective in Southern California, but it borrows its imagery from sources that originated in the East. Matthew Hale Smith's Sunshine and Shadow in New York (New York, 1868), an exposé revealing the contrast between the mansions of New York's wealthy and the squalor of the Five Points district, is an early example of this sort of discourse and visual language.
44.
Lyon
, “
Foul Dirt, Darkness and Bedlam Curse of `L.'” Local celebrity radio evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson returned from a trip abroad during the campaign and was immediately recruited by the Times to spread the gospel of the anti-“el” crusade. Sermonizing that Los Angeles was “a place of refuge” for people seeking “peace, quiet and comfort,” McPherson earnestly suggested that these refugees had fled to Southern California precisely to escape “the noise, dirt, unsightliness, gloom and danger of the elevateds.” This city on a hill should not, she asserted, be defiled by the elevated, thereby “destroy[ing] the sacredness of the place” and turning it into a pit of “poisonous pestilence.” See “Evangelist Is Against Elevateds
,” Times, April 29, 1926, 2:
1
.
45.
Although ardently opposed to the elevated railway plan, the Times—always an aggressive booster— was not opposed to urban expansion in general, nor even to some isolated skyscraper development. Rather, the paper wished to balance a businesslike ambition for metropolitan “progress” against its historic investment in Mediterraneanism.
46.
Advertisement by local business leaders
, Times, April 14, 1926, 1:
8
.
47.
The railroad plan backers were so visually inept that they ran one advertisement that actually reprinted several of the Times's most effective drawings, claiming rather plaintively as a caption that “these cartoons misrepresent facts.” Consistently, the railroads' ads emphasized extended blocks of text where the Times struck back with clear, easily legible images. In a sense, then, the railroad backers' ads reinforced the message of their opponents, presenting a public image that was cluttered, dark, and blocky. See Examiner, April 29, 1926, 1:
9
.
48.
Business Men's Association of Los Angeles, “In the Spirit of Fair Play,” Record, March 12, 1926, 13.
49.
Lyon, “Foul Dirt, Darkness and Bedlam Curse of `L.'”
50.
“ The Election Arguments,” Record, April 26, 1926, 10.
51.
“
Plaza Depot
,” Examiner, April 20, 1926, 2:
20
. Some alternate shorthand references included “
Depot in Chinese District” or simply “Chinatown site
.” See “
Depot in Chinese District, or No More Grade Crossings?
” Examiner, April 12, 1926, 2:
16
; and “
Sane View of Plaza Plan by City's Traffic Experts
,” Examiner, April 24, 1926, 2:
16
. At the same time, in an article in the same paper City Councilman Ralph Criswell also drew attention to earlier—but rejected—efforts “to have the city accept a large area in the old Chinatown district as a site for a great passenger terminal.” See “
Criswell Calls Plaza Terminal Unnecessary
,” Examiner, March 29, 1926, 1:
5
. Meanwhile, the Business Men's Association began referring to the Plaza Terminal in the same way—as the “
Chinatown property
,” as one advertisement put it. This was clearly a calculated campaign to solidify the association of the Union Station with the ethnic district. See “
Fabrications vs. Facts
,” Times, April 28, 1926, 2:
8
.
52.
“
Plaza Plan, Ignoring P.E., Reveals Its Fatal Weakness
,” Examiner, April 26, 1926, 2:
7
.
53.
Many opponents of the Union Station suggested in a similar vein that the Plaza site was no longer central to the city. It represented the metropolis's hazy past, when the city needed to put forward a more modern and dynamic impression of itself to visitors. The city was growing during the 1920s toward the “south and southwest, toward the sea” as one commentator put it and ought not to look back toward the old heart of the Spanish town. See “
Finance Head Raps Station on Plaza Site
,” Examiner, January 21, 1926, 1:
6
. Modernization of Los Angeles required not just rapid transit facilities, but also an abandonment of an antiquated urban atmosphere: “Hotels, high-class shops and theaters in this city have long since moved south of Fourth street and are rapidly proceeding south and west....The Plaza is to Los Angeles what the Battery is to New York.” Once more, Southern California needed to get in line with other major metropolises of the Jazz Age; it could not afford to cling to a murky past, no matter how romantic. See “
Expert Opposes Union Station at Plaza
,” Examiner, February 21, 1926, 2:
15
.
54.
Citizens' Union Station Committee
, “
Keep The Elevateds Out!
” Examiner, April 28, 1926, 1:
14
.
55.
The Times rarely wasted an opportunity to express its appreciation of the historical core of the city, often in florid terms: “The departed glory of the historic Plaza and its ancient mission is to be returned and indelibly fixed and combined with the glory of the present and promise of the future. So the charm and romance of the old days are to be commingled with the achievements of the present and the visions of the future. Typically Angeleno.” In other articles, the paper presented the Plaza in the context of urban renewal. Focusing on the proximity of the site to the new Civic Center complex (including the new City Hall), the construction program now became one of beautification: “Many people are under the impression that a union station in the Plaza area will damage or destroy the historic Plaza and the old Plaza Church. Nothing could be farther from the fact. The Civic Center plan not only will not molest the old church and park but will beautify and perpetuate it as the center of the city's most imposing group of buildings.” The old center of the city would now form “a magnificent setting of great public buildings,” representing the progress American civilization had made in Los Angeles. Juxtaposed to the quaint structures of the Spanish era would stand the modern edifices of the twentieth century. The Plaza would remain, but remade as a purified recreational landmark. In effect, the Union Station project would complete a process that had progressed all century to remake the old district as a romantic tourist destination, a shrine to a vague Mediterranean heritage long passed by. See, respectively, “
Magnificent Los Angeles Civic Center in the Making: Steam Shovels Clear Way for Downtown Beauty Spot
,” Times, April 18, 1926, 2:
1
;
J.P. Gallagher
, “
Union Depot Marks Era
,” Times, April 27, 1926, 2:
1
; and “
Complete Our Civic Center by Voting `Yes' on Propositions 8-9
,” Times, April 28, 1926, 2:
1
.
56.
“Magnificent Los Angeles Civic Center.”
57.
“
People Vs. Railroads, Union Station Issue
,” Times, April 20, 1926, 2:
2
.
58.
For example, see Bottles, Los Angeles and the Automobile.
59.
Of course, Davis generally uses this rhetorical pair as a lens through which to analyze historiography on the city as a whole and comment on the larger resonances and limitations of the Mediterranean “city myth.” See Chapter 1 in
Mike Davis
, City of Quartz (
New York
, 1992), 15-98.
60.
“
Is the Skyscraper Doomed?
” National Municipal Review15, no. 8 (1926):
438
.
61.
“
The Skyscraper
,” National Municipal Review16, no. 1 (1927):
1
.
62.
Corbett
, “Up with the Skyscraper,” 101.
63.
Henry H. Curran
, “
The Skyscraper Does Cause Congestion: Major Curran Comes Back At Mr. Corbett
,” National Municipal Review16, no. 4 (1927):
234
.
64.
“
Los Angeles, City of Homes
,” Evening Express, April 5, 1926,
14
.
65.
“
The Future City
,” Evening Express , April 5, 1926,
14
.
