One book’s look back at the founding of the Port of Los Angeles

Phineas Banning pulled up some deep dreams from the bottom of San Pedro Bay. There, he imagined the greatest shipping center in the world, built upon the purest port land he had ever seen. But if railroad tycoon Collis Huntington had his way, all those ships stacked stories-tall would today be a few more miles up the coast, wading through the waters off Santa Monica instead. It’s a forgotten story in the founding of the Port of Los Angeles, but that’s the kind of black-and-white history that Port of Los Angeles: An Illustrated History from 1850 to 1945 explores.

Commissioned to commemorate the port’s centennial in 2007, the book is the combined work of Ernest Marquez and Veronique de Turenne, who wisely divided their effort into six sections: Construction, Labor, Shipping, Culture, Recreation and Military. Within each part, Marquez and de Turenne piece together photos from every corner of port life—a circus elephant being hauled off a ship, warehouses stuffed with drums of oil, even a shot of the imported Italian marble used to build LA City Hall.

While all the photos are striking, the book’s words are perhaps just as important. After the story of the founding of the port is told in a lengthy introduction, Marquez and de Turenne augment things with simple captions, snippets of information that add up to a surprisingly worthwhile narrative. What’s unsurprising, however, is that the unknown stories and forgotten faces, like San Pedro’s Shanghai Red (who supposedly had hands so big he could palm a gallon jug), provide the book’s true color. And it’s that kind of detail that makes Port of Los Angeles such a pleasing piece of history, so thorough it might as well be a time capsule dredged from the depths of Banning’s fantasies.

PORT OF LOS ANGELES: AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY FROM 1850 TO 1945 BY ERNEST MARQUEZ AND VERONIQUE DE TURENNE | HARDCOVER | 240 PAGES | ANGELCITYPRESS.COM | $40

Tags: Books, ernest marquez, PORT OF LOS ANGELES, San Pedro, Veronique de Turenne