Venice Beach Boardwalk: History and Culture of Ocean Front Walk

The Venice Beach Boardwalk, officially called Ocean Front Walk, began as the seafront promenade of Venice of America, the resort town that developer Abbot Kinney opened on July 4, 1905. Over the next century, Ocean Front Walk history ran from a pleasure-pier resort to a rundown "slum by the sea," to a haven for Beat poets, skaters, graffiti artists and bodybuilders. Today it is a pedestrian promenade of about 2.5 miles and one of the most recognizable public spaces in Los Angeles.

This guide to Venice Beach Boardwalk history covers how the promenade began, how it changed, why Muscle Beach matters to its story, and what to look for when you walk it today.

Venice Beach Boardwalk history: who built Venice and the boardwalk?

Venice was the dream of Abbot Kinney, a wealthy tobacco businessman. In the 1890s Kinney and a partner, Francis Ryan, bought a strip of oceanfront land south of Santa Monica and developed a resort called Ocean Park at its northern end. Kinney then set out to build something much more ambitious on the marshland to the south.

His idea was a cultural resort modeled on Venice, Italy. He called it Venice of America, and it opened on July 4, 1905. To drain the marshes and create home sites, Kinney dug several miles of canals. Buildings along the main streets were designed to look like Italian Renaissance architecture, and Windward Avenue got an arched, colonnaded arcade over its sidewalks; many accounts credit the Italian-born artist Felix Peano with designing the columns. Only pockets of that original Venetian-style architecture survive today.

Kinney also hung a large VENICE sign at Windward Avenue to lure home buyers. The original disappeared about 50 years later. A reproduction, 63 feet across and lit with LEDs, was hung on the old anchors in 2007 and is now a favorite photo spot.

What was on the Venice boardwalk in the early years?

In its first decades, the oceanfront was all about amusement. Kinney built a pleasure pier that opened with the resort in 1905 (sources give its length as 1,200 or 1,600 feet). At its end stood an auditorium with about 3,600 seats, and the pier also had a ship-themed restaurant, a dance hall and an aquarium.

Along Ocean Front Walk itself, early attractions included:

• The Venice Plunge, an indoor saltwater swimming pool
• Around 40 concessions and rides, including a merry-go-round and a Ferris wheel
• A bowling alley and a pool hall

By 1910 the pier also had a miniature railway and several rides, and after the 1920 fire it was rebuilt bigger, with roller coasters and a Fun House.

What happened to the Venice piers?

The pier era was dramatic and short. On December 20, 1920, a fire that started in the dance hall destroyed much of the amusement pier, a month after Abbot Kinney's death. The Kinney family rebuilt quickly, and the new Venice Amusement Pier reopened on May 28, 1921. Los Angeles County records another devastating fire in 1924.

Meanwhile, Venice's finances and infrastructure struggled. Venice voters approved consolidation with the City of Los Angeles in 1925. Los Angeles was less interested in canals and amusement piers than in roads. Many canals were filled in and paved over, and after oil was discovered in 1929, hundreds of wells sprang up in the southern part of Venice within two years.

The city wanted to close Venice's amusement piers but had to wait for the leases to expire. That happened in 1946; the city declined to renew the lease on the Kinney pier, and the piers were torn down. With them went the resort era of Ocean Front Walk.

Why was Venice called the "slum by the sea"?

After the piers closed, Venice fell into neglect. By the 1950s it had picked up the nickname "Slum by the Sea." The city did not pave Pacific Avenue, the old Trolleyway, until 1954.

That decline had an upside. Cheap rents drew immigrants, young artists and writers. In the 1950s and 1960s Venice became a West Coast center of the Beat generation, with gathering places such as the Gas House on Ocean Front Walk and the Venice West Cafe nearby. The bohemian, anything-goes reputation the boardwalk still carries began here.

How did Muscle Beach end up on the Venice boardwalk?

Fitness has been part of the boardwalk's identity for more than 60 years. The original Muscle Beach was two miles north, on the sand just south of the Santa Monica Pier, where acrobats, gymnasts and strongmen drew crowds from the 1930s. When Santa Monica shut that site down at the end of the 1950s, many lifters moved south to an outdoor weightlifting area on the Venice sand at the City of Los Angeles' Venice Beach Recreation Center. Locals called it "the Pen." The full story is in Muscle Beach History: From Santa Monica to Venice.

Venice's cheap rents and tolerance for eccentric beach culture suited the bodybuilders. In 1965 Joe Gold opened Gold's Gym on Pacific Avenue, a few blocks from the beach, and through the late 1960s and 1970s the Pen and the gym together drew the biggest names in the sport, including Arnold Schwarzenegger and Franco Columbu. The 1977 documentary Pumping Iron carried images of Venice bodybuilding around the world.

In 1987 the City of Los Angeles officially dedicated the Pen as Muscle Beach Venice. It still sits right on the boardwalk at the south end of the Venice Beach Recreation Center, and anyone walking by can stop and watch lifters train. Read our visitor guide to Muscle Beach Venice, or learn how it compares with its predecessor in Muscle Beach Venice vs. the Original Muscle Beach.

This is the stretch of coastline where the Golden Era LA Tour slows down. A working LA strength coach walks guests along the boardwalk, stops at the Pen and tells the stories of who trained there and why it mattered, before the group heads to see Gold's Gym Venice from outside.

How did skateboarding culture start in Venice?

Venice's surf and skate history is just as famous as its bodybuilding history. In the early 1970s the rundown beachfront around southern Santa Monica and Venice was known as Dogtown. In 1973 Jeff Ho, Skip Engblom and Craig Stecyk opened the Jeff Ho Surfboards and Zephyr Productions shop in Santa Monica. Its surf team surfed the Cove at the abandoned Pacific Ocean Park pier.

The shop's skateboard team, the Z-Boys, formed in 1975. Members included Tony Alva, Jay Adams, Stacy Peralta and Peggy Oki. They skated in a low, surf-inspired style, and during the 1976 to 1977 drought they used drained backyard swimming pools to develop aerial skateboarding. Their story is told in the documentary Dogtown and Z-Boys (2001) and the feature film Lords of Dogtown (2005).

The skate legacy is now built into the boardwalk. The City of Los Angeles opened the Venice Beach Skate Park on the sand in March 2009, and it has become one of the best places in LA to watch skaters.

What are the Venice Art Walls?

The Venice Art Walls are what remains of the Venice Pavilion, a beachfront community building completed in 1961. The area around it, known as "the Pit," became a gathering place for artists and skaters, and in the 1980s and 1990s a hub of graffiti and skate culture. The pavilion was demolished around 1999 to 2000, but some of its walls were kept and restored, and since 2000 artists have been allowed to paint them legally. The walls change constantly, so no two visits look the same.

What is the Venice boardwalk like today?

Today Ocean Front Walk is a pedestrian promenade of about 2.5 miles, lined on one side by shops, cafes and murals and on the other by sand, palm trees and the beach bike path. Los Angeles County describes a scene of artists, fortune tellers, roller skaters, street vendors and performers, with Muscle Beach in the middle of it. In the 1980s and 1990s the boardwalk became a mecca for street performers, from breakdancers and acrobats to chainsaw jugglers.

Our visitor guide to the Venice Beach Boardwalk has practical tips. Highlights to look for:

1. Muscle Beach Venice, the outdoor weight pen where Golden Era bodybuilders trained in public
2. The Venice Beach Skate Park, on the sand near the recreation center
3. The Venice Art Walls, for constantly changing graffiti and murals
4. The basketball and paddle tennis courts at the Venice Beach Recreation Center
5. The VENICE sign over Windward Avenue, a block inland, plus the surviving colonnades
6. The remaining Venice Canals, a short walk inland, for a quiet look at Kinney's original vision

If you are planning a day around the area, see Venice Beach for Fitness Fans: A Visitor's Guide and The Best Time to Visit Venice Beach.

Why does the Venice boardwalk matter to fitness history?

Few places in the world tell the story of a sport in public the way Ocean Front Walk does. The Venice Pen kept the Muscle Beach tradition alive after Santa Monica closed its site, and it gave the Golden Era of bodybuilding a stage where tourists, photographers and filmmakers could see the athletes up close. Combined with Gold's Gym a few blocks away, it is a big reason Venice became known as the "Mecca of bodybuilding."

See the boardwalk with a guide

You can walk the boardwalk on your own, but the history is easy to miss if you do not know what you are looking at. The Golden Era LA Tour is a roughly six-hour guided tour, not a workout, that visits the vital places of bodybuilding history: the Venice Beach Boardwalk, Muscle Beach Venice, Gold's Gym Venice (seen from outside) and the Original Muscle Beach in Santa Monica. Van transport, a healthy lunch and a t-shirt are included, and a coach tells the stories at every Stop.

Traveling as a group? A Private Tour covers up to four guests on a date you choose. Shopping for a fan? Gift cards never expire.

LA Gym Tours is an independent operator and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Gold's Gym, the City of Los Angeles, the City of Santa Monica or any person mentioned in this article.