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Tag: Guy M. Rush

  • August 30th in Seal Beach History

    On this date in 1914, Guy M. Rush ran this ad in the Sunday edition of the Los Angeles Times.

    I love these Henri DeKruif seal-themed ads for Seal Beach, and I also think that “Seal Beach–the place where good shore dinners flourish” is a much better slogan than that ghastly “Mayberry By The Sea.”

    I also think it’s high time that the finer dining establishments in Seal Beach start using aquatic mammal waiters in tuxedos again. It would really tickle our tummies.

    Aug_30_1914_Seal_Beach_ad– Michael Dobkins

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  • August 2nd in Seal Beach History

     On this date in 1914, the Santa Ana Register ran this ad for the new “Atlantic City of the West” — Seal Beach!

    By now, we’re all familiar with the Seal Beach booster pitch: incredible real estate opportunities, safe beach, fun for you and your family, act now or you’ll lose out! Seal Beach took decades to take off the way its promoters had hoped, but it’s hard not to love an ad with a seal with a cane and a top hat.

    C’mon, who doesn’t want a lot near the spray? Only $500!

    Aug_2_1914_Booster_Ad– Michael Dobkins

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  • June 24th in Seal Beach History

    On this date in 1914, a “big auto excursion” left Santa Ana at 10:30 a.m. sharp to visit Seal Beach to enjoy “the surf, fishing, dancing, and bowling” and, representatives of the Guy M. Rush Company dearly hoped, put money down on a newly built home or beach lot.

    June_24_1914_Auto_Excursion_to_SB

    – Michael Dobkins

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  • April 11th in Seal Beach History

    On this date in 1914, the Guy M. Rush Company hosted a special promotional excursion to Seal Beach. A special train left San Bernardino at 8 a.m. with seats reserved for the holders of fifty special $2.35 tickets for the excursion. Tickets were also allotted for purchasers in Riverside, Ontario, and Pomona, all cities with stops for boarding on the route to Los Angeles, then Long Beach, and finally Seal Beach. The price included a free lunch and free Saturday  band concert.

    This was the second of two heavily promoted Seal Beach excursions from San Bernardino in early 1914. The first excursion on March 22 was covered in this post. Like the earlier excursion, the real purpose was to sell city lots.  Sales must have been disappointing because this was the last such excursion. The Guy M. Rush would continue marketing Seal Beach real estate to Los Angeles County, Long Beach, and Orange County, but these three ads from March and April 1914 featuring cartoonist Henri De Kruif’s seals were the last attempts to hook Riverside and San Bernardino County residents into buying lots in Seal Beach.

    – Michael Dobkins

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  • March 28th in Seal Beach History

    On this date in 1914, the Guy M. Rush Company ran the following ad announcing to the world that “Seal Beach Is Moving Along” in both the San Bernardino News and The Free Press. The city would incorporate officially as Seal Beach in October of the following year, but the Seal Beach name was already being ferociously pushed as a new real estate brand in the hopes that lots in “Seal Beach” would sell better than lots in the bland and generically named “Bay City.”

    March_28_1914_Seal_Beach_is_Moving_ad-3

    – Michael Dobkins

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  • March 8th in Seal Beach History

    On this date in 1914, the Guy M. Rush Company ran an ad for Seal Beach in the Los Angeles Times, featuring cartoonist Henri DeKruif’s indefatigable seals.

    This time the seals climb a ladder to a diving board for a “Dive to Briny Coolness.” This was meant to entice potential buyers into buying a house close to the beach because “Hotter days are on the way!” This makes perfect sense. For as we all know, “Seal Beach never sizzles. It’s as cool as a cucumber all summer.”

    – Michael Dobkins

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  • February 16th In Seal Beach History

    On this date in 1914, the Santa Ana Register proclaimed that earlier in the week the Mercer Construction Company had begun strengthening the pier with new pilings and renovating it with “electroliers at short spaces and resting seats.” The Guy M. Rush Company, which was managing the oceanfront property in the yet-to-be officially named “Seal Beach,” also announced the style of the pier was to be match the proposed cement promenade that was to extend along the entire beachfront. Less glamorously, work on cement sidewalks and curbs would begin the next week.

    – Michael Dobkins

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  • January 30th In Seal Beach History

    On this date in 1924, a newly reorganized Seal Beach Chamber of Commerce meet under the direction of president C. J. Smith. The school orchestra opened the meeting with several musical selections.

    Dr. Everett Reed requested that Mrs. Padrick, city clerk, and I. C. Smith, a Los Angeles manufacturer and Seal Beach resident, assist him on the committee of industry and manufacture.

    H.W. Raymer of the entertainment committee suggested that a banquet be held to promote interest and sociability.

    C. M. Conlee brought to the chamber’s attention some much-needed public improvements, such as a school bond issue, a public restroom, street names installed on curbs, and a new city hall (it would take over five years for this suggestion to become a reality) .

    F. L. Wilson also suggested that air transportation to Seal Beach would soon become a reality.

    Finally, J. C. Putnam reported that every business firm in Seal Beach with one or two exceptions had joined and that number of members of the reinvigorated Seal Beach Chamber of Commerce would surpass one hundred before the meeting adjourned. 

    All this was reported under a Santa Ana Register headline of “SEAL BEACH TO BACK CHAMBER WITH VIM.” We don’t see much vim around town nowadays.

    – Michael Dobkins

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  • January 29th In Seal Beach History

    On this date in 1914, a deed was recorded transferring 13.85 acres owned by Isaac W. Hellman to Guy M. Rush. The property joined Seal Beach (formerly Bay City) on the East (just past 14th Street) and stood between the Pacific Electric red car tracks (Electric Avenue) and the high tide line. This property was divided into lots and was given the exotic name of “tract no. 1.”

    The streets of tract no. 1 were more colorfully named with a nautical theme: Dolphin Avenue,  Seal Way, and Marine Avenue. The already existing Ocean Avenue  curved through tract no. 1 to meet Bay Boulevard (later renamed Seal Beach Boulevard). After Tent City and the Joy Zone were replaced by more housing, Seal Way was extended westward beyond 14th Street.

    The mortgage on the entire property was a whopping $ 44,015.

    This 1921 aerial view shows Seal Beach seven years after the sale of the lot:

    The triangle spotlights the boundaries of Tract no. 1.

    – Michael Dobkins

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  • January 20th in Seal Beach History

    On this date in 1914, the citizens of Seal Beach agreed by unanimous vote to accept the donation of a $6000 tract of land offered by the Guy M. Rush Company and the Bayside Land Company to be the site for a school building. The site was located  between 11th and 12th Streets two blocks from the beach and close to the Pacific Electric line. Seal Beach Elementary School, which was later renamed Mary Zoeter School, was built on this site.

    The images below show the tract’s location on a Spence Aerial Photo taken almost eight years after the vote.

    Click on the image below for a better view of the tract’s location.

    – Michael Dobkins

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