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Oxy in the Neighborhood

The College Evolves, The College Builds

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Looking from across the York (then New York) Valley, the elevated flat area with the lollipop shaped trees is the location of today’s central quad. Ralph Roger’s house, later the Phi Gamma Delta house is center. Rogers gave part of the sixty-five acres donated by local real estate men for the campus. A viewer here in 1887 would have seen the tracks for the Garvanza and Eagle Rock Railway, built by Rogers; the service lasted ten days.
The architect of Occidental College surveys the land on which he would layout the new campus. A few houses are visible in the distance, in the center is a low spot with a drainage culvert, and on the right is the new trolley line running north on what would become Eagle Rock Boulevard. The sometimes-swampy land would continue to influence development in the valley. The trolley line would tie the area to Los Angeles, to the south, and Eagle Rock City, to the north.
Remsen Bird Breaks Ground for the Hillside Theater 1924: The College President seems in a festive mood as he flourishes the “groundbreaking shovel” used since the Highland Park days. Behind him are Harold Wagner ’24, Student Body President ; Thomas G. Burt, Dean of the Faculty; and two unidentified women. The community was asked to contribute. Many responded, including the Women’s Twentieth Century Club, Kiwanis, and the Chamber of Commerce.