Betty Lou Young and Randy Young Santa Monica Canyon: A Walk Through History Casa Vieja Press: Pacific Palisades, CA, 1997, 182 pp., 1913, 1890,
7. Canyon School
" . . .
"The story of Canyon School at this time [1913] is eloquently told in tape-recorded reminiscences by two of its teachers, Beulah Archer Asimont and Theresa Sletten. Beulah June Archer came with local credentials. She attended the South Side School in Ocean Park, which was founded in 1890-a one-room frame schoolhouse with a cupola, resembling Canyon School. Her teacher was Miss Hamlin, a very young, very tall woman with long black hair which was caught up by huge bone hairpins into a bun that shifted from side to side atop her head. She was impressive in the classroom and an inspiration to her students. Beulah later observed, "I thought that, next to God and Christ and my parents was my teacher, Miss Hamlin, and I determined that I would be a teacher some day."
"Miss Archer attended Santa Monica High School and the Los Angeles Normal School on Vermont. After graduation in 1913, she came to Canyon School, position that paid seventy-five dollars a month, plus five dollars for janitorial duties. Her trip each day took her by streetcar to the canyon rim at Inspiration Point, then down a trail. The young teacher walked carefully, dressed in her long skirts. wearing cuban heels, and with her red hair up high in a bun-"not because of Miss Hamlin, but because that was the style.""
"The thirty-odd pupils who made up her class ranged in age from five to fifteen years and included black Americans, white Americans, Hispanic-Americans, Japanese-and Russian-Americans-the latter coming from the fishing colony next to the Long Wharf. There, on a narrow strip of sand between cliffs and surf, families lived in small houses and shacks and in old street cars brought out from Los Angeles to provide housing at four dollars a month.
" . . .
"One of the boys lived in a streetcar and was very poor . . . Miss Archer hated to see him walk over to Jefferson School in Santa Monica for classes in sloyd (woodworking), so she bought him an outfit and had him change in the shed that housed the mechanical toilet . . . " p. 61
9 The Lower Canyon as West Coast Bohemia
" . . .
"The eccentric style was set in 1913 when the subdivsion was brand new. A wealthy dowager named Mary Kyte, who lived in one of the grand houses on Ocean Avenue, bought the large parcel of land inside the sweeping curve of Mesa Road. She enclosed it with a fence, built two brick restrooms inside, put in ponds and trees, and engaged Roman Marquez to work full time caring for the plantings. She brought groups of nuns and parochial school children out to go to the beach, but only once during her twenty-four years of ownership did she really entertain, with an elegant catered afternoon party in the garden behind the wall.
"The strong-willed lady drove out to visit the property in her custom-built, chauffeur-driven limousine, sitting in the front seat and clutching the bulb of an air horn which she sounded vigorously while going up and down the Ocean Avenue grade . . .
"The Kyte property remained intact until the mid-1930s, when it was bought and subdivided by Robert Donovan. Architect Thornton Abell purchased a portion and built his own widely honored International-style home on the hillside and in the 1940s incorporated the two restrooms into a small house for artist Richard Haines.
" . . . "