Exposition Park and USC

Exposition Park, originally named Agricultural Park, was developed in 1876 as a showground for agricultural and horticultural fairs. The property became state land in 1880, the same year USC was founded, but during the 1890s it fell into private hands through a corrupt state legislature allied with local opportunists. Its character quickly deteriorated, and it became a haunt of the city's riffraff. William M. Bowen, an attorney and adjunct professor of law at USC, was appalled by the gambling and debauchery beyond the park's gate and led a successful campaign late in the decade to recover the tract for the people of California. With support from civic leaders including USC President George Finley Bovard, he secured commitments from city, state, and county to develop the land as a public educational and cultural recreation center. On November 6, 1913, the day after William Mulholland opened the Owens River aqueduct, Exposition Park was formally dedicated as the home of a state Exposition Building and the county Museum of History, Science and Art, with a National Guard Armory also planned. Bowen then pursued a major athletic stadium for the region in the park. Bovard pledged that USC would play all its home games there, Los Angeles newspaper publishers helped guarantee an $800,000 loan, and architect John Parkinson offered his firm's services at cost. In June 1923, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, named in honor of those who died in World War I, was completed. Less than a decade later it was enlarged in time for the 1932 Olympic Games. By then the park's landscaping was in full flower, including a formal rose garden planted with nearly 16,000 donated rose bushes. In later decades, Exposition Park continued to change: the Exposition Building and the armory were replaced by the California Science Center; the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County expanded into several branches; and in 1984 the California Afro-American Museum joined the other museums. Since 1959, the Coliseum, host to the 1932 and 1984 Olympic Games, John F. Kennedy's acceptance speech at the 1960 Democratic Convention, and the first Super Bowl, has shared the sports spotlight with the indoor Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena.

Los Angeles, California · United States