29: Lido Isle — The Island No One Wanted

For more than six decades beginning in the 1880s. Lido Isle went through a series of owners (most of whom got the island basically for free) and failed developments before—in the latter part of the 20th Century—it turned into some of the most coveted real estate on the West Coast.  

Transcript

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Welcome to Newport Beach in the Rearview Mirror, a podcast about the events and people, famous and forgotten, that shaped Newport Beach. I'm Bill of Dill. Here we are at part two of our episode on Newport Beach's eight residential islands. Now this was supposed to be the finale, but you know what? We're making the executive decision that Leto Isle and Balboa Island each deserve their own episodes. So we're calling an audible. Right now, we'll explore the long history of Leto Isle that goes back to the 19th century. The basic through line of its history, it was an island no one wanted for nearly a half century. Today, it has some of the hottest properties on the West Coast. The finale of this three-part series will drop shortly, and it's titled William S. Collins Balboa Island Visionary, Con Man or Both. And that will detail an epic piece of Newport history. But so will this one. It was so much fun researching Leto Isle's early days, and I I I learned a ton. So let's jump right in. First, the basics. Leto Isle is Newport's second biggest island behind Balboa Island. Today it has about 800 homes, 250 of which are on the bayfront, and they all sit on roughly 108 acres. It's near the cross streets of West Coast Highway and Newport Boulevard, with Leto Village and the Leto Movie Theater near its entrance. And when you drive down West Coast Highway through Mariner's Mile and look across the Harbor Channel, the land you see is Leto Isle. Okay, with that introduction, here are eight things to know about Leto Isle. And we'll use Leto Isle as the default name, even though it wasn't called that until the mid-1920s. And in case you're wondering, Leto in Italian means shore or bank or sandbar, and the latter is especially appropriate for Leto Isle. Alright, let's dig into the history of Leto Isle. First thing to know, no one wanted Leto Isle for decades. From the late 1900s to the nineteen twenties, the then large mud flat, which was also described as a sandbar tomato tomato went through a series of owners who basically got the land thrown in as part of other deals. For example, by nineteen oh four, the often submerged property near what was once the mouth of the Santa Ana River had fallen into the hands of one JP Greenley, who owned a large chunk of the Balboa Peninsula along with Leto Isle. He then sold a right of way down the peninsula so the Pacific Electric Red Car Trolley Line could service the Newport Pier area and Balboa. As an afterthought, Greenley gave the trolley company Leto Isle. And by the way, that was how the island got its first name, Pacific Electric Island, or simply Electric Island. Other names for the island included Huntington Island, and that's because the railroad magnet Henry Huntington owned the trolley line. And the last name for the island before it became Leto Isle was Parkinson Island, named after another owner of the property. And we'll find out way more about him next. Second thing to know about Leto Isle. It was originally planned as the industrial hub of a commercial Newport Harbor. In the early twentieth century, city boosters had visions of turning Newport Bay into a massive commercial harbor with Leto Isle at the center of the plans. The island was to have wharfs and factories and warehouses and railroad spurs. The works. The Leto Isle owner who pushed for these plans had quite the rags to riches story. His name was W.K. Parkinson and he bought the island in 1923 for forty five thousand dollars or about seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars in today's money. Now mister Parkinson worked as a humble railroad conductor who seemed unlikely to ever own an island, but then he got lucky. Very, very lucky. He bought a piece of property near Bakersfield and accidentally discovered a vast amount of oil on the land. He became an overnight multimillionaire. He was a real life Jed Clampett, for those of you old enough to get that reference. Mr. Parkinson used some of his newfound wealth to buy Leto Isle and at great expense dredged the bay in 1923 and 24 to make the island suitable for development. He gave Leto Isle its final shape. And the spruced up island suddenly had suitors. Three years after his purchase and after the dredging was done, Mr. Parkinson was offered$750,000 for the island, which he promptly turned down. Locals couldn't believe he walked away from that much money, but Parkinson thought an island that served as the hub of a thriving harbor would bring him a second fortune. Unfortunately, he died a year later. His widow accounts never provide for her first name, which was a typical journalistic practice in the early part of the twentieth century. She lived in a mansion in Glendale, about fifty hard miles from Newport Beach, and she could not care less about the island. So it sat undeveloped for several years. And there's a sad postscript to the widow's story. She soon remarried, but this time to a con man who quickly squandered her fortune. The former misses Parkinson died penniless. And so Leto Isle remained undeveloped for several more years until his widow sold it. The third thing to know about Leto Isle, and this one's super fun. During the dredging around Leto in 1923, a treasure map was found. That's right, workers found a faded map that they concluded was authentic and of Spanish origin. The map showed that some early day Spanish explorers had buried gold near the entrance of the Santa Ana River, which at the time was near Leto Isle. Despite a lot of digging, the alleged treasure was never found. And for those modern day treasure hunters among you, if the gold did exist, it would likely be buried deep beneath Newport Boulevard or West Coast Highway. That doesn't make for easy digging. One more fun note, in the late 1930s, workers making street repairs did find some booty on Leto Isle in the form of sacks of high grade whiskey apparently buried in a hurry and then forgotten during prohibition. The fourth thing to know about Leto Isle. The island owns its ample charm to a Swiss architect named Franz Hurding. Here's how that came about. Mr Parkinson's widow sold Leto Isle to William Clark Creiden for about one point two million dollars. He envisioned the island as a residential community, likely because the momentum to turn the bay into a commercial harbor had slowed. And by then the mid nineteen twenties, summer residential communities had sprouted up on Balboa and Bay Islands, and in a stroke of absolute genius, the island's new owner hired Franz Hurding in nineteen twenty seven to design a world class island community on a blank slate of a property that didn't even have a bridge yet. Herding's vision was inspired by the French and Italian Riveras, especially Leto de Venezia, the exquisite Italian resort on the Adriatic Sea at Venice. Herding gave the island its fourth and final name, Leto Isle. His plans called for nearly eight hundred homes influenced by Mediterranean architecture, tiled roofs, courtyards, gardens, plus an avenue that looped around the island and a series of wide pedestrian walkways that crossed the width of the island. Those pedestrian walkways were hated by the city council, which worried that they didn't leave enough room for the increasing amount of car traffic that was everywhere. Finally, the city and the developer compromised, and the walkways were made much more narrow. And you know what's a bit of a shame is that Franz Herding's vision of this community that was inspired by an Italian resort and filled with Mediterranean style homes wasn't somehow codified in the homeowners associations. So today we'd still have that flavor of a Mediterranean resort that Franz Herding dreamed of. Of course, Leto Isle is still a spectacular community, but it's it's a little bit of a hodgepodge of different architectural styles, and it just would have been nice if Franz's original vision remained intact. The streets were named after European cities and resorts and arranged in alphabetical order, with Via Antibes being the first street after you cross the bridge to the island, and via Zurich being the last street. He also talked Mr. Creidin into setting aside thirteen bayfront lots on two sides of the island for public parks, along with tennis courts and a clubhouse with a tower. That was patterned after the tower in Leto de Venezia. Part of Herding's plan included a yacht club. So the Leto Isle Yacht Club was launched in 1928. Now remember, Leto Isle was basically barren at the time, so the formation of the yacht club was strictly a marketing ploy and it would take another two decades before the Leto Isle Yacht Club became legit. And the good news, it's still thriving today. All of this would make Leto Isle, Newport's and one of California's first master plan community. Fifth thing to know about Leto Isle, initially no one, and I mean no one wanted to buy a home lot on Leto Isle. Like Balboa Island and Cronodomar before it, the Leto Isle development was just a little bit ahead of its time. By 1928, the Leto Isle Clubhouse and six model homes had been built. But that would be all the development for a few years because of the scarcity of buyers. At the time, the island was remote and the parcels were priced too high. The price tag was sixty two hundred dollars for a dirt lot, which is a hundred and forty-four thousand dollars in today's money. It didn't help that a bridge hadn't been built yet, and prospective buyers were ferried to and from the island in wooden crisscraft speedboats and a ferry that could carry up to 70 passengers. All of this reminded potential buyers how isolated the island was. To make matters worse, the Great Depression hit. Soon after, Mr. Creided in gave up and yet another developer, a group of Los Angeles businessmen, bought Leto Isle for$2.5 million in 1930. If you're keeping track, the price of the land was now going up significantly as developers started to smell the potential for a real and large profit. But that promise of profitability was still years away and ownership would continue to churn. Since the eighteen eighties until nineteen thirty, Leto Isle had changed ownership at least six times, and that's probably a low number. And there were still two more to come. The sixth thing to know about Leto Isle In nineteen thirty, the city of Newport Beach undertook what was billed as the largest public works project ever in California to make the Leto Isle development more attractive to buyers. The city advanced one point two million dollars, or about twenty million dollars in today's money to build on Leto Isle, streets and sidewalks, seawalls, piers, and of course a bridge to get to it all. And before the bridge was completed to span the 75 yards or so between the mainland and the island, the city built a temporary dirt causeway to Leto Isle using mud from the harbor's bottom. Also included in the project was the installation of underground utilities, an unheard of practice at the time. The contractor for the Leto Isle project was the highly respected Griffith Company. And that company, which would be the island's next owner, would continue to play a major role in the island's development for decades. After being awarded the contract, the Griffith Company did not mess around, especially with an impatient owner who was hamrhing money. How quickly did the Griffith Company move? How about this? The company used seaplanes to fly three hundred workers back and forth from Los Angeles each day. How fun would that commute have been, especially in nineteen twenty-seven? And it probably was a little bit terrifying too. In that early age of aviation. The bonds doubled the purchase price of each lot, and of course the additional financial burden didn't help with home sales. The seventh thing to know about Leto Isle. The Los Angeles syndicate that owned Leto Isle could not make a go of it. Anemic sales in massive debt compounded by the Great Depression quickly bled them dry. In 1930, the ownership of Leto Isle then fell to Title Insurance and Trust, which was the biggest debt holder and left holding the bag, or more accurately, left holding a deserted island. And two years after that, the Griffith Company bought the remaining lots, about 750 of them from Title Insurance and Trust, which could not wait to dump the island in someone else's hands. Both Title Insurance and Trust and the Griffith Company had the same idea. Cut any additional losses on this dog of an island by holding a massive liquidation sale. And here's what they did to sell as many home lots as quickly as possible. A tent was set up on the island, salesmen were recruited in newspaper ads, and prices were slashed by as much as 80%, allowing buyers to purchase a home lot for as little as$550. And if you didn't have cash, no problem. You could make monthly payments of just eleven dollars and the property was yours. Another promotion gave buyers a free inner lot if they bought one on the bayfront. On top of all of this, if you bought a home lot, Franz Herding, the internationally renowned architect from Switzerland, would design your home for free. As the marketing slogan stated, a little buys a lot. But locals thought another marketing slogan was just plain laughable. It was Leto Isle a smart address. Those words appeared on island signs that were surrounded by a hundred acres of sand and mud and salt grass and weeds and mosquitoes. This juxtaposition brought forth, according to one local, quote derisive laughter from others in the community. Leto Isle was not seen as a smart address. According to dubious newspaper reporting, the liquidation sale was a huge success from the jump. Six hundred thousand dollars worth of lots had been sold in just the first six months. Now I've learned by doing research for many episodes of this podcast that reporters in the early part of the 20th century took developers at their word, no matter how crazy the claim. They basically served as stenographers. If a reporter would have done the simplest math, the 600k in sales would have sold out the development, and that just didn't happen. And in fact, you didn't need to rely on any math at all. You just needed to take a look at the nearly vacant island. Two years after the sale started, just thirty-eight of the eight hundred home lots had been sold. That's less than five percent of the inventory, and those sales were closed by almost giving away the parcels. In nineteen thirty-five, about five years into the liquidation, a salesman with the awesome name of Paul Pappy Palmer came on the scene and boasted he could sell all of the remaining lots in just five years. Well Pappy Palmer did sell out the development, but it took him over twenty years to do it. The eighth and final thing to know about the history of Leto Isle. To give Leto Isle some pizzazz to help with home lot sales, the Griffith Company opened the Leto Movie Theater in 1939 near the entrance of the island. The Griffith Company had ties to early Hollywood, so as a way to make Leto Isle more glitzy, it spent$75,000 to build a 622-seat Leto Movie Theater. News accounts of the construction centered on the theater's huge circular marquee, which was made of copper and is still a new. Newport icon almost 90 years later. It's such a classic that it continues to appear in Hollywood period pieces. And here's a fun fact about the theater. Betty Davis, one of the biggest movie stars of the 1930s and 40s, who owned a home in Chronadomar, frequently visited the theater construction site. The actress told the owner one day that the theater better open with one of her movies. And so it did. The first film that was played in the theater was Jezebel starring Betty Davis. It was also Davis who suggested a sitting parlor should be built in the ladies' bathroom so female patrons could smoke and chat away from the men. And that sitting parlor minus the smoke is still there today. One final note about Leto Isle. From the time Pappy Palmer finished up his work on Leto Isle in the mid-1950s, until today, Leto Isle has become one of the jewels of Newport Harbor, a beautifully planned island community that emerged from a swampy piece of land that no one wanted to own and later no one wanted to buy property on. Let's finish with a sweet little poem inspired by Leto Isle and written by one of its residents, Richard Unwin in 1956. I know a little island where the sun shines all year round. I know a little island where happiness abounds. I know a little island enclosed by waters blue, where everyone does his small share to make it shine like new. Okay, not exactly Walt Whitman, but but a very heartfelt poem nonetheless. Thanks for getting into this podcast time machine with me to take a look at Leto Isle's epic past starting way back in the 1880s. We'll see you next time. The Griffith Company landed landed the Griffith the Griffith. The Griffith the Griff The Griff Ith. The Griff If Griffith Griffith Griffith Griffith. The Griffith Griffith.