Recovering Our Stories
People, especially in Laguna, are endlessly fascinating. Here’s a story from Laguna’s past involving the 1932 death of an aspiring artist, Laguna’s first public art, and a woman who dedicates her life to helping the poor in the Settlement House movement. Let’s start with the settlement movement.
Grinding urban poverty was a social issue in the 1880s, especially with the flood of immigrants. Sound familiar? Progressives proposed an enlightened solution: “settlement houses.” Rather than give welfare to the poor, middle-class volunteers would lift them up by living together in multi-family homes where they could learn from and help each other. It was Laguna’s Friendship Shelter for the homeless, but with established citizens in some apartments. The movement seems the essence of being your “brother’s keeper.”
The first U.S. settlement home opened 1886 on Manhattan’s Lower East Side and, surprisingly, continues to this day as University Settlement Society. The settlement movement grew to over 500 homes by the late 1920s when an estranged wife, Isadora W. Kerr, reinvents herself as a social worker and joins University Settlement. She is living there in the 1930 Census. In the 1920 Census she was the wife of a prosperous Philadelphia doctor with a new child, servants, and a bright future. Two more children follow but then the marriage falters, the reasons unknown. The husband remains with the children, helped by a younger nurse he later marries.
Isadora has a sister, a Pasadena artist and dog lover who moves to Laguna about 1931 and associates with the town’s Humane Society. Isadora joins her in Laguna, perhaps to care for her ill sister who dies in mid-1932. Before returning to serve the poor of New York, Isadora has the inspired idea to spend her money on art for the community as a memorial for her sister, rather than a “cold granite stone” in the cemetery.
Building on her sister’s love of dogs and supported by the local Humane Society, Isadora commissions the noted Laguna sculptress Ruth Peabody to create a bronze statue of a child watering a dog that can also serve as a public fountain with a place for dogs. The Humane Society president offers her Scotty terrier and her granddaughter Adrianne as models.
Now the community comes together to create Laguna’s first public entrance. The city offers the triangle-shaped land across from the Art Museum as Laguna’s second park. The Chamber of Commerce proposes it be named for Elmer Jahraus, founder of Laguna Lumber, and staunch town supporter. The Garden Club proposes to plant a community Christmas tree with landscaping in the park. The water company offers to install piping and provide water. The whole town catches the spirit; it seems everyone does something. The dedication was the biggest event in Laguna’s brief history.
There’s just one problem: The statue remains, incorrectly titled “Boy and Dog,” but the story has been lost. We ought to have a plaque that tells this beautiful story from our past. There’s meaning in that.
Skip fell in love with Laguna on a ‘50s surfing trip. He’s a student of Laguna history and the author of Loving Laguna: A Local’s Guide to Laguna Beach. Email: [email protected]
