Self-Guided Home Tour Reveals Hidden History

Hidden in plain sight among the downtown district's modern glass-front boutiques and towering, contemporary beachfront homes are little pockets of old Manhattan Beach. A new self-guided walking tour put together by the The Manhattan Beach Cultural Heritage Conservancy aims to bring those patches of local history to the forefront.

"I started this conservancy and I just felt we had to make more of an impact on the community," said local historian Jan Dennis. "And with summer we get more tourists, so I said, 'Let's do a walking tour.'"

The tour takes about an hour ("Or 45 minutes if walking fast," says Dennis) and winds through an area between Highland Avenue and the Strand, south of the pier as far as 3rd Street.

Dennis received help from the Manhattan Beach Sun newspaper in putting together a fold-up pamphlet containing a map and details on 17 homes and one business—Ercole's, which was built in 1902. The Copy Shop printed up the guides free of charge.

Dennis said she tried to select buildings at least 100 years old and those that show Manhattan Beach has an architectural legacy that stretches beyond the familiar beach cottage designs for which the city is perhaps best known.

"I started downtown because that's where the largest quantity of older homes are," Dennis said. Many of the older homes inland have been torn down. There are still a few, but it would be more of a driving tour."

If successful, Dennis said she plans to draw up similar self-guided tours for other Manhattan Beach neighborhoods. She is also making herself available for a docent tour to anyone who is interested. Though the print-out contains factoids on all the stops in the tour, Dennis has an encyclopedic knowledge of the buildings in question and the area's nearly 100-year history.

Still, the tour is meant to be a leisurely pursuit, she said.

"The way we designed the walking tour, to make it comfortable, is to keep it going in the same direction so the flow goes well," she said. "I wanted to keep this as simple as we could and allow people to enjoy a stroll along the Strand and learn something at the same time."

Copies of the tour pamphlet are available in several locations around town, including City Hall, the Manhattan Beach Library, Shade Hotel, Hillside Pharmacy and the Chamber of Commerce office. For more information on the tour, call 310-372-8520.