1919

Los Angeles is suffering from a serious case of centennial overload. On New Year’s Day in 1919, the city boasted neither a state university nor a well-funded symphony orchestra. It had no expectation of a major private library and art museum, still less any movie studios explicitly dedicated to quality above profit. It lacked even a decent restaurant booth where you could get drunk and grouse about all the cultural amenities you were missing.

By the last day of 1919, L.A. had them all: UCLA, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Huntington Library, United Artists, and Musso and Frank Grill.

How on earth did these five enduring L.A. institutions enter the world within just months of one another? Arguably more important, can the Huntingtons and Chaplins of 2019—the philanthropic founders of today—learn anything from their example?

SYNCHRONICITY I

The late pontiff of modern California historiography, Kevin Starr, called 1919 the Southland’s “takeoff year,” though he left uncharacteristically few clues as to why. Nationally, the easy answers are just economic. The end of the First World War had brought