Venice Canal Historic District

This guide to the Venice Canal Historic District opens on a July day in 1929, when dump trucks began pouring dirt into Coral Canal, burying the waterways that gave this Los Angeles neighborhood its name. It traces developer Abbot Kinney's 1905 vision of an American Venice, gondoliers included, and the automobile age that turned his canals into an obstacle city leaders wanted gone. California's governor himself came to praise the burial, calling it a sacrifice of sentiment to progress.