Culver City Case Study

Just south of his hometown of Los Angeles lies Culver City, which made its mark with its rapidly growing film industry, where Hollywood classics such as The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind were filmed. With such great successes came a drastic population growth rate of an incredible 1,011% in the 1920s (Mondkar), thus requiring thousands of new jobs and an expansion of the city; answering the problems introduced by this population growth is where Hayden Tract comes into play- enclosed by an abandoned railroad and located just outside of Culver City, the tract served as a manufacturing and industrial hub as it housed numerous warehouses and factories, thriving in the economy of the post-war era. Unfortunately, this boom didn’t last long, as by the early 1960s the tract hit a hard spot as …show more content…
Culver City as a whole was in peril, and sought out a hero to bring it back to life.
Seeking to save Culver City from destruction, Frederick and Laurie Samitaur Smith bought many of these abandoned buildings with the hope of revitalizing Culver City by incorporating extravagant architecture throughout the city, thus establishing both a social and economic change without any government subsidiaries, political influence, or single master plan. This seemed near impossible at the time, as no single architect seemed open-minded enough to branch out into the avant-garde architecture that they were hoping for.
Introducing Eric Owen Moss: the young architect was looking for his breakthrough into the mainstream architecture world, and the Samitaur Smiths