Culver City, California


Culver City is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 40,779. It is mostly surrounded by Los Angeles, but also shares a border with the unincorporated area of Ladera Heights to the east. The city was named after Harry Culver who incorporated it in 1917.
In the 1920s, Culver City became a center for film and later television production. It was best known as the home of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios from 1924 to 1986. From 1932 to 1986, it was the headquarters for the Hughes Aircraft Company. National Public Radio West and Sony Pictures Entertainment have headquarters in the city.

History

Early history

evidence suggests a human presence in the area of present-day Culver City since at least 8000 BCE. The region was the homeland of the Tongva-Gabrieliño Native Americans. For centuries, native people lived in areas currently part of and surrounding Culver City. California's native people were massacred by waves of Spanish, Mexican and Euro-American invaders through a combination of slavery, disease, relocation, forced labor, imprisonment, broken treaties and a genocidal war of extermination, including paid bounties for dead "Indians".
The Spanish and Mexican governments offered concessions and land grants from 1785 to 1846 forming the Ranchos of California. Culver City was founded on the lands of the former Rancho La Ballona and Rancho Rincon de los Bueyes. When Culver City was founded, native Latino people were not allowed to buy property.
During the American Civil War, a U.S. Army post called Camp Latham was established from 1861 to 1862 on the south bank of Ballona Creek.

Culver City

first attempted to establish Culver City in 1913. It was officially incorporated on September 20, 1917, and named after its founder. The area benefited from pre-existing transportation links; Culver's first ads read "All roads lead to Culver City". The city was explicitly founded as a whites-only sundown town, as were most of the suburbs and towns outside the downtown and Central Avenue districts of Los Angeles. Culver ran ads promoting "this model little white city", while his close associate, Guy M. Rush, promoted lot sales "restricted to Caucasian race". The city also at times excluded people of non-Christian religious faiths.
The weekly Culver City Call was the first newspaper in the community. The paper was founded in 1915.
The first film studio in Culver City was built by Thomas Ince in 1918 for The Triangle Motion Picture Company. Silent film comedy producer Hal Roach built his studios there in 1919, and Metro Goldwyn Mayer took over the Triangle studio complex in 1924. During Prohibition, speakeasies and nightclubs such as the Cotton Club lined Washington Boulevard.
Culver Center, one of Southern California's first shopping malls, was completed in 1950 on Venice Boulevard near the Overland Avenue intersection.

Hughes Aircraft Company

opened its Culver City plant in July 1941. There the company built the H-4 Hercules transport. Hughes was also an active subcontractor during World War II. It developed and patented a flexible feed chute for faster loading of machine guns on B-17 bombers, and manufactured electric booster drives for machine guns. Hughes produced more ammunition belts than any other American manufacturer, and built 5,576 wings and 6,370 rear fuselage sections for Vultee BT-13 trainers.
Hughes grew after the war, and in 1953 Howard Hughes donated all his stock in the company to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. After he died in 1976, the institute sold the company, which made it the second-best-endowed medical research foundation in the world.

The studios (1960s, 1970s and 1980s)

The Hal Roach Studios were demolished in 1963. In the late 1960s, much of the MGM backlot acreage, and the nearby known as RKO Forty Acres, once owned by RKO Pictures and later Desilu Productions, were sold by their owners. In 1976 the sets were razed to make way for redevelopment. Today, the RKO site is the southern expansion of the Hayden Industrial Tract, while the MGM property has been converted into a subdivision and a shopping center known as Raintree Plaza.
In October 1975, Fox Hills Mall opened in the place of a golf course.

Rebirth of downtown (1990s and 2000s)

In the early 1990s, Culver City launched a successful revitalization program in which it renovated its downtown as well as several shopping centers in the Sepulveda Boulevard corridor near Westfield Culver City. Around the same time, Sony's motion picture subsidiaries, Columbia Pictures and TriStar Pictures, moved into the former Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer lot which was renamed Columbia Studios in 1990 and took on its current name, Sony Pictures Studios, a year later.
There was an influx of art galleries and restaurants on the eastern part of the city, which was formally designated the Culver City Art District.

Geography

The city is surrounded by the Los Angeles neighborhoods of Mar Vista and Palms to the north; Westchester to the south; Mid-City, West Adams, and Baldwin Hills to the east; the Ladera Heights unincorporated area to the southeast; and the L.A. neighborhoods of Venice and Playa Vista to the west, along with the unincorporated area of Marina del Rey.
Culver City's major geographic feature is Ballona Creek, which runs northeast to southwest through most of the city before it drains into Santa Monica Bay in Marina Del Rey.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of, over 99% of which is land. Over the years, it has annexed more than 40 pieces of adjoining land.

Neighborhoods

The city recognizes 15 neighborhoods within city limits:
  • Blair Hills
  • Blanco-Culver Crest
  • Clarkdale
  • Culver West
  • Downtown Culver City
  • Fox Hills
  • Jefferson
  • Lucerne-Higuera
  • McLaughlin
  • McManus
  • Park East
  • Park West
  • Studio Village
  • Sunkist Park
  • Washington Culver

    Climate

Demographics

2020

Ethnic groups

According to the 2020 Census, the population of Culver City was 46.5% Non-Hispanic White, 16.1% Asian, 15.2% Hispanic White, 8.24% Black or African American, and 5.57% Other Hispanic.
According to Mapping L.A., Mexican and German were the most common ancestries in 2000. Mexico and the Philippines were the most common foreign places of birth.

Economy

Corporations with headquarters in Culver City include Beats Audio, MedMen, NantHealth, Sweetgreen and Sony Pictures Entertainment.

Largest employers

According to the city's 2020–21 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, the top employers in the city were:
#Employer# of Employees
1Sony Pictures Entertainment3,000
2Westfield Culver City1,500
3Southern California Hospital at Culver City1,116
4NFL Media957
5City of Culver City808
6Culver City Unified School District800
7West Los Angeles College739
8Goldrich & Kest Industries, LLC670
9Target507

Movie and television production

Hundreds of movies have been produced on the lots of Culver City's studios: Sony Pictures Studios, Culver Studios, and the former Hal Roach Studios. In 2017, Amazon MGM Studios announced plans to build a studio in Culver City.

Businesses

Museums

The Wende Museum possesses a collection of Soviet and East German visual art and everyday artifacts to promote an understanding of Soviet art, history and culture between 1945 and 1991. Additionally, the Museum of Jurassic Technology, founded in 1988 by David Hildebrand Wilson and Diana Drake Wilson, provides over 30 permanent exhibits displaying an eclectic mix of items that blend fact and fiction.

Library

The County of Los Angeles Public Library operates the Julian Dixon Culver City Branch.

Architecture

The architecture of Culver City reflects its history as an early location for film studios and, more recently, as a site for architectural experimentation, particularly for the projects of Eric Owen Moss at the Hayden Tract. The architecture office of Morphosis headquartered here. Styles represented include Mission Revival and Colonial Revival from the city's early days, to the PWA Moderne of the 1930s, to modern, postmodern, and deconstructivist styles from the past few decades. Notable architectural landmarks include:
  • Ivy Substation, a Mission Revival building that houses The Actors' Gang
  • Culver Studios, offices in the style of a Colonial Revival mansion
  • Culver Hotel, a six-story brick flatiron
  • Helms Bakery, in PWA Moderne style
  • Kirk Douglas Theatre
  • St. Augustine Catholic Church, a Gothic Revival church
  • Robert Frost Auditorium, at Culver City High School, 4401 Elenda St. Constructed in 1963–64, its unique scallop shell design became an instant modern architectural landmark for the city. Its original 1,250-seat design was the inspiration of then 26-year-old Andrew Nasser, a consulting structural engineer with Johnson & Nielsen. Credit was claimed, however, by Ralph Flewelling of Flewelling & Moody, the project architects. The record was set straight 54 years later at the unveiling of a $16.3M renovation in 2018. Capacity was increased to 1,300 seats, acoustics improved, and a new 40-foot high steel proscenium arch supports catwalks, lighting, and air conditioning.
  • Platform