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WATCH FOR THE RETURN OF THE PALMS–VILLAGE SUN, IN MAY 2008
Our diversity is our strength

The Palms–Village Sun
News, opinion and features about Historic Palms,
including Westside Village
www.PalmsVillageSun.info
This site is not affiliated with any group. Opinions are those of the writers.
Map From the Past: 1933-39
Few apartments in Palms; almost no houses in Westside Village
You will have to scroll to see the various parts of Palms. Can you find where you live now?
See the notes below the map.

Anonymous map makers left us this legacy.
As part of the New Deal's recovery program in the 1930s, the Works Progress Administration hired all sorts of people to work for the government — including map makers. This is one of the maps they did.

Items of note:

  • Only six houses in all of Westside Village.
  • Exposition Boulevard still called Featherstone Drive.
  • No freeways.
  • Just a few apartments in Palms — the red-toned parcels. Most of them being duplexes, with some triples and a couple of larger ones. The numbers on the lots indicating how many units there were.
  • Palms Boulevard called Ocean Park Avenue west of Overland and Stilson Avenue east of it. The street not yet cut through where Palms Middle School is today.
  • Neither Charnock Road Elementary School nor Palms Middle built. Palms Elementary the only school in town (marked SC).
  • The Palms Market just where it is today.
  • The Palms branch library on Woodbine at Vinton, where Woodbine Park is now.
  • A railroad depot at the top of Durango. (This may be a freight station.)
  • Culver Junction at the tip of Media Park the main station for Culver City.
  • Church properties generally where they are today, marked C.
  • A bunch of manufacturing businesses (gray shading) on the east tip of Palms, where the Venice Crossroads Mall (Albertson's) is now.
  • No Brotman Medical Center.
  • Venice Blvd. divided by the tracks of the Pacific Electric Railway. The Culver City-Palms passenger station just north of Media Park (in L.A.).
  • The odd boundary on the St. Augustine schoolgrounds explained by the gerrymandered inclusion of six properties off Jean Place within the city of Los Angeles.
  • Both the Kings Daughters home on Regent Street and the Masonic Lodge on Venice Blvd. marked with CL for "clubhouse." Clubhouses also marked above a drugstore on the southeast corner of Woodbine and Motor and midblock on the east side of Motor between Woodbine and Lawler.
MAPS FROM THE PAST
A Look Back at the Development of the Palms area

Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps have told for decades the story of U.S. cities as reflected in their changing land use.

Sanborn maps of 1919, 1924, 1929 and 1951 help us understand:

Sanborn Maps are via the Los Angeles Public Library.

Here are some other interesting maps: