Robbie Anderson Chronicles City History In Beverly Hills: The First 100 Years - By Victoria Talbot / Beverly Hills Courier Robbie Anderson, great grandson of Margaret Anderson, the legendary hotelier who created The Beverly Hills Hotel, has brought a Centennial masterpiece to the City with his book, Beverly Hills: The First One Hundred Years, which is sure to become a legend itself. Anderson brings to life the epic story of a generation of visionaries who saw among the bean fields a prophecy fulfilled of a City that would embody the Best of the Best. Anderson traces the timeline from its humble beginnings to the present with trans-generational insights acquired through research and family history, being a true descendant of the founding family of Beverly Hills. Backed by meticulous doc- umentation, Anderson tells his story with poetic enthusiasm. “And the story began,” he says, “when a handful of audacious and very wealthy oilmen, familiar with beating the odds, played a hunch, and gradually but inexorably, from horizon to horizon, as far as one could see, fields of cabbage heads and lima beans gave way to a field of dreams . . . Dreams do not come in a box. They are always outside of it. And so it was with the great dream of Beverly Hills.” Divided into sections formed by fate and time, Anderson leads us chapter by chapter on their journey through discovery and debauchery, with persistence, wisdom and fancy and a little of the old movie magic until inevitably one day, a City emerged unlike any other in history. “The City of Beverly Hills roared into the 1920’s. In the first half of the decade between 1920 and 1925, the City’s population grew from fewer than 700 to 7,500,” he writes. “And, of course, the price of land and homes leaped upward as well.” In the 1920s, Americans were infatuated with the new sport of auto racing and so, riding the wave, Beverly Hills enthusiastically took the lead, giving the public even more reason to visit. In late 1919, to promote land sales and capitalize on the trend, race car driver and businessman Jack Danziger built a speedway with a group of leading citizens that included Jesse Lasky, Cecil B. DeMille and Silsby Spalding, who would go on to develop Bel-Air. No expense was spared. The track cost $900,000 to build and it was completed in a matter of months. The 50-foot wide oval track pitched a perilous 45-degrees to enable four cars to drive abreast, seating the driver and the mechanic within. Skyboxes “were outfitted with living room furniture,” he writes. So significant was the speedway that it opened and closed the national season. Beverly Hills sported the longest track and fastest (116 mph) races in the country. Opening Feb. 28, 1920, Douglas Fairbanks led the day, beginning a tradition. To this day, the City continues its worldwide reputation, hosting the grandest events with A-list celebrities, which has become the City’s hallmark. The speedway lasted only four years. “No matter how profitable the races were, they would never be as profitable as selling the land for development,” writes Anderson, a sentiment that forms the backdrop of the City to this day. The automobile remains a powerful cultural symbol here, where Teslas and Ferraris compete with Bentleys and Lamborghinis on the City’s streets. Each year the Concours d’Elegance at Greystone mansion and the Rodeo Drive Concours d’Elegance in June bring thousands to the City. Last month City Hall set the stage for Ferrari’s celebration of 60 years in America. Anderson’s book, which details this and many more epic adventures in the City’s remarkable history, will be available in select stores and hotels, including Gearys and The Beverly Hills Hotel and Bungalows, Nov. 17. For more of this marvelous history, the men and women who brought the vision to life, and the book itself, at 7 p.m. author Robbie Anderson will appear at Roxbury Park for the “Beverly Hills Historical Society One Hundred Years, One Hundred Stories,” Nov. 17. All are welcome and the event is free.
Posted on: Sat, 15 Nov 2014 02:41:32 +0000