Birth of a Shopping Mecca

By Cindy Frazier
Senior Writer

October 18 -- As soon as there was a City of Santa Monica, there was Third Street, a dusty bustling commercial strip at the heart of a growing seaside town.

The precursor of today’s popular Third Street Promenade, the City’s commercial center stretched, as it does today, from Broadway to Wilshire Boulevard, just a short walk from Ocean Avenue and spectacular views of Santa Monica Bay.

So it came as no surprise when The Outlook was founded as a four-page weekly newspaper in 1875 (the year of the City’s incorporation) that Third and Wilshire – which now marks the northerly end of the Promenade – was considered the best location for a new business venture in a new city.

The Promenade looking north from Broadway in the early 1900s. (All pictures courtesy of the Santa Monica Library image archives)

Six years later, the city’s oldest commercial building, the Keller Block, rose at the corner of what is now Third and Broadway – the southerly end of the popular strip. Soon a row of brick “block” buildings would spring up along the street, as developers followed suit, competing for the best locales.

Third Street was where Santa Monicans worshipped and bought bread – a strip of churches, shoe repair shops, meat markets, hardware and grocery stores easily accessible by trolley or horse and buggy in a rapidly growing town.

Even Santa Monica’s first fire station, built in 1902, was located on Third Street – at Santa Monica Boulevard. Decades later, Third Street and Santa Monica Boulevard would also be the site of the city’s first “skyscraper” – the Bay Cities Building opened in 1929.

It’s not clear who – or what – determined Third Street would be the prime location for the city’s shops and services.

“We don’t know who decided that,” said Santa Monica historian Fred Basten, who wrote the book “Santa Monica Bay: Paradise By the Sea.”

The question can probably best be answered by looking back at how and why the city was founded.

Originally developed by industrialist John Jones, who saw the “city by the bay” as an ideal site for a future Port of Los Angeles, and his partner, Col. Robert S. Baker, the town was laid out in neat blocks and crowned by the Santa Monica Hotel, which would play host to the sailors, silver brokers and adventurers the two men were sure would flock to their shores.

The optimism of Jones and Baker bore fruit, and Santa Monica was soon bustling with butchers, bakers, watchmakers, restaurateurs and saloonkeepers to serve its growing population of 1,000.

“For a time it looked like a typical frontier mining town with false fronts, boardwalks and dirt streets,” Basten writes in his book. “Cattle and stray horses roamed at will, and gun-toting residents found great sport in shooting at the circling seagulls.”

Four months after the first lots were sold in July 1875, the town even boasted a tennis club. It was located on the 1000 block of Third Street at Washington Avenue just north of the current Promenade. Schools and churches soon followed.

One colorful addition to Third Street was Steere’s Opera House, built by John Steere at Third and Broadway and best remembered for the collection of stuffed birds that served as its primary decor.

What is currently The Gap on Santa Monica Boulevard and the Promenade in the Roaring Twenties.

Third Street was the natural choice for a commercial district catering to visitors and locals alike. Jones’ mansion and other large estate homes were situated at what was then and now considered the best real estate – Ocean Avenue north of the railroad pier.

To the east, “behind” these homes was Second Street, with the old Santa Monica City Hall, an 1873 brick structure that still stands as part of Hostelling International and is considered the oldest building in the Santa Monica Bay area.

The bluff side of Ocean Avenue – which could be called “First Street” – was preserved for public parkland, and also no doubt to assure continued ocean views for the city’s leading residents.

As the town grew, more hotels sprang up, including the legendary Arcadia Hotel, a palatial beachfront establishment that was considered the best hotel on the Pacific Coast at the end of the 1800s.

But then, just before the turn of the century, the City’s fortunes fell. In 1897, the City of Los Angeles decided to locate its “official” port at San Pedro – dashing Jones’ dream of a mega port city, but leading to new horizons.

Instead of a fortune in silver, the city found its fortunes in the sun and sea.

Despite, or because of, the loss of the port designation, Santa Monica reestablished itself as a tourist mecca, with the building of the Pleasure Piers, including the Santa Monica Pier built in 1916. Thousands flocked to the city on the electric trolley, which had been operating since 1896, to enjoy the city’s bath houses, hotels and beach clubs.

Taking advantage of the visitor boom, many of the nation’s biggest retailers, as today, set up shop on Third Street – J.C. Penney, Montgomery Ward, Kress 5-10-25 Cent Store, Walgreens and Newberrys.

The “Roaring Twenties” were exciting years in Santa Monica, a time of spectacular growth and the maturing of the city. The decade saw the city's largest population growth, with the number of residents doubling from 15,000 to 32,000, according to The Outlook.

Fourth Street looking north from Broadway in the 1920s. Henshey's Department store, now the site of Toys 'R Us, is the dark building on the right.

“The community lost its image as a quaint, seaside village and became a metropolitan shopping district,” The Outlook wrote. “The Henshey’s, Van Antwerp, and Murdock’s Department store was opened in 1925,” one block from Third Street, further extending the commercial district.

The Criterion Hotel, Apartments and Theater were built at Third and Arizona. The landmark structure still stands today and proves that “mixed-use” development is nothing new in Santa Monica, at least on Third Street.

The go-go 1920s hit a brick wall with the stock market crash of 1929, and the Great Depression clobbered Santa Monica as hard as it did the rest of the nation. In 1933, employment reached a low of less than 1,000 jobs, The Outlook reported. Many businesses closed, and property values plummeted. The owners of the newly built Bay Cities Building – now known as the Crocker Building – went bankrupt.

But Santa Monica was again bailed out of economic decline – this time by Douglas Aircraft, which had operated out of the city since the mid-1920s and sponsored the world’s first round-the-globe flight in 1924.

During World War II, at the peak of its military production in 1943, Douglas employed nearly 44,000 workers – at a time when the city’s population was 67,500, The Outlook reported.

The postwar years brought even more growth to Santa Monica and to the Downtown district, with Sears staking its claim to the city's bustling business center in 1947 by opening its department store right across from Third Street on Colorado Avenue.

This further extended the commercial corridor while the nation retooled for peace and consumerism made a comeback. By the late 1950s, Third Street was a busy commercial strip with lots of cars, bars, banks, record stores and a Singer sewing machine shop.

In the 1960s, after the Santa Monica Freeway brought in a new generation of vehicular visitors, City leaders decided to take the area one step further and make Third Street into a pedestrian-only zone. The Third Street Mall was born.

But by the mid-1980s, the crowds had dwindled and what was billed as a “Pedestrian’s Paradise” was facing competition from the indoor Santa Monica Place Mall which now straddled Third Street between Broadway and Colorado Avenue.