Why Pier Avenue matters.
Pier Avenue is a storied corridor where Hermosa Beach's coastal character meets early railway geography, compact commercial blocks and a steep descent from the inland ridge toward the Pacific.
Running through Hermosa Beach between the elevated eastern neighborhoods and the waterfront, the coastal corridor follows a westward line from Pacific Coast Highway through the city center toward the ocean, descending steadily as it crosses Valley Drive, Ardmore Avenue and Hermosa Avenue. Eastern blocks occupy higher ground around the Community Center before the roadway drops across the former railway corridor and enters a tighter commercial district of small storefronts, restaurants and low-rise buildings. Traveling west compresses the street into shorter blocks as glimpses of the Pacific become increasingly prominent and the descending grade draws the corridor directly toward the shoreline. The final blocks below Hermosa Avenue shift into a pedestrian-oriented district whose compact proportions contrast sharply with the wider roadway and residential frontage farther uphill. The result is a corridor whose pronounced grade, changing block scale, former transportation crossings and direct alignment with the Pacific give Hermosa Beach an unusually legible connection between its inland ridge and oceanfront center.
What defines Pier Avenue.
Pier Avenue is best known for beginning as Santa Fe Avenue, the principal inland connection between Hermosa Beach's developing coastal settlement and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway. Hermosa Beach emerged after agents Burbank and Baker acquired 1,500 acres from A. E. Pomroy in 1900 for Sherman and Clark, who controlled the Hermosa Beach Land and Water Company and developed the tract across former Rancho Sausal Redondo land. Santa Fe Avenue formed one of the young community's earliest principal streets and was paved in 1904 for seven blocks from the coast toward the railway line. Hermosa lacked a formal Santa Fe station during its earliest years, so Burbank and Baker constructed a platform west of the tracks near the avenue and the railroad supplied an old boxcar for freight storage. The transportation connection became substantially more permanent in 1926 when Santa Fe constructed a stucco depot on the north side of the avenue opposite the earlier platform and installed Western Union telegraph service. The original Santa Fe Avenue name subsequently gave way to Pier Avenue, shifting the street's geographic reference from the inland railway to the coastal destination at its western end.
Commercial and entertainment development gave the descending western blocks another consequential role during Hermosa Beach's growth between the world wars. Ralph E. Matteson and business associates advanced plans in January 1923 for a combined bank and theater building as local entrepreneurs pursued hotels, manufacturing ventures and other projects during a period of rapid expansion. The resulting Bijou Theatre became part of a commercial district already forming around the avenue's intersection with Hermosa Avenue, where the Morse and Morse general store had operated by 1908. Development farther uphill responded to rising enrollment: Pier Avenue School opened in 1911 for pupils from the third through ninth grades, and later additions included a large civic auditorium. The Long Beach earthquake of March 10, 1933 damaged the original school so severely that it was razed, and architect Samuel E. Lunden designed a replacement completed in 1935 for $200,000. Lunden brought substantial architectural credentials to the commission through work that included the Pacific Stock Exchange and USC's Doheny Memorial Library. The school remained in educational use until 1975, preserving the avenue's role as a civic axis long after rail travel ceased to govern movement through the city.
How Pier Avenue fits.
Pier Avenue works as the anchor for an outing connecting a local museum rooted in grassroots preservation, a jazz club central to the development of West Coast jazz and an ocean structure rebuilt repeatedly as Hermosa Beach adapted its waterfront to the Pacific.
Begin at Hermosa Beach Museum, whose institutional origins reach to spring 1987, when Rick Learned, Ricardo Reznichek, Patricia Gazin, Bunny Seawright, Bill Schneider, Viva Stroyke, Eddie Webber, Sue Horger and Larry Gray formed the Hermosa Beach Historical Society after years of local photographs and objects being kept in private homes. The organization attracted 240 founding members and opened a one-room museum in the former Pier Avenue School before expanding into a former girls' locker room in March 1991. Private fundraising later supported another expansion inside the historic school complex, and the present museum space opened in 2007. Its holdings encompass 3,500 objects spanning the city's development, surfing, paddleboarding, beach volleyball, skateboarding, jazz and punk, placing several cultural movements associated with Hermosa inside the former school where generations of local residents studied. Continue to Lighthouse Cafe, where bassist Howard Rumsey persuaded owner John Levine to permit a trial jazz session on May 29, 1949. The building had opened as Verpilate's restaurant in 1934, became the Lighthouse during the 1940s and served merchant seamen and industrial workers before Rumsey redirected its musical future. His first Lighthouse ensemble drew musicians from Los Angeles's Central Avenue scene, including Teddy Edwards, Sonny Criss and Hampton Hawes; later Lighthouse All-Stars lineups included Jimmy Giuffre, Shorty Rogers, Shelly Manne, Bob Cooper and Conte Candoli. The house band produced nine albums, and Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Kenton and Bobby Troup were among the musicians who performed there as the club acquired national importance in West Coast jazz. Conclude at Hermosa Beach Pier, whose first incarnation was constructed by the Hermosa Beach Land and Water Company in 1904 as a 500-foot wooden structure. A 1913 storm damaged it beyond recovery, prompting construction of a concrete replacement extending 1,000 feet into the Pacific with asphalt paving and tiled shelters along its sides. That structure was condemned as unsafe in 1957, and the present concrete-decked pier, extending 1,140 feet, was completed in 1965. The sequence of destruction and rebuilding parallels the shoreline itself, where the original wooden Strand repeatedly suffered storm damage before concrete construction replaced it in stages beginning in 1914. The progression moves from community preservation inside a former school through Rumsey's conversion of a sailors' bar into a major jazz center and culminates at successive generations of waterfront engineering, connecting Hermosa Beach's civic memory, musical influence and physical relationship with the Pacific along the city's principal coastal approach.
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