Author Tied to Playa del Rey's Past in a Big Way

I’ve been fortunate enough to meet people around Playa del Rey who have built a picture of this great little community and helped me understand it better.   

For me, it’s akin to putting a puzzle together.  And the people I meet provide pieces of the puzzle.

Everyone has his or her own unique story of how they’re tied to this community.  And their stories overlap and intertwine to create a more complete picture of Playa del Rey.

One such person is Brad Fowler, who contacted me and suggested we meet at Café Milan in the Matilla shopping center at 205 Culver Blvd. 

When I approached the cafe, Fowler was outside, crouched in front of his collection of historic photos of Playa del Rey which he’s enlarged to poster size and sells for $10. 

He was handwriting an invoice for the last copy in his current inventory of his book, called T.O. McCoye’s Playa del Rey, which is almost literally a photo history of Playa del Rey in the 1920s and 30s.

You may be wondering who T.O. McCoye is, a man Fowler has spent almost the last 20 years researching, compiling data and writing and revising a book about.

I was excited to learn that McCoye was one of the first real estate brokers in Playa del Rey with the firm Dickinson and Gillespie, which I noted in occupied the historic two-story beige stucco building at 200 Culver Blvd. in downtown Playa del Rey.

The Dickinson and Gillespie firm relocated here from Minnesota in the 1920s to develop and sell property in Playa del Rey. According to Fowler, McCoye was the broker who sold the first piece of property for Dickinson and Gillespie in 1924.

As it turns out, McCoye wasn’t just a man who had a direct hand in shaping Playa del Rey, but he was also Fowler’s maternal grandfather. 

McCoye was a native Los Angeleno and moved himself and his wife to Playa del Rey, then called Palisades del Rey, when he landed the job with Dickinson and Gillespie. 

According to Fowler’s book, McCoye’s daughter, Barbara, or Aunt Bobby as Fowler knew her, was the first baby born in Palisades del Rey in 1924.  Two more daughters followed, Patricia in 1926, who was Fowler’s mother, and Marilyn in 1929.

The book is full of family photos of the young McCoye daughters doing various activities in and around town.  They’re seen on the porch steps of McCoye’s own real estate firm in the 1930s at the location of Outlaws restaurant. 

The McCoye sisters are photographed playing musical instruments, with their swim team and in a summer camp.

What prompted Fowler to put together and publish this book was his stumbling upon his grandfather’s personal archives when he was looking for photos of his mother Patricia as a girl after she passed away, and what he found was a rich historical account of Playa del Rey in that era.

Fowler said the archives contained about 400 original photo negatives, issues of Dickinson and Gillespie’s “Palisades Del Rey Press,” real estate ads and brochures and newspaper clippings.

Fowlers book, which he’s collaborated on with D.J. Dukesherer (who has also penned a book of the history of Playa del Rey), is a true photo history of the homes and businesses in the 1920s and 30s in Playa del Rey.

It shows oil derricks in people’s front yards and backyards all along the beach; train tracks where Vista del Mar is currently; historic homes on large parcels of land overlooking downtown Playa del Rey; the dredging and rerouting of Ballona Creek and the constructing of the breakwater near Marina del Rey-- just to name a few notable differences to how Playa del Rey looks now.   

The book also contains photos of the neighborhoods and homes that Los Angeles acquired and tore down to build the first airfield, which would later become Los Angeles International Airport. 

The book contains the first advertisements and newspaper articles extolling the new airstrip, which reflected the excitement at the time that Del Rey was selected as the site. 

Fowler has undertaken extreme amounts of research to fill in the missing pieces of his grandfather’s extensive photo collection. 

Although, he said photos were mostly well-labeled with addresses and dates, the neighborhoods and topography of Playa del Rey has changed so drastically since those days that it has been rendered almost unrecognizable even to Fowler’s trained eye.

For example, Fowler drew my attention to a photo in his book that depicts one of the oldest houses in Playa del Rey (not to be confused with the other oldest houses on the hill, which I mentioned in my column last week.)

According to Fowler, the house still sits on Fowling Street (once named Fowler Street) near its intersection with Montreal Street, but he could never find it.

Fowler finally realized that at some point the house had been cut in half and one half disposed of, rendering it almost unrecognizable now.   

I’ve walked past this house many times on my way through my neighborhood, and it is immensely cool to see how it looked in its original state with nothing but rolling hills on either side and 360 degree scenic views. 

Fowler could talk on and on about the history of Playa del Rey, which he’s researched and devoted the past 20 years of his life to. 

I only had a couple hours with him, but the doors and windows of Playa del Rey’s past are opening up to me, and I’m excited to see what I find.