Selling Eternity in 1920s Los Angeles

• Published in: Metropolis in the Making p. 341
• Main Author: David Charles Sloane
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: University of California Press 02.07.2001
• Edition: 1
• Subjects: Anthropology; Applied anthropology; Applied arts; Applied ecology; Architecture; Arts; Behavioral sciences; Biocenosis; Biological sciences; Biomes; Burial practices; Burial structures; Cemeteries; Cities; Commercial forests; Cosmological philosophy; Cultural anthropology; Cultural customs; Ecology; Ecosystem management; Ecosystems; Environmental management; Eternity; Forest management; Forests; Funerary architecture; Grasslands; Graves; Human geography; Lawns; Mausoleums; Memorials; Metaphysics; Metropolitan areas; Natural resource management; Philosophy; Philosophy of time; Plant communities; Plastic arts; Political geography; Population ecology; Sculpture; Sculpture in the round; Social sciences; Statues; Synecology; Visual arts
• ISBN: 0520226267; 9780520226265

In 1928, whenHarpers Magazinewriter Sarah Comstock tried to describe Los Angeles, she was immediately taken by its hustle-bustle. First, she tried to cross a street, and found instead, “I quiver, cower, make a dart, halt in panic.”¹ If the arrival of the car in addition to the street railway made the city’s streets as congested and dangerous as any in America, then electricity illuminated its street life: “Lights, lights, lights. Along Spring Street and Broadway and Hill, throughout the downtown cross streets, they focus in fierce incandescence.” Welcome to the big city. In the city that so many