My wife got a last-minute call this morning for a temp job. We hopped int the car and I drove her there. Afterward, I headed out to explore a city that is an important part of Hollywood history and the history of my own family:
Culver City.

First a bit of history:
Harry Culver first to California in 1910 and learned Real Estate and sought to create a grand “balanced community”. Then in 1917 he drew up the Articles of Incorporation for Culver City. Then in 1924, Harry Culver moved his real estate office into the Hunt Hotel, which would later be named the Culver Hotel which has become a local landmark and is on the National Register of Historic Places.

This plaque describes the history of the Culver Hotel and of Henry Culver founding the city and his hand in early silent films.
This plaque out front the Culver describes the history of the hotel and of Henry Culver founding the city and his hand in early silent films.

Culver endorsed Thomas Ince’s establishing the first of three movie studios in the town that would be known as “The Heart of Screenland.”
Besides the fact that I love the movie industry, why is this so important to me? Well, let me tell you.
After my grandparents moved out to California from New York city, and settled in my home town, they showed interest in other parts of Southern California.
Not long after my second uncle was born, they were invited to Culver City to consider purchasing land there. (Who invited them, and what the original reason, I do not know. It was probably a marketing gimic, give them a tour and pay for their dinner. That sort of thing.)
They would tell the story of taking my uncle, who was just a baby at the time, with them and visit a Real Estate agent’s office in the building we know as the Culver Hotel.

This hotel, first known as the Hunt Hotel, is important to my family history as my grandparents visited it with their baby to consider buying local real estate.
The Culver Hotel
The Culver Hotel in Culver City
This hotel, first known as the Hunt Hotel, is important to my family history as my grandparents visited it with their baby to consider buying local real estate.


EDIT (See Correction at the bottom)

After they were taken to the top of the hotel to look out over all the land around the fledgling community and the vast emptiness up against the nearby hills and rolling fields of barley. Thinking of the baby in her arms she said; “Who would want to live here.”
What makes my grandmother’s statement so fascination and prophetic is because the child that was in her arm that day would grow up, and after returning from World War II, would marry and raise his family in Culver City.

No, these are not my grand parents, but the could well have been as the women holds a young baby. The newspaper the man is holding declares the founding of Culver City.

As I wrote this blog I realized that the real estate agent they had met with might well have been Harry Culver himself? I don’t know, but there is a strong possibility that they were in his offices inside the hotel that would later bare his name.
So, after dropping off my wife I drove down to Culver City. I had worked in a temp job there years ago at the Sony Studios corporate offices. The studio has since sold off what we called SPP (Sony Pictures Plaza). I wanted to wander around the area. As I entered the heart of the city, I was looking for a place to park and followed the signs until they pointed to a drive into a building I had never seen before. Parked, I entered an elevator back to the surface. When the doors opened, I was greeted by an old familiar site. The front gates of the Culver Studio.

As I exited the elevator of the parking structure I was met by an old friend.

While I had worked in SPP, my wife had worked for Sony owned animation company just around the corner from the studio on Ince Blvd.
Remember Thomas Ince? He started the what would be known as the Culver Studios. Ince was a pioneer in the silence film era. The studio would go through many hands over the coming century, from Cecil B. DeMille, to RKO, Desilu Studios (Lucille Ball and Desi Arnez), and others. It continues to be a working studio today.
I didn’t have as much time to wander about as I would have liked, but I enjoyed lunch in a restaurant in that new building over the parking structure. My greatest problem with the building is that you can’t see the Culver Studio’s ‘colonial’ front building from Culver Blvd as you could have for nearly a century.


It was a nice day out, bringing back many family memories, and of my own working around the area.

CORRECTION – Talking with my mother yesterday (a few days after I first posted this blog) I told her about what I wrote above and she had to correct me on one of my family comments above. From what she said I have removed my grandfather’s quote above.

I remember him talking about an office that had too plush of carpet. I thought it was the office in the Culver Hotel. According to her, I was wrong. Apparently my grandfather had gone to a stock brokers’ office (I don’t know what year this would have been) and saw the plush carpet and immediately didn’t like the place. Unfortunately, he did buy the stock that was recommended to him that day and ended up loosing money. All his life he would regret not listening to his gut feeling about the plush carpet.