Beach City Renaissance: Manhattan Beach hopes to become the “Florence of Southern California”
Manhattan Beach cultural arts manager Martin Betz and City Councilperson Steve Napolitano by the Light Gate sculpture, a harbinger of public art to come in the city. Photo Sometime circa 1909 Albert Clinton Conner stepped off a train into a fledgling little development called Manhattan Beach. Further down the rails, Hermosa Beach and Redondo Beach were already booming beach towns, but the scraggly sandswept environs of Manhattan Beach — dominated by a large series of dunes forming a crest through the middle of the settlement — had made it less desirable for prospective homeowners. It wouldn’t become incorporated as a city for another three years. But “Pops,” as Conner was known, didn’t have a problem with dusty places. He was patternmaker, inventor, and artist; he was attracted to new frontiers. He’d spent most of his 61 years in Indiana. He was a self-taught Impressionist painter of some acclaim who, along with his brother, Charles, had founded the Rambler’s Sketch Club, which metamorphosed into the renowned Richmond Art Group. Richmond was a small and surprisingly art-minded little city in the flatlands of eastern Indiana. The town, pop. 12,000 at the time Conner lived on its…
Read this story on easyreadernews.com