The Venice Canals Used to Be Huge

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]These are the canals of Venice, Los Angeles. Developed in 1905 to be the Venice of America. A wild mashup of Venice, Italy, and Coney Island. But the original network of canals was four times bigger.

[00:00:11]>> So, what happened to the other canals?

[00:00:13]MLA realtor Tyler Neil. Let's dive in.

[00:00:15]>> Venice, California was originally swamp land. But in 1880, conservationist and avid traveler Abbott Kenny, who has a mural in Venice, >> got stuck in LA on his way to Australia and noticed he'd never been in such good health. So he decided to stay and develop a beach resort town on this swampland 14 mi west of LA. Dubbed Venice of America, it featured seven canals, several islands, a saltwater lagoon, a miniature railroad that circled the canals, camel rides, a pleasure pier with a roller coaster, and even gondelas with imported gondeliers that serenated passengers in Italian.

[00:00:48]>> Bravo. Just watch the splashing. It's a new frock. Venice of America was so successful that a second set of canals was dug, which happened to be the only one still remaining today. But by the 1920s, too many visitors were arriving by a new fangled invention known as the automobile.

[00:01:03]>> And streets like this, designed for boats and pedestrians became obsolete.

[00:01:07]So in 1929, the city of LA filled the canals in and turned this into this and paid for it with property taxes collected from the neighborhood. But the newer canals didn't have enough homeowners yet to levy the necessary property taxes to pave them over. So they were left, but that's when the Great Depression hit and those canals became so derelct they were known as the slum by the sea. And they remained neglected for decades until finally in 1993 a $12 million restoration plan was approved to redevelop the canals. And today the canal district is on the National Register of Historic Places and includes some of the most picturesque and desirable real estate in all of LA with a median home price of $3.9 million. I guess Abbott Kenny was on to