“Brentwood”: Then and Now

In tracing the affluent community’s history, ‘Brentwood’ reveals its Pacific Palisades connections —————————————————— You might say that Jan Loomis married into Brentwood history. The author of the new book ‘Images of America: Brentwood’ (Arcadia Publishing) became interested in the subject following her wedding to Robert L. Loomis, the grandson of Arthur L. Loomis, whom she met while both were college students at Claremont. ‘We became more interested in Brentwood history when we moved to the Palisades permanently in 1973,’ she told the Palisadian-Post. Robert’s grandfather lived in the Huntington Palisades, and was active with the Pacific Palisades Chamber of Commerce and the Palisades realty board. Loomis and Robert, who publishes the San Diego Daily Transcript, live in greater San Diego. However, until 1990, the Loomises lived on Vance Street, off Chatauqua, where they raised their sons, Robert D., now 42, and Richard R., 41. ‘That particular piece of land,’ Loomis, 63, said ‘was rumored to be won by [original Palisades landowner] Robert Conran Gillis in a poker game.’ Arthur’s father, Laurence Duncan Loomis, was in real estate and was among the original Westside developers (along with the Jones, the Bandinis, and such familiar Brentwood names as William Edward Sawtelle, Nathan Pearl Bundy and Harry M. Gorham). Westgate (Brentwood’s original moniker), was so ‘named,’ Loomis said, ‘because it was outside the west gate of the Old Soldiers Home (now the Veterans Administration site).’ The 300-acre Home served as a hospice for Union veterans of the Civil War. Originally, the area that would become Brentwood popped up in the diaries of the Spanish missionaries. ‘They would mention that there were native people [the Gabrieli’o Tongva Indians],’ Loomis said. The Loomis family, represented photographically in ‘Brentwood,’ emigrated from England in 1637 and settled in Windsor, Connecticut, Loomis explains. ‘My husband’s family went West, and the immediate generation that came to California came from McPherson, Kansas.’ Then they discovered land. ‘They wanted people to come but there was little incentive, so they created the soldier’s home. They were correct,’ Loomis reports. ‘Land at that point was a dime a dozen. Just lima beans, barley and hay. In fact, the lima beans won a silver medal at the 1904 St. Louis World Fair.’ L. D. Loomis and his partners formed the Santa Monica Land and Water Company in 1897 ‘so that the land could be sold as stock,’ said Jan Loomis (who notes that the company’s records informed a great deal of this book). The majority stock was bought by Gillis, a native of Nova Scotia who had followed his brother out to California. Gillis, who was related to Sawtelle by marriage, owned most of the company by 1902 and, therefore, possessed what is now present-day Brentwood, Santa Monica, Brentwood, and Pacific Palisades. In 1906, the Western Pacific Development Company bought 360 acres from the Land and Water Company and began laying out Brentwood Park, named for William Lynton Brent, president of the Merchants Trust Company and an investor in the Brentwood venture. Gillis subdivided the land outside the west gate of the Soldiers’ Home into lots for a community he called Westgate. These lots were sold for $150, with some bigger lots costing $350. San Vicente Boulevard, with its trolley tracks down the median, connected the area to the rest of Los Angeles. Other developments followed–Westgate Acres, Westgate Gardens, and Westgate Heights. ‘The boundaries were not as defined as they currently are,’ Loomis said. ‘Sawtelle was its own entity. Santa Monica was the town.’ Sawtelle was incorporated in 1906 as a city, and was later annexed to Los Angeles in 1922. According to Loomis’ book, ‘The entire Brentwood area was annexed to Los Angeles in 1916’ upon the completion of an aqueduct and access to an unlimited water supply. Its original borders included the Soldier’s Home property to the east, 26th street at Santa Monica to the west, the mountains in the north to Mulholland, and San Vicente to the south. In 1921, Gillis went on to sell some Santa Monica Land and Water holdings to the Rev. Charles H. Scott, who purchased some property as a site for the Methodist colony that, in the following year, became Pacific Palisades. With her first such book, ‘Brentwood,’ now in stores, Loomis has already begun preparing her next book: ‘Images of America: Pacific Palisades’ is tentatively scheduled for a summer 2009 release.