Undated Aerial Photo, facing northeast, probably from the 1910's. The Bimini Baths are in the center. Across the street, in the lower left corner is the Rayfield building. Sacatela Creek is on the right. Streetcar tracks cross the creek on a wooden bridge. First Street runs along the top edge, Second Street along the bottom and Bimini Place is along the left. Photo from the Los Angeles Public Library.
Our street, Bimini Place, has a great history. Bimini runs just two blocks – it’s a block east of Vermont Avenue at First Street. When I am speaking with elderly folks who grew up in Los Angeles and I mention what street I live on, they often say “Oh! I remember going to the Bimini Baths as a kid.”
Undated Aerial Photo, facing east, a little after the previous photos, probably from the 1920's. Vermont Avenue is horizontally along the foreground. Second Street runs vertically through the center left. The El Patio Ballroom occupies the center of the picture (sitting where Vons is today.) The Bimini Baths and the Rayfield Building are on the left, Sacatela Creek runs horizontally in the background. Photo from the Los Angeles Public Library.
Legend has it that, in the late 1800s, folks were prospecting for oil here, and hit hot water. According to this 1902 article, Dr. David W. Edwards opened the Bimini Baths in 1902 in this “rather remote location… nestled in the eucalyptus groves surmounting the hills beyond the Westlake oil fields, it is out of the sight of most men.” The first baths building burned down in 1905 and was re-built even bigger (as seen in the above photos.)
Undated photo of the streetcar headed for the Bimini Hot Springs. Photo from the Henry E. Huntington Library Collection, appeared in the Los Angeles Railroad Heritage Foundation Journal winter 2008/2009
The street car line visible in the photo above (and the upper photo), was called the H line. This line came from downtown along its own right-of-way and turned around at 1st and Vermont, then the suburban streetcar terminus.
The Mijoo Peace Church at 170 Bimini Place, stands on the former site of the Bimini Baths. The church building adaptively reused the former Daily Racing Form building.
The Bimini Baths closed in 1951 after being desegregated. The facility had been closed to (at least) blacks and Asians. Attendance had already been in decline due to fear of contracting polio from public pools. When I moved into the neighborhood in 1996, the baths site was the building where the Daily Racing Form was printed. This enterprise departed, and the site is now the Mijoo Peace Church (pictured above.)
One of two pairs of railroad tracks in the sidewalk just north of 117 Bimini Place.
There are a few remaining traces of the old streetcar tracks. There are tracks (pictured above) that cross the sidewalk just north of eco-village’s 117 Bimini building. These tracks continue into the lot behind Red’s Auto Repair, at the southwest corner of Bimini Place and First Street. When the city built the shared street project here in 2008, they converted this sidewalk to permeable concrete. I heard that the streetcar rails weren’t in the city’s project design drawings. The crew that was out here to re-do the sidewalk came across the tracks and decided to leave them in place and to add the decorative brick treatment around them.
Prior to the street being resurfaced last year, there were cracks in the street that revealed the outlines of tracks beneath. I remember being able to see the actual rails in the street in one pothole… so the tracks are still out there under the asphalt. There’s also, outside Seijin’s Auto Repair, a small section of oddly curved sidewalk curb (shown below) that paralleled the tracks as they turned north onto Bimini. I think that the old rail right-of-way runs through the auto repair site… but I haven’t been on that site and looked for any rail remnants.
Curved sidewalk curb along south side of Bimini Place where the train formerly turned from its own east/west right-of-way onto Bimini Place. (This curve is also visible in the upper left of the historic photo at the top of the post)
Some additional reading/viewing/information here: (in addition to the above links in the story)
>Bresee Foundation Community Stories
>2004 LA Times “Then and Now” Article
>Militant Angeleno in Search of Sacatela Creek
Two weeks ago, as I sat at the waiting room of my doctor, I picked up a magazine which had a short write-up about the bimini baths. It mentioned that the place is now a church. I’ve been thinking that it must have stood where the Mijoo Peace Church is right now. Thanks for the article. I’ve always been really curious about that rail track near the auto shop.
One more question. When did the streetcars stop?
The cars ran until the late 40’s or early 50’s I think. This website http://www.uncanny.net/~wetzel/pedemise.htm states that “The main routes of the system continued in operation until the late 1940s and then were quickly dismantled in the 1950s.”
HI,
I FOUND THIS VERY INTERESTING, AND IT BROUGHT BACK CHILDHOOD MEMORIES. I WAS SIX OR SEVEN THE FIRST TIME MY MOTHER AND I TOOK THE “STREET CAR” FROM HOLLYWOOD BLVD., AND HARVARD AVE., TO BIMINI BATHS. (NOW 66) I THINK THE BUILDING WAS GREEN, AND I STAYED IN THE SHALLOW END OF THE POOL….
THANKS FOR THE MEMORY
[...] an undated L.A. Public Library photo of the Bimini Slough, behind the Bimini Baths: (this is probably also from approximately the 1920’s) Undated photo of the Bimini Slough. [...]