A dreamer named Abbot Kinney bought a few miles of empty marshland on the coast west of Los Angeles. While locals smiled at “Kinney’s Folly”, the dreamer and his thousand man army of union workers began dredging the now famous Venice Beach canals. They built boardwalks, and walking boulevards, grand piers and a bathhouse. Abbot Kinney opened his Venice of America just in time for the Fourth of July, 1905. Artists, celebrities, and honeymooners from all over the world came to embrace this romantic concept of Venice in America.

South of “Kinney’s Folly,” Warren Wilson sat on a white sand dune. He owned the Los Angeles Daily Journal, the legal newspaper in Los Angeles that operated from downtown LA, 20 miles away. He was the devoted father of eight children. At the end of the red car line and a good walk south, Wilson had staked out the location of his dream home on top of the white sand dunes. The Venice Beach House still sits on the same white sand where Wilson built it more than 100 years ago. It took the dredging of Marina del Rey in the 1960′s and the deposit on Venice Beach of harbor bottom sand 10 feet deep to turn Wilson’s view of the pure white sand to the yellow sand beach you see today.

As the antidote to city life, the Venice Beach House was completed in 1911. The Wilson family included Abbot Kinney and the two Kinney sons who married two of Warren’s daughters, and following along was a close-knit group of Hollywood stars and local personalities.

The Venice Beach House has been faithfully restored, inviting an ever growing circle of friends and family to share its casual elegance. Its distinctive craftsman style architecture and long list of celebrity connections have earned its listing on the National Register of Historic Places, and we remain thankful for Venice Historical Society’s recognition with its highest restoration award and honor.