From the Daily News: A hundred years ago, Van Nuys was founded in a strategic land rush

By Dana Bartholomew, Staff Writer

Posted: 02/20/11, 9:00 PM PST

A flood of real estate ads trumpeted “the largest opportunity on the entire Pacific Coast today.”

Then came the house-to-house telephone barrage by William Paul Whitsett beckoning every Angeleno to head for the San Fernando Valley for barbecue beef and beans.

And lots of lots of land.

More than 10,000 enthusiasts turned out 100 years ago today for the opening land auction for Van Nuys – billed as “the town that was started right.”

“We are the heart of the Valley – it’s where it all started,” said Lydia Drew Mather, president of the Van Nuys Neighborhood Council and founder of its historic district, who has organized a centennial commemoration for this weekend.

“The economic engine, the suburban concept of Los Angeles really began here.”

Spaniards had founded the historic Mission San Fernando Rey, following centuries of Native American habitation.

Farm moguls had tilled vast swaths of the nearly treeless Valley, mostly for wheat. There had even been prior settlements – such as San Fernando, Burbank, Chatsworth and what is now North Hollywood – spurred by the growing railroads.

But it was the founding of the town of Van Nuys by a group of savvy developers, bankers, railroad and newspaper interests that sparked a strategic Valley land rush, historians say.

“It was an unbelievable example of how a group of people with all the money, all the connections and all the know-how put together an instant town,” said Richard Hilton of the Museum of the San Fernando Valley, who leads historic tours. “It just sprang up.”

Though not, however, without considerable foresight and planning.

In 1909, a downtown syndicate led by the goateed patriarch of the Los Angeles Times, Gen. Harrison Gray Otis, paid $2.5 million to Isaac Newton Van Nuys for the Lankershim Ranch – the sprawling south half of the San Fernando Valley.

Van Nuys, heir to the ranch, had turned the 47,500 acres south of today’s Roscoe Boulevard into a thriving wheat-growing empire.

Led by Otis, his protege Harry Chandler, streetcar mogul Moses Hazeltine Sherman and title insurance king Otto Freeman Brant, The Los Angeles Suburban Homes Co. was now bent on turning ploughshares into cash.

For this, the syndicate’s Board of Control turned to Hobart Johnstone Whitley, a master developer, banker and promoter from Toronto, who had worked with U.S. railroads to found more than 100 towns, and the Oklahoma territory.

Water was on the way from the Owens Valley via the Los Angeles Aqueduct, which in 1913 flowed down the Sylmar spillway.

After developing Hollywood, the shrewd municipal monger and syndicate partner turned to the sprawling Valley just over the hill, according to “The San Fernando Valley: America’s Suburb.”

“Here was a basin of immense size, located right next to a growing city,” said author Kevin Roderick. “Whitley must have thought he had found a subdivider’s Promised Land.”

“My great-grandfather was a visionary,” said Gaelyn Whitley Keith, author of “The Father of Hollywood,” who lives in Sacramento. “He brought the future into the present.”

The largest subdivision in Los Angeles County would be recorded as Tract 1000, and included plans to develop three “wonder towns” – Van Nuys, Marian (now Reseda) and Owensmouth (now Canoga Park) – linked by a meandering super boulevard.

The $500,000 Sherman Way, flanked by rail and buggy lanes, boasted 14 miles of roses, palms and electric lights. And a speed limit of 100 mph.

And on its northern leg, now known as Van Nuys Boulevard, was hatched the one-mile-square township of Van Nuys.

Eager visitors from Los Angeles who hopped off the train for the public auction a century ago were greeted with paved sidewalks, 10 board-and-batten houses and emerging storefronts for new banks, druggists and other businesses.

Business lots were hawked for $660, home lots for $350. The opening auction netted $39,606 in down payments, according to Roderick. Other accounts cite $250,000 in first-day sales.

“It was essentially a beef barbecue with frijoles,” said John Hendry, secretary of the Van Nuys Neighborhood Council, and a local historian. “There was a famous barbecue specialist.

“But no beer. Van Nuys was to be a dry town.”

Many credit the marketing of Van Nuys to Whitsett, a native of Pennsylvania related to Betsy Ross of patriotic flag fame, who held a half-interest in the town. An initial booster, he would become one of its most prominent civic pillars.

“The guy was smart, and did a good job, and that led to the rapid growth of the San Fernando Valley,” said Bill Carpenter, curator of the Los Angeles Valley College Historical Museum. “The notion that the suburban growth spurt began after World War II is not true.

“It began in 1911.”

The town’s first baby, Whitley Van Nuys Huffaker, uttered his first cry on Oct. 18, 1911. Two months later, the Pacific & Electric Red Car trolley arrived from Los Angeles.

What has been dubbed “the mother of Valley cities” grew to become its civic and financial heart.

Midwesterners flocked to Van Nuys, whose virtues were touted by the Van Nuys Call, the predecessor of the Daily News, founded in 1911.

Factories such as the Johnston Organ and Piano Co. moved in, followed by plants from General Motors and Anheuser-Busch.

In 1928, the Metropolitan Airport was founded, which later became Van Nuys Airport, once the nation’s busiest general aviation airport.

Four years later, the Van Nuys municipal building would add art deco panache to the Valley skyline.

Van Nuys High School, founded in 1914, would educate hundreds of celebrity students like bombshell actress Marilyn Monroe, Robert Redford, Jane Russell, and Natalie Wood. Alice Waters, creator of California cuisine, was a graduate.

The former Valley Federal Savings was an anchor for its business elite, the former Van Nuys Women’s Club a home for civic-mindedness. The former Bob’s Big Boy on Van Nuys Boulevard was a legendary stop for “American Graffiti”-style car cruise nights.

Then its prestige waned. Over the years, much of Van Nuys seceded to the tonier Lake Balboa, Sherman Oaks and Valley Glen in a bid to boost property values.

“It just feels like a lot of the history has gone away,” said Michele Klees, editor of the Van Nuys-Reseda Elks Lodge newsletter, who moved to the area in 1959.

“Van Nuys es very nice,” goes the refrain from a snarky Los Abandoned tune on You Tube. “But it’s not paradise.”