I came across an article written February 5, 1928. Its headline read: Arts Center Projected.
“Involving more than $500,000, an educational and art center consisting of 20 studios and shops to be announced for immediate construction by the Harry H. Culver Company on a twenty-acre site a short distance off Culver Boulevard on Coombs Avenue southwest of Culver City. The announcement was made by Earl D. Eastham, general sales director of the company.
The new development, which will be at the entrance of the Culver Company’s “University Gateway Tract” will only be a short distance from the business section of Culver City. Overland Boulevard will connect the art and craft center with the older business district. Plans are about completed for the building of nineteen schools which will represent almost every of learning, ranging from different music schools – violin, voice and piano – dramatic school, dancing academies, everyday grade schools to the Lutheran & Loyola universities that are to be built west of Culver City in the Del Rey Hills.”
Harry’s vision came to a sudden halt, and the reasons are unclear. Postwar, this section became a single-family neighborhood.
As Justin Jampol, founder of the Wende Cold War Museum, was just beginning his quest for an arts and cultural center, I had to share my finding with him. A century ago, a man with a vision knew the importance for higher education and the arts in our city.
Today, a hundred years later, Justin Jampol has given our city a wonderful museum space with gardens, reinventing the VFW space into the Glorya Kaufman Arts Center for all to enjoy. Coincidence? I think not.
