The Visible & Hidden History of Long Beach

So you’re visiting Long Beach. Curious about where some of the many notable and unusual structures are located? Here’s a sampling of some of the more well-known homes and buildings mixed with the NuPike replaced by Shoreline Drive, dining and businesses.

1806 Rancho Los Alamitos, 6400 E. Bixby Hill Road. At a gated community, tell the guard you’re visiting the rancho, you’ll be allowed to enter. Worth Knowing: During the California Gold Rush in the early 1850s, Rancho Los Alamitos was the headquarters of the largest cattle ranch in the United States. Still standing.

1844 Los Cerritos Ranch House and Rancho Los Alamitos, 4600 Virginia Road. Rancho Los Cerritos or Casa de los Cerritos, “the little hills” was built for merchant Jonathan Temple, a Yankee pioneer for the headquarters for a 27,000-acre ranch.

Worth Knowing: The major activity on the ranch was cattle and sheep. No gate, no guard, by a golf course. Still standing.

1902 The Pike, South of Ocean Boulevard and Magnolia Avenue. The Pike opened with a bathhouse, later known as the Plunge. Featuring the Cyclone Racer, which opened in 1930 and closed in 1968. and a plethora of added carnival-style booths, theaters and other attractions favored by teens, sailors and out-of-towners. Worth Knowing: In the 1950s, the Pike was renamed the NuPike.

1906 The Bembridge House, 953 Park Circle Drive. Surrounded by various Victorian dwellings, the Bembridge House is a Queen Anne Victorian where Dorothy Rankin Bembridge lived for more than 80 years. Worth Knowing: When neighboring houses were leveled to create Drake Park, Dorothy “held out like a mother hen.” It’s still there.

1912 Castle Croydon, 3000 E. Seventh Street. Worth Knowing: Home to Dyzzy On Vinyl. It’s still there.

1927 Oceana, 20 37th Place. The expansive Oceana residence was built in 1927 by Gertrude Matern Wieczorek, a German countess and her portrait artist husband, Max. Worth knowing: With the start of World War II, German nationals were not allowed to live on the coast, so the residence was converted to house Seaside Hospital nurses. It recently sold for $7.25 million.

1929 Villa Riviera, 800 E. Ocean Boulevard. Historic tower in “Tudor Gothic” style at Alamitos Avenue and Ocean Blvd. Worth Knowing: Survived the 1933 Long Beach earthquake, shaken but not toppled. It still stands.

1932 Coffee Pot Building, 957 E. 4th Street. Opened as the Hot Cha Cafe coffeehouse. Worth Knowing: Example of “fantasy architecture” popular in the 1920s and ‘30s, but most of its examples have been demolished.

1933 The Skinny House, 708 Gladys Avenue. Narrow three-story house built on a narrow lot. Worth Knowing: Cited by both the Guinness Book of World Records and Ripley’s Believe It or Not as the nation’s skinniest house. It still stands.

March 1933 Long Beach 6.4 earthquake. The 6.4 earthquake that struck Long Beach destroyed many buildings and caused the deaths of 120 people from being hit by falling objects. About 10 miles to the east of downtown Long Beach, many farm worker families who lived on what is now Palo Verde Avenue at the current site of Cal State Long Beach sought refuge at the Rancho Los Alamitos home of Fred Bixby.

Worth Knowing: Post-quake buildings were cobbled together from several homes badly damaged and tagged for destruction after the quake.

1949 Long Beach State College, 1250 Bellflower Blvd. Opened in an apartment building in nearby Park Estates, Los Angeles-Orange County State College, then moved to its current site as Long Beach State College in 1950 and California State College in 1964 and California State University in 1974 with a student population of over 30,000.

Worth Knowing: For employees who arrived by car in 1953, when it rained, mud flowed into the college parking lot from next-door neighbor Rancho Los Alamitos, cars were thus stuck in the mud. Currently, all CSULB parking lots are paved.

1950s The NuPike. After competition from Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm, operators of the Pike needed a new name: the NuPike. late City Council gadfly Thomas Murphy had a piece of Hollywood on the Pike. “You had barkers out there screaming, big fans blowing up the women’s skirts, bells ringing, a noisy place. We did a lot of cooking, sold thousand pounds of shrimp. I think we invented hot dog on a stick. All the waitresses had to peel pounds of shrimp.”

Worth Knowing: NuPike’s Laff in the Dark funhouse was the eight-year home of the desiccated body of wild west outlaw Elmer McCurdy on display until his arm fell off Dec. 8, 1976. Considered derelict, the NuPike was demolished under city redevelopment authority in 1979.

1950s Western Corral, 240 American Avenue. In the mid-1950s, Murphy said, “I opened the Western Corral with a partner, he never even drank until he met me. I put pictures of covered wagons on the wall.”

Worth Knowing: “We had a 14-piece girl band from Alaska. I remember one time they got up with sailors and marched up and down Pine Avenue and American Avenue. It cost me $500 to the policeman’s ball with Lawrence Welk. It’s where Acres Of Books is now.”

1959 Acres of Books, 240 Long Beach Boulevard. As American Avenue became Long Beach Boulevard, Bert Smith’s Acres of Books, which he began in Cincinnati in 1927 moved to Long Beach in a 12,000 square feet building. Smith died in 1965. In their third generation of family ownership and had grown to over a million books in stock, the largest used bookshop in California and a worldwide destination for book lovers and celebrities and authors like Ray Bradbury.

Worth Knowing: “Travel Around the World With Bertrand Smith’s Acres of Books” was posted over the entrance. The store closed on Oct. 18, 2008. Drive by to see if it’s still there.