Abbot Kinney (1850-1920) was the founder of Venice. Born in New Jersey and raised in Washington, D.C., Kinney got rich from a tobacco business that he ran with his older brothers. He’d traveled much of the world by 1880, the year he arrived in SoCal to discover that the climate helped his chronic asthma. In fact Kinney first moved to the hills above Pasadena (see Kinneloa Avenue) before his interests inevitably shifted to Santa Monica, where he built a summer home in 1886 and cofounded Ocean Park in 1893. Kinney soured on his later Ocean Park partners (including Alex Fraser), so in February 1904 – according to legend – they staged a coin toss to divide their shared property. Kinney won the toss and unexpectedly chose the “worthless” wetlands in the south. True or not, Kinney did claim those wetlands and in March of that year revealed his plans to transform them into a facsimile of Venice, Italy. The Venice of America, canals and all, opened on July 4th, 1905. It was a hit with the day trippers and Kinney got to die before seeing his canals filled in and his amusement pier burned down. Venice’s most famous street didn’t adopt Kinney’s name until 1990. Before that, it was called West Washington Boulevard. (And it originated in 1903 as Toltec Place!) Nearby Washington Street then had its name changed… to West Washington Boulevard.
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