To celebrate my 100th Etan Does LA post, here’s the history of a beloved LA landmark celebrating its 100th birthday this year: the carousel inside The Looff Hippodrome, the oldest attraction on the Santa Monica Pier. The Hippodrome was named a National Historic Landmark (and simultaneously listed on the National Register of Historic Places) in 1987.

Added to the National Register of Historic Places (and designated a National Historic Landmark) on February 27, 1987

It’s only right and natural that the Looff Hippodrome is the first thing you encounter as you walk over the bridge taking you from Ocean Ave. to the Santa Monica Pier. This beige and blue behemoth, with its festive mish-mash of Andalusia and Byzantium and California, is the longest-standing structure on the Santa Monica Pier, save the pier itself. It’s one of just three buildings that remains from the pier’s golden years, from its 1916 opening through WWII, and the only one that looks pretty much the same as it used to. This hippodrome “retains its physical integrity,” in historic preservation parlance.

The word “hippodrome” describes a type of ancient Greek stadium used for horse and chariot racing. The Looff offers horse racing of a sort via the century-old carousel that it was built to house…though you’d be a fool to bet on any of the 44 handsome carved stallions (plus one goat) spinning around the thing’s giant mirrored axis to the strains of an ancient Wurlitzer. 

The current carousel is actually the Looff Hippodrome’s third. The original was built in 1916 by Charles I.D. Looff and his son Arthur. Looff Sr. was a German immigrant who became one of the preeminent amusement park empresarios of his day. This was the guy that built Coney Island’s first amusement ride in 1876, as his very first carousel commission. The Looffs would go on to design dozens of carousels, roller coasters, Ferris wheels and full-scale amusement parks. In the last decade of his life, Looff was living in Long Beach, creating his hand-carved, spinning menageries for the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, The Pike in Long Beach, and even the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco. It all culminated in the Santa Monica carousel, the final one he made before his death in 1918. It was so popular that they had to add an extra ring of horses!

The Looffs’ vision for their pier in Santa Monica extended far beyond the Hippodrome. They created the “Looff Pleasure Pier,“ a massive amusement park on stilts over the Pacific Ocean, containing all form of amusement. They built it just south of the Santa Monica Municipal Pier, a 1000-foot projection (later extended to 1600 feet) once described as the “largest concrete pier in the world.” 

During the Pier’s heyday before WWII, visitors would take the electric trolley north from Venice or west from downtown LA. They could ride the carousel or one of the two coasters, “The Blue Streak” and “The Whip,” scream while airborne on a swing ride known as the “Aeroscope,” go bowling and play billiards, play at the penny arcade, walk through a classic funhouse called “What Is It?” or dance at the wildly popular La Monica Ballroom, built to accommodate 5000 people; it was the first ballroom in America to broadcast its programs on TV. 

In the late ‘40s, the new freeway system was underway, and LA’s burgeoning post-war population found it easier to travel further afield for their entertainment. New destinations like Knott’s Berry Farm (opened in 1940) and Disneyland (1955) were competing for LA’s entertainment $$. The Looffs had been out of the picture since 1924, and during WWII, the City of Santa Monica leased the whole Pier to Walter Newcomb, owner of the Philadelphia Toboggan Company. In 1947, Newcomb installed the merry-go-round in the Hippodrome that’s still there today: the Philadelphia Toboggan Company #62, built in 1922. It was moved to the Santa Monica Pier from the nearby Venice Pier, which had closed in 1946, and was set on fire by some local miscreants the following year. 

By the late ‘60s the Pier was in bad shape. The old La Monica Ballroom, since converted into a roller rink, caught fire in 1962, and was demolished along with the portion of the pier underneath it. Developers started pitching the Santa Monica City Council on projects for a pier-less future. One of the more audacious plans involved flattening parts of the mountains and building a massive barrier island with an offshore freeway and luxury housing. While that proposal was defeated, the City Council did pass an order to demolish both the amusement and municipal piers in early 1973. As you can imagine, that didn’t sit too well with Santa Monica residents. A group of activists formed Save Santa Monica Bay to fight against the demolition order; the City Council rescinded the demolition, and the council members in favor of it were voted out in the April 1973 municipal election. Santa Monica would soon pass a measure that forbade any future demolition orders for the Pier.

Also in 1973, the carousel was famously used in the Oscar-winning film The Sting; Paul Newman’s character Henry Gondorff operates it with his girlfriend and lives in one of the Hippodrome offices. Plenty of real life celebrities spent time in the Hippodrome, too. Joan Baez used to crash with her friend Colleen Creedon, a local activist who lived upstairs in the late ‘60s. Historian and longtime Pier employee Jim Harris recalls that Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda were a big part of the Save the Pier movement in the ‘70s. Marilyn Monroe used to find solace in watching the carousel spin ‘round in the early ‘60s. 

The Santa Monica Pier’s history has been a roller coaster ride, so to speak. For every technological gaffe, fire or storm threatening to pull it into the sea over the years, there’s been a group of engineers, civic leaders and concerned citizens working to restore it. It’s still a popular tourist attraction, especially since the 1996 opening of Pacific Park at the far west end of the Pier. It’s got roller coasters, an arcade, the world’s first solar-powered Ferris wheel…sound familiar? You could find all these kinds of attractions at the Looff Pleasure Pier, over 100 years ago. Some nine million people visit this historic pier each year. And every single one passes by the Looff Hippodrome and its famous carousel, still spinning after all these years. 

Recommended Reading

+Looff Hippodrome’s National Historic Landmark application

+Santa Monica Pier History (santamonicapier.org)

+The Santa Monica Pier’s Looff Hippodrome Turns 100 (KCRW)

+The Santa Monica Pier Turns 110 (Messenger Mountain News, 2019)

+Philadelphia Toboggan Company website