"Think of it!" Ole Hanson told the world: "This is just a painting five miles long and over a mile wide. Its foreground is the sea. Its background the hills. We will use for our pigments flowers and shrubs and trees and red tile and white plaster. Our streets shall follow the contour of the ground. Our beach shall always be free from hurdy gurdies and defilement. We believe beauty to be an asset as well as gold and silver, or cabbages and potatoes. We may build at San Clemente but one building, but we will preserve for all time these hills from the heterogeneous mixture of terrible structures which so often destroy the beauty of our cities." It had never been done before.
From "The Story of San Clemente ~ The Spanish Village", by Homer Banks
"I offer San Clemente to the lovers of beautiful California, with the firm conviction that there are many who will appreciate what I am doing and who will help make [keep] it the village beautiful."
Ole Hanson...if you have not heard the story, was the founder, designer and builder of the Spanish Village By-The-Sea known as San Clemente. He did a great job of it ,as far as I can see, and he had a plan which he followed carefully. Like an artist, he executed his plan to his satisfaction, no one elses. Like Walt Disney's creations, people liked what these guys had to offer and they beat paths to their doorsteps.
Not many people have the audacity to look upon someone else's creation and presume to improve on it with their own touch. If they don't like what the artist has created, they should buy a new canvas and begin from scratch. Don't tamper with success.
In the case of a community such as San Clemente, I have watched as several developers have wandered off the I-5, had a look at San Clemente (another man's work of art) and said to himself, "I will make this place better" - whether the community wants it, likes it, or not. I have yet to see a replacement of a historic San Clemente building, be better than what was there originally. Nowhere in this city can be found an example of a better building than the original Spanish style one it replaced.
With that in mind please consider the artist's (Ole Hanson's) poetic sketches for San Clemente which were his inspirations for what he built. Then judge for yourself if tampering by other artists (a.k.a. DEVELOPERS) is justified. Is it about the design and the art of San Clemente? or is it about the money?
And they keep coming...
"I vision a place,"
he wrote, "where people can live together more pleasantly than in any other place in America. I am going to build a beautiful city on the ocean where the whole city will be a park; the architecture will be of one type, and the homes will be located on sites where nearly everyone will have his view preserved forever. The whole picture is very clear before me. I can see hundreds of white walled homes bonneted with red tile, with trees, shrubs, hedges of hibiscus, palms and geraniums lining the drives and a profusion of flowers illuminating the patios and gardens. I can see gay sidewalks of red Spanish tile and streets curving picturesquely over the land. I want plazas, playgrounds, schools, clubs, swimming pools, a golf course, a fishing pier and a beach enlivened with people getting a healthy joy out of life.
~ Ole Hanson
"I want people to have more than a piece of land; I want them to have location, environment, development. I feel that my past successes in real estate will assure them of future prosperity here, and I feel that by giving people a chance to live intelligently and artistically I may possibly influence other builders to help. I do not want people to be repulsed and sent away by ugliness in San Clemente as they have been by ugliness in other communities (unless they have been forced to remain and hammered into their ugly molds). This will be a place where a man can breathe! I have a clean canvas and I am determined to paint a clean picture. Think of it a canvas five miles long and one and one half miles wide!"
~ Ole Hanson
THE HISTORIC SAN CLEMENTE MIRAMAR THEATRE STANDS ON THE BRINK...
