Culver City
The town Harry Culver built for the movies: MGM's lot, Ince's mansion, a cabinet of curiosities, and warehouses turned into experiments.
22 places · 3 walks in the app · 1 episode
The episode
Photos: Culver City: Jengod, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Places worth stopping at
With the app in your pocket, you get a note about each one as you walk by.
The E Line1
Culver City station
The E Line's Culver City stop, on the old Air Line's right-of-way. Its art paints the city from its hills, with faint faces of famous locals.
Studios & stories4
Helms Bakery
Helms baked here from 1931 to 1969; its coaches whistled through LA, "Daily at Your Door". It was bread baker to the 1932 Olympics; the sign was relit in 2003.
Ivy Substation
This Mission-style hall powered three Red Car lines from 1907, turning AC to 600 volts DC. Since 2005 it's the Actors' Gang's 99-seat theatre.
The Culver Studios
The white mansion copies Mount Vernon: Ince built it in 1918. Gone with the Wind was made on this lot, though Tara itself stood on Forty Acres.
Sony Pictures Studios (MGM)
MGM's lot from 1924 until it was sold in 1986; Stage 27 was Munchkinland in The Wizard of Oz. Sony's now, with weekday studio tours.
Odd museums4
Center for Land Use Interpretation
The Center for Land Use Interpretation studies how America uses its land, from mines to missile sites. Its display space here is free, Friday to Sunday, 12–5.
Museum of Jurassic Technology
Behind this plain front: a cabinet of curiosities whose claims you can't quite trust. Upstairs, the Tula Tea Room serves Georgian tea among live doves.
Bhagavad-gita Museum
Eleven dioramas of near-life-size dolls tell the Bhagavad-gita, made of bamboo, rice straw and clay by craft learned in Mayapur, India. Open since 1977.
Wende Museum
The Wende keeps the Cold War's leftovers: over 100,000 objects from the Eastern Bloc and dissident movements. Wende is German for transformation; entry is free.
Buildings6
Citizen Publishing Company Building
Built in 1929 for The Citizen, the local paper, by Eugene and Kitty Donovan. On the National Register since 1987.
Culver Hotel
The flatiron Culver Hotel, 1924, the town's first "skyscraper". Harry Culver's office is still on the second floor; legend says Chaplin lost it to John Wayne at poker.
Culver City Hall
City Hall of a town Harry Culver willed into being: when neighbouring Palms joined Los Angeles in 1914, Culver's town stayed out, and it incorporated in 1917.
Kirk Douglas Theatre
The 1947 Culver Theatre, a Streamline Moderne movie palace near MGM, is a playhouse now. The box office and the mezzanine tile are original.
The Hobbit Houses
The Hobbit Houses: storybook apartments a Disney and Lockheed worker built in his spare time, with no doorknobs and no right angles inside. Homes; look from the street.
The Hayden Tract
The Hayden Tract: since 1986 Eric Owen Moss has turned old warehouses here into strange new offices, among them the Stealth and the Samitaur Tower.
Public art1
Old Growth (New/Now)
Utility poles with no wires: 56 glass panels form a Douglas fir on one side and old Edison and city photos on the other, lit by the sun's own power.
Parks & the stairs3
Carlson Park
Culver City's first park, dedicated in 1927 on old racetrack ground. In summer, Culver City Public Theater plays here for free.
Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook
282 uneven steps of recycled concrete up to a view over all of LA. The tallest step is about 20 inches; a bronze marker sits between steps 247 and 248.
Stoneview Nature Center
A brownfield turned garden on the Park to Playa Trail: oranges, figs, avocados and lemonade berry to see, with art by Fallen Fruit.
Places of worship2
St. Augustine Church
MGM's parish: this 1937 Gothic church faces the studio, and its pastor advised on MGM films. Stars came to the dedication.
King Fahad Mosque
The King Fahad Mosque, opened in 1998, holds 2,000 worshippers under a 72-foot minaret; Saudi Arabia paid for it.
A shop worth a stop1
The Ripped Bodice
The Ripped Bodice sells nothing but romance novels: opened in 2016 by sisters Bea and Leah Koch, the first such shop in the Northern Hemisphere.
Walks
Start a walk in the app and put your phone away. It tells you when you reach each stop.
Walk
From Culver City station
13 stops · 3.6 km · 1 hr 30
A station loop from the E Line: Old Growth, Helms Bakery, the Ivy Substation, the curiosity museums on Venice Boulevard, the Culver Hotel and the Culver Studios, back to the station in about ten…
Walk
MGM's Culver City
6 stops · 3.6 km · 1 hr 15
From the Sony (old MGM) lot to its parish church, the Hobbit Houses, Carlson Park, the Wende and the mosque.
Walk
The Hayden Tract and the stairs
4 stops · 3.6 km · 1 hr 30
From the station through Eric Owen Moss's Hayden Tract to the foot of the Overlook stairs, up all 282, and on along the Park to Playa Trail to Stoneview.
The Yesteryard app
A guide that taps you on the shoulder.
More of Los Angeles
Venice Beach
Abbot Kinney's 1905 'Venice of America': a boardwalk that never calmed down, and canals that outlived his own.
29 places · 4 walks in the app · 2 episodes: Free
Downtown LA
Where the pueblo began and the trains still meet: El Pueblo, Chinatown, Little Tokyo, Bunker Hill and Broadway, walked between the stations.
48 places · 5 walks in the app · Episode: In the app’s beta
Santa Monica
Where the trains, the bluff and the pier all reach the sea: a town that kept reinventing its waterfront, from 1890s railways to a rotating steel head.
32 places · 3 walks in the app · Episode: Coming soon
Pasadena
The winter town of the rich that became the Athens of the West: the Arroyo's Craftsman houses and bridges, Old Town, the Civic Center and the Rose Parade's home, by the A Line.
31 places · 3 walks in the app