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This innovative and absorbing book surveys a little known chapter in the story of American urbanism—the history of communities built and owned by single companies seeking to bring their workers' homes and place of employment together on a single site. By 1930 more than two million people lived in such towns, dotted across an industrial frontier which stretched from Lowell, Massachusetts, through Torrance, California to Norris, Tennessee. Margaret Crawford focuses on the transformation of company town construction from the vernacular settlements of the late eighteenth century to the professional designs of architects and planners one hundred and fifty years later. Eschewing a static architectural approach which reads politics, history, and economics through the appearance of buildings, Crawford portrays the successive forms of company towns as the product of a dynamic process, shaped by industrial transformation, class struggle, and reformers' efforts to control and direct these forces.
The City of Torrance anchors Los Angeles County's South Bay area and is known widely as a “headquarters city” for corporate giants Exxon Mobil, Nissan, Honda, and others. Yet the city's unique history often gets glossed over. “Downtown Torrance,” also known as “Old Torrance” and the “Olmsted Districts,” was laid out in 1912 by Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., the influential urban-designer son of the “Father of Landscape Architecture,” F. L. Olmsted Sr. The town founder and patriarch, Jared Sidney Torrance, gave Olmsted Jr. the imperative to create a unique industrial city. The results are in the streets, buildings, and parks between Western Avenue and Crenshaw Boulevard, north of today's Plaza Del Amo and south of Dominguez Way. Some structures in this district were designed by renowned architect Irving Gill, including the Southern Pacific Railroad Bridge and the Pacific Electric Railway depot.
In 1917, when Torrance School first opened, the city of Torrance was developing a reputation as an industrial powerhouse. The new school initially served all school-age children in one building. By 1923, the elementary students had their own school, and Torrance High School stood as the only high school until the 1950s. As the population of the city grew, so did the campus of Torrance High. The rich history of Torrance High School is filled with academic and athletic successes, as well as storied alumni like Louis Zamperini and Ted Tanouye, who served the United States during World War II. In the 1990s, the highly recognizable Main Building served as a set for several television shows, including Beverly Hills, 90210 and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and movies, such as She's All That and Not Another Teen Movie.
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