Where's the White House?

When Arthur Preble was 12 and moved with his family to Harding Street in Long Beach in 1952, he could look down his block at the sands of Long Beach.

"I would step out of the house and see the beach," Preble recalled. "I used to walk straight down to the ocean."

And some years later, a beachfront apartment building, called the Azores, was built and obstructed his picturesque view. But he still could play with friends in the many vacant lots between the homes in his neighborhood, known as the Presidents Streets.

The 10-block neighborhood is bound by Broadway, extends north to East Walnut Street and is sandwiched between Roosevelt Boulevard (which is not part of the historic area) to the west and Maple Boulevard, Long Beach's easternmost block.

Since the Prebles moved in the neighborhood has changed where homes are built close together on small lots on long, narrow, one-way streets.

Whereas streets in the West End are named successively after a state from New York to Nevada, the streets in the East End neighborhood are not all named after men who once lived in the White House. Nor is every street that bears a president's name in that area.

"To every rule in Long Beach there is an exception," said Roberta Fiore, former president of the Long Beach Historical & Preservation Society. "Lincoln was a president but he's not in the president streets, and August Belmont wasn't a president but his name is."

Belmont, a financier, and New York City Mayor John Purroy Mitchel, whose last name also graces a street sign in the area, were friends of William Reynolds, a former state senator who was the primary developer of Long Beach island. Fiore admitted uncertainty about the logic behind the street names, but speculates that if later developers bought and built on several vacant lots, they were given street naming rights.

The area was originally called East Holme, to distinguish it from West Holme, the area roughly from the West End to Lindell Boulevard, where Reynolds built Long Beach's original Estate homes. His first development in East Holme, and his last on Long Beach island, was a hotel called the Lido Golf and Country Club, in 1928. (Today, the building is the Long Beach Towers condominium complex at 2 Richmond Rd.) The cupola and pink-colored beachside hotel offered swimming pools, tennis courts and cabanas.

"The Lido Hotel was referred to as 'the dream of Araby,'" Fiore said. "During the Great Depression, people needed a fantasy escape. Reynolds would open the ceiling in the ballroom, and he covered one of the three swimming pools out back with glass, and said when you danced at the Lido you danced on water under the stars."

During the 1930s, sandcastle homes were built on neighboring streets to compliment the similarly styled hotel. During the Great Depression a developer could buy a vacant lot and build a sand castle for $5,000.

"After Reynolds died in 1932, the developers who came down said if you can't afford to go to the Lido Hotel, we have all this property in the East Holme section, so we will build castles by the sea to go with this hotel," Fiore explained.

Many original sandcastle owners were Broadway and movie types. Perhaps the most famous presidents streets resident was Cole Porter, who later moved to Lido Beach.

During World War II, the hotel owner then, Abe Seidon, rented it to the U.S. Navy, and after the war about 90 percent of the presidents streets were developed and featured split levels, bungalows and daylight homes, a flat-roofed ranch with picture windows.

Preble said that the vacant lots were mostly developed by the 1960s, but that a number of children always populated the area. Apparently, the Presidents Streets today remain mostly family oriented.