New Windows into Santa Monica's Past 

  
The Arcadia Hotel, from Picturesque California, edited by John Muir, 1894 

COASTLINE IS A magic word. By choosing it as your keyword for searching the Image Archives of the Santa Monica Public Library, you open a window to the past. Or try "Gold Coast," "bluffs," "palisades," or another of the local coastal terms. Each keyword creates a timeline of digitized photographs on the screen, showing the evolution of the Santa Monica Bay landscape between the Palos Verdes Peninsula and the Santa Monica Mountains in Malibu from the nineteenth century to the present.  

Palisades and beach looking south to the Arcadia Hotel, 1880s  

The development of the City of Santa Monica and its environs has been well documented by photographers since the 1880s, for personal and esthetic as well as commercial and historical purposes. Many early photos were sold as souvenirs and mementos, and have been donated to the Archives from private collections; others were commissioned by the City as documentation of the region's development. 
      Comparison of these photographs can provide a sense of the impacts of rapid development on the natural setting, as well as insights that may assist with conservation of coastal resources. The Image Archives database may be searched by keyword, date, photographer, or collection, yielding new perspectives as the images are juxtaposed in different ways. You can follow the erosion of the bluffs from decade to decade or observe the construction and widening of the coast road until it becomes the Pacific Coast Highway. Images of early visitors who came from Los Angeles to camp in Santa Monica Canyon give way to resort hotels and saltwater plunges (most of them now gone). Piers erected in hope of major port activity were left to decay; others have been restored for recreation as amusement parks. 
      The Santa Monica Public Library's collection is available for viewing during library hours, Monday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m; Friday and Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.; and Sunday, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. The Library is at 1343 Sixth Street in Santa Monica; (310) 458-8631. Photographic reprints are available from copy negatives; ink-jet prints may be made from the digitized images in the database.  

Cynni Murphy is the Image Archives Librarian of the Santa Monica Public Library.