Capping off a years-long selection process, Manhattan Beach City Council on Tuesday night made the final choice of artwork to commemorate the Bruce family at Bruce's Beach Park.
The council voted unanimously to move ahead with "Building Paradise," by artist April Banks. The artwork is an abstraction of a beach cottage
honoring the Bruce family and the Black homeowners and entrepreneurs who were
building their lives and dreams along the coast in the early 1900s.
"Through that small house structure, one might be able to imagine what the family’s vista would have been looking out to the ocean," said Mayor David Lesser. "It’s thoughtful; it’s powerful...It has a sense of history about it."
The artwork is proposed to be 10.5 feet long, 10 feet high, and five feet wide. It will be made of brick and concrete along with mosaic artwork. (The materials may be slightly modified to make the artwork graffiti-proof.) It will be positioned in such a way that it will not block ocean views.
The project dates back to 2021, when the City Council first approved $350,000 from the city's Public Art Fund for a sculpture to honor the Bruce family. The project was supervised by the city's Art in Public Places Committee, which includes members of the Cultural Arts Commission, City Council members, art advisors and representatives from the Black community.
The city had asked for artwork “to honor the
site’s history as a Black-owned resort and to promote racial justice and
healing” through “a large-scale, durable sculpture that will serve as a
space for community connection and education.”
A first round of requests for proposals did not yield feasible projects, so the committee switched to an RFQ (request for qualifications) process, which is designed to invite artists to submit resumes and recommendations to prove they are qualified to do the work.
"The amount and quality of submissions was remarkable and it was truly a joy and a privilege to look through them all," said Councilmember Amy Howorth, who served on the committee.
Since 2020, the city of Manhattan Beach has engaged in an emotional debate over how -
or how much - to recognize Willa and Charles Bruce, pioneering Black
business owners who created a thriving resort for Black beach-goers in
Manhattan Beach in the 1920s.
(Historical images of Charles and Willa Bruce, of beachgoers at Bruce's Beach resort, and of the former Bruce's Beach resort site. Photos via Bruce's Beach Task Force subcommittee.)
By
the mid-1920s, with pressure from community members who did not
want Black beachgoers in town, Manhattan Beach's Board of Trustees (a
precursor to the modern city council) claimed the land under eminent domain,
condemning the lots and displacing the Bruce family as well as other
families who had
settled in the area. (Of the 30 lots condemned, five were owned by five
Black families and had been developed with cottages, homes, or, in the
Bruces’ case, a two-story building for their business; and the remaining
25 lots were owned by White property owners that had no structures
built upon them and were uninhabited.)
The land was acquired by the state of California in
1948, and was transferred to L.A. County in 1995. The beachfront property the Bruce family once owned is now the site of the Los Angeles County Lifeguard Training Headquarters.
The
effort led by Los Angeles County leaders to return the land to the
Bruce family reached a significant milestone in September 2021 when
California Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 796, a bill permitting the return of the county-owned beachfront property to the Bruce family, into law.
L.A. County officials handed over the deed to the property
to the descendants of the Bruce family in July 2022. The county also
created a plaque on the Strand that details the history of the
beachfront property. Nevertheless, the Bruce family in 2023 sold the property back to L.A. County for $20 million.
Meanwhile,
within Manhattan Beach, it was not until 2006 that the city publicly
acknowledged this chapter of its history by naming the area east of the
beachfront property Bruce's Beach Park and establishing a plaque in that
(park) location. In the summer of 2020, a movement began growing for the city
to
take further action to recognize the Bruces.
Despite creating a
Bruce's Beach Task Force and
adopting a history report created
by the task force, the Manhattan Beach City Council struggled for
nearly a year with finding compromise on the wording, location, and
style for a new marker honoring Bruce's Beach Park and the Bruce family.
