Abbot Kinney (1850-1920) was the founder of Venice. Born in New Jersey and raised in D.C., Kinney got rich from a tobacco business that he ran with his older brothers and he’d traveled much of the world by 1880, when he arrived in SoCal and found that the climate helped his chronic asthma. In fact he 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, so in February 1904 he reportedly staged a coin toss to divide their property between them. Kinney won the toss and unexpectedly chose the “worthless” marshland south of SM. A month later, he revealed his plans to transform it 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 oceanside fantasyland deteriorate. (He bequeathed his house to his employee and friend Irving Tabor, which caused a stir as Tabor was black.) 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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