My 50 Years in Palms

My 50 Years in Palms
by David I. Worsfold

This is the second article in a series on the history of Palms written by David I. Worsfold, recognized historian and civic leader who celebrated his 50th year as a Palms resident on October 1964.

In 1914, promoters were trying to change the name of Palms or supplant the old town for the glory of Harry Culver, which would enrich the big property owners by moving the business center to their property. The Palms leaders were attempting to stop them in their scheme of changing the name and moving the business center and probably destroying the old town.

The Palms leaders worked for annexation to Los Angeles. The area proposed included all of the Culver investment - Sherman and Clark subdivision (Tract No. 2444) Nolan Park and Tract No. 1775. The vote in April, 1914, failed to gain the majority and a redrawing of the boundary lines to exclude some land and some opposition voters made possible the later incorporation of Culver City. The area known as Ivywild was also excluded and so was the area west of Overland Avenue, but the rest of the community voted annexation on June 1, 1914, under the name of Palms. This happened in my tender years before I came here, when I didn't know or care.

On New Years, 1915 the family walked over the Palms Hills to see the Beverly Oil Wells. I had never seen oil wells in Illinois or Oregon and so this was something new. In mid-January we walked to the big Rand house on a high point of Baldwin Hills. In February dad started working on the first movie studios here, the Kalem Co. This later became the Essanay Studio. The name came from the initials S and A, from Spoor and Anderson who came from Waukegan, Ill., my birthplace. Of course the first studio here was in Palms as there was no Culver City yet.

I had started first grade in a brand new school at Corvallis, and arrived in Palms in time to start the second grade in a brand new $60,000 school. The old Palms school was built in 1888, and was still standing; my father helped to tear it down. The few children from the new development went to Palms School because there was no other school except way out in the farm area, which was the old La Ballona School and was a poor building. When it became necessary to build a new building, the children of that district were sent to Palms.

My first friends in Palms were Cedric Hutchinson, who lived on 3rd Street, and Earl Messick, who lived across the alley on 6th Street but my closest friend was Alex Gill. They had a ranch on Washington Street and 6th Street. There was always a lot of action there; the old lima bean ranch had horses, pigs, mules and a cow. Brother Dick and I played in the barn and on the pepper tree, and the windmill. After 50 years my brother intimately knows the area where the bean ranch was, but now it's called Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios. He started working there in 1925, and is there now.

Part 3