In 1991, this anonymous alley was named in memory of Irving Burns Tabor (1893-1987), onetime employee of Venice founder Abbot Kinney. The Louisiana-born Tabor came to Venice c. 1909 and was soon working for Kinney. Because he was black, the public knew him only as Kinney’s chauffeur and/or janitor – he identified himself as “decorator” in 1917-1920 documents – but he was later recognized as Kinney’s friend and confidante. Tabor married his first wife Mamie in 1916. Around that time, he purchased a lot on Westminster at 6th and started building a bungalow complex that still stands today. Mamie died after childbirth the following year; some time later, Tabor married second wife Ethel Florence Sielski (1896-1972), who would become a prominent Venetian in her own right. After Kinney’s 1920 death, Tabor worked at Bank of America before establishing his own maintenance company. The most famous story about Tabor is that Kinney bequeathed him his Venice house and that Tabor, barred from living in that whites-only part of town, dismantled it and hauled it to his own. True? Hard to say. Kinney’s widow Winifred stayed in the house until 1926, when local civic leader Walter D. Newcomb Jr. bought her property. She relocated to north Santa Monica and died a year later. I’ve seen no record of Tabor inheriting anything from either Abbot or Winifred Kinney, but by 1927 he, Ethel, and their kids Thelma and Emmett had indeed moved to a nice place on 6th and Santa Clara that’s now known as the “Kinney-Tabor House”. Did Tabor get the house when Winifred sold her Venice land? Did Newcomb give it to him? Or is it all bunk? I await further evidence.
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