SOUTH BAY DIGS | Digital Edition Online

28 DIGS.NET | 5.17.2019 M AY 1 7 , 2 0 1 9 | I S S U E 2 0 5 722 1st Street, Unit D, Hermosa Beach, California, 90254 Office: 310.373.0142 South Bay Digs Magazine is published every other Friday by m3 Media, LLC. Reproduction in any form or by any means is strictly prohibited without the prior written consent from m3 Media LLC. The Publisher and advertisers are not responsible or liable for misinformation, misprints, or typographical errors. All advertised properties are subject to prior sale or withdrawal without notice. Real estate advertised in this publication is subject to the Federal Fair Housing Act. M3 Media will not knowingly accept any advertising for real estate which is in violation of the law. All persons are hereby informed that all dwellings advertised are available on an equal opportunity basis. Any and all submissions to this publication become the property of m3 Media, LLC and may be used in any media. CO N N E C T W I T H U S .net TO OUR READERS South Bay DIGS welcomes your feedback and encourages reader response to our editorial features. Please send your letters to the Publisher at 722 1st Street, Unit D, Hermosa Beach, California, 90254 or via email to WDOW@southbaydigs.com. Please include your name and contact information. Letters may be published and we reserve the right to edit. ADVERTISING For inquiries, please contact Publisher Warren Dow at 310.373.0142. EDITORIAL For editorial inquiries, please email Editorial@SouthBayDIGS.com on the cover FIND YOUR PLACE. MAY 17, 2019 DIGS.NET PRESENTED BY JOHN CHUK A & KERRY DAWSON NW REAL ESTATE BROKERS FEATURE ON PAGE 80 INSIDE GLORY DAYS THE WOMAN IN BLUE DANISH DESIGN A Fresh Expression PRESENTED BY JOHN CHUKA 310.990.1110 & KERRY DAWSON 310.753.5537 NW REAL ESTATE BROKERS LIST PRICE $7,099,000 FEATURE ON PAGE 80 CREATIVE SERVICES & AD DESIGN/ORIGINAL ARTWORK PROVIDED EXCLUSIVELY BY SOUTH BAY DIGS. © 2019 m3 Media, LLC. All rights reserved. Publisher Associate Publisher Editorial Director Director of Operations Marketing Director Digital Media Director Senior Graphic Designer Graphic Designer Contributing Writers Senior Staff Photographer Warren J. Dow Carol Skeldon Amy Adams Lauren Potter Kyle Coats Kieron McKay Ryan Lyse Jim Alba Wendy Bowman Jenn Thornton Constance Dunn Karine Monié Joclene Davey Abigail Stone Paul Jonason The Portuguese Bend Club is a private beach colony that has existed since the 1940s. Covering 38 acres with a half mile of coastline, this area was once a haven of summer cottages and small homes built on land leased from Palos Verdes Properties. The leases on the cottages were short, only twenty-five years, because Palos Verdes Properties, owned by the Vanderlip family, was not sure what they wanted to do with the property. They were the typical 1940s weekend places where people went to have a quiet time at the beach. Back then there was a clubhouse, restaurant, paddle tennis courts, 50 foot swimming pool, a sandy beach, and a 485 foot long dock where boats could tie up, which were all destroyed by the Portuguese Bend landslide in the mid 1950's. The restaurant, dock and clubhouse are gone and have been replaced with a volleyball court, paddle tennis courts, play ground equipment and, of course, the clubs signature palm thatched ramadas and picnic tables. In the late 1950s Palos Verdes Properties put 42 lots up for sale and they were offered to people who had lost their homes in the land slide. Lot numbers were drawn from a hat and everybody paid the same price, about $10,000. Some of the buyers moved their houses from the slide area; others built new ones. Beginning in the early 1970s leases on the properties owned by Palos Verdes Properties began to expire and the company started to raise the rent. Then in 1975 the residents of the club united to negotiate the purchase of their properties. These negotiations went on for the next twelve years and by then, Portuguese Bend was owned by the Transamerica Corporation. What You See Is What You Get Purchase of the individual properties from Transamerica was finalized in 1987. At that time there were 51 beachfront homes and their owners bought their cottage sites, the beach, the common area which included 19 acres, the gatehouse and the roads. No parcel map of the area existed then, only a tax assessor's map, and property was bought on the basis of what you see is what you get. It wasn't until after the purchase from Transamerica that a survey was conducted to establish lot lines. There are 94 homes in the Portuguese Bend Club .Until recently, homes in the club were on septic tanks, but because the area is so close to the Portuguese Bend slide, City geologists, recommended that sewers be installed. Now, all of the homes are hooked up to a private sewer system and it has its own sewer pumps and lines. The club offers year-round membership to about 300 Peninsula residents. The above is an excerpt from my book "Historic Tales of Palos Verdes and the South Bay". For more info see http://www.southbayhistory.com. PORTUGUESE BEND LANDSLIDE S O U T H B A Y History Tidbits Flotsam Castle One of the most unusual homes ever constructed in the beach communities of the South Bay was a home constructed entirely of driftwood by a local "hermit" on the beach at the southern end of Torrance Beach. The home was constructed by Louis C. Dart during the period from 1919 to 1925 and was known as both the "Flotsam Castle" as well as the "Hermit's Castle". Louis was an attorney by training who practiced in western Nebraska. After having lost his voice by too many years of "lawyering" and having suffered from kidney disease and other intestinal ailments, like many others at the time, moved to Southern California in September 1919 to try and regain his health. After working at several jobs at local ranchos, he went to the shoreline just south of the area known as Clifton-by-the-sea in Redondo Beach below the area later developed as Hollywood Riviera. There he found an old tent, and exhausted and deathly ill, stayed to die. Soon after, an old Mexican woman told him that the waters of the fresh water spring at the base of the cliff bluffs had healing powers. For a month, he lived only on the spring water. He then found some wild tomatoes at the top of the bluffs and lived for quite a while only on a broth of tomatoes and snails. Over that time, he miraculously regained his health and began to build his castle from driftwood and other materials he found on the beach. The port of Redondo was very active transporting materials, some of which found their way overboard drifting to shore. Louis stated that he only spent 20 cents on nails for an emergency and that all of the other materials were delivered to him by "Neptune's White Horses". On Thanksgiving in 1920, a 45 foot yacht named "Genevieve" moored just offshore, and winds that night broke her moorings and dashed the yacht on the rocks on the beach. The owners of the yacht paid Louis $5 to watch over the yacht overnight and then offered numerous items to him for helping them salvage the remains of the yacht. Many of these items found their way into the castle including an old galley stove whose remains slowly washed up on the shore over a two year period. Louis expanded the castle over the next several years finally reaching 4 stories in height. An old sign hung over the entrance reading "This building cost but little money but much work without which life affords no satisfying kick". Another sign read "My family-outside its appetite- is not so very big-Just a brindle Thomas cat and a black-nosed guinea pig". Over the years, the castle became popular with visitors and Louis raised money by selling soft drinks (cooled by a cooler fed by the spring), cigarettes, candy, and even started to bake and sell thousands of pies. Several other drift-wood homes were also built south of Louis' castle during the 1920's. After abandoning the castle sometime after 1925 and moving to Riverside, the developers of the Hollywood Riviera project burned the house down in May 1930. The above is an excerpt from my book "Historic Tales from Palos Verdes and the South Bay". For more info go to www.southbayhistory.com Flotsam Castle 1924 S O U T H B A Y History Tidbits mdmegowan@gmail.com Maureen Megowan 310.541.6416

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