Oil and Urbanization on the Pacific Coast: Ralph Bramel Lloyd and the Shaping of the Urban West

Michael R. Adamson. Morgantown, WV: West Virginia University Press, 2018. 384 pp., maps, photos, diagrams, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $99.99 cloth (ISBN 978-1-946684-43-1); $29.99 paper (ISBN 1-946684-36-3); $29.99 electronic (ISBN 978-1-946684-44-8).

Michael R. Adamson presents a rich narrative about a figure who has to date received little attention from geographers, outside of perhaps those familiar with the history of the Ventura Avenue oil field and the still-operating Lloyd Center located just east of downtown Portland, Oregon. Over the course of the book, readers will be immersed in the details of the professional life of Ralph Lloyd, and will be exposed to the myriad ways that he tried to shape the urban landscape of three cities during the early part of the twentieth century: Ventura and Los Angeles in California, and Portland in Oregon, with particular attention on property holdings and investment opportunities of Lloyd's in the latter two.

The story of how Lloyd cemented his role as a key player in the Ventura Avenue oil field as an independent operator, and, in turn, used these profits to finance his real estate activity in Los Angeles and Portland is meticulously researched. As the reader learns, the former ended up being a fairly successful professional endeavor for Lloyd, whereas the latter proved far more challenging. Adamson demonstrates that Lloyd was certainly motivated to profit from the rapid urban development that he witnessed in these cities during the 1920s, but readers also learn that Lloyd held strong convictions about the ways in which these cities should develop in tandem with this growth. He actively tried to steer those processes in deliberate ways, particularly in Portland. In the end, Lloyd's direct contributions to the current physical urban landscapes of these cities is relatively minor, although Adamson makes it clear that the lens through which he viewed the roles of entrepreneurs, local government actors, and private companies as civic actors had much to do with the evolution of areas of these cities in which he held property. Such a perspective also represents an important message when considering the future of cities today, especially in the face of rapid urban technological changes.

Adamson's work offers a clinic in thorough and detailed archival research, and readers should prepare themselves to learn about the litany of terms and negotiations that Lloyd navigated to pursue his financial interests and attempt to bring his vision of successful urban development to bear. Adamson does a fantastic job of describing the ways in which Lloyd, a man who loudly resisted regulations and taxation, especially those resultant from the New Deal, navigated and manipulated actors from both the private and the public sectors to try and achieve his goals. As the reader learns toward the end of the book, investments from public sector actors ultimately were ironically responsible for Lloyd's perception as a successful figure in the commercial real estate market, rather than those from the private sector that Lloyd so coveted and failed to secure time and again both during and after the Great Depression.

A central message of the book is that there is a clear connection between the profits earned from Ralph Lloyd through production of oil in the Ventura Avenue oil field in Southern California during the early part of the twentieth century and the emergence of a new kind of urban landscape in Portland, Oregon. Of course, the intermediary steps were complex and dynamic, and readers learn just how unlikely that outcome was given that Lloyd often felt frustrated and at times exasperated by the political landscape and culture of Portland. Adamson wastes little time in noting that Lloyd's source of financial security can be ultimately traced to fortuitous land holdings atop petroleum reserves, and that such luck allowed Lloyd to have the opportunity to attempt to shape both the physical landscapes and civic processes of both Los Angeles and Portland. Despite this financial stability, Adamson reminds us throughout the book that Lloyd's career in commercial real estate was long but generally frustrating. His persistence in the market was a direct result of steady and reliable income from the Ventura Avenue field, which perhaps had much to do with the conservative nature of Lloyd's transactions in the sector that differed from a number of his peers and competitors.

Readers should be aware that the title of the book suggests that the work focuses on the strong linkage between oil development and urbanization that occurred along the Pacific Coast. Certainly, the well-documented interrelationships between automobility, petroleum extraction and refining, and suburbanization in the postwar United States had much to do with the development of just about every major metropolitan area in the western United States. Still, the roots for some of those processes can be traced to decisions and events that happened in the 1920s and 1930s, which is the primary focus of this work. Adamson devotes most of the text to focusing on the career of Ralph Bramel Lloyd and those in his immediate orbit. This book, then, is a rich case study that illustrates how an individual who profited from oil development invested those funds in commercial real estate holdings in select parts of two important metropolitan areas on the Pacific Coast.

Discussion of some of those broader mechanisms that ultimately helped to define the urban form of these cities is found at times. For example, Adamson does describe how retailers such as Sears began their search for new store locations away from existing sites in central cities in the post-Depression years that were more accommodating to the automobile (p. 111). Further, he describes how vacant lots adjacent to proposed store locations held by property holders like Lloyd became attractive for their ability to host parking lots, viewed as an essential amenity to attract business. This marked a dramatic change in the perception of land use within cities compared to just a few years prior, and this shaping of the urban area to accommodate the automobile became a well-known general hallmark of urban form. There is little question such mechanisms played a role in the high amount of space in urban cores that is dedicated to parking infrastructure in this part of the country, a subject of recent interest (e.g., Chester et al. 2015; Hoehne et al. 2019).

Indeed, the automobile became one of the most important things for commercial real estate actors to accommodate to attract future business and grow regional economies during this time period. Given the clear influence that those such as Lloyd had on local government officials, as Adamson details, it is not surprising to see such a landscape in these cities today. It should also not be lost on readers that Adamson makes it a point to note how irritated Lloyd was with the automobile exhaust and fumes at his downtown Los Angeles office when the “oilman”—as he is referred to many times by Adamson—decided to move to a new location away from downtown and ten stories above street level to avoid these nuisances that he had a direct hand in creating (p. 172).

More broadly, though, Adamson's work contributes to the vast literature on the political mechanisms that contributed to the automobile-focused urban form largely seen today in these cities. Throughout the book, readers learn that although Lloyd ultimately ended up being largely frustrated by prospective tenants unwilling to commit to the longer term deals and the occupancy stability that he sought, he was a master at understanding and manipulating the institutional mechanisms by which he could achieve his goals. Readers learn that he was able to constantly lobby for civic objectives that aligned with his vision of what a city should look like when and where it suited him. Perhaps this is one of the more lasting components of Lloyd's legacy. Adamson details how Lloyd was able to convince members of the Portland City Council to vote in support of the goals of his Holladay Park property on the east side of Portland, albeit ultimately to the detriment of their careers. Lloyd was thrilled by the ways in which Los Angeles civic leaders openly supported infrastructure investments that accommodated the automobile, which comes as no surprise, as Lloyd knew that he stood to profit handsomely from the growth and development enabled by automobility, especially if funded largely by the public. He did not understand the reasons behind Portland's greater degree of reluctance to widen streets and expand infrastructure for cars, and more generally by its more deliberative civic governance mechanisms compared to Los Angeles. Many present-day residents of Portland would likely swell with pride at such a statement. Still, even in the City of Roses, he ultimately helped to facilitate a more automobile-centric urban landscape, even if it required some of his own capital to do so.

Finally, it is worth reviewing the present-day Lloyd Center through the lens of the rich history that Adamson provides. The Lloyd Center represents the ultimate delivery of Lloyd's vision for a multiuse property on the east side of Portland, albeit not precisely the way he imagined when he began pitching his hotel project in the 1920s. The Lloyd Center opened in 1960, which as Adamson notes, means that Lloyd did not live to see its opening day. The mall now markets itself as an outlet that champions primarily local retailers. That message aligns well with popular perceptions of Portland's culture, although it stands in contrast to Lloyd's initial vision of the property in a couple of notable ways. First, Lloyd long desired to attract a national chain to occupy one of his properties and serve as the centerpiece of his holdings, both in Los Angeles and in Portland. Second, it would be interesting to hear Lloyd's reaction to that marketing framework today given his desire to “Los Angeles-ize” Portland, which Lloyd so desired for the city, despite never finding sustained success in the commercial real estate market in Los Angeles. Indeed, Lloyd once stated, “(M)y neighbors are, by injunction suits and otherwise, still hampering and delaying my program in a way that is astonishing to a man who is accustomed to the encouragement that is given one for making improvements and capital expenditures in all districts of Southern California” (p. 117). Still, there now stands a commercial development in Portland that carries his name, thanks in no small part to Lloyd's decision to acquire a number of properties east of downtown during the 1920s. No building in Southern California does so.

ORCiD

Scott Kelley https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4860-9590