Rare Promotional for an African-American Community Near Los Angeles

[African Americana]: [California]: Dones, Sydney:

Eureka Villa [caption title].

[Los Angeles or Chicago: ca. 1926]. Single sheet, 9.25 x 16 inches, folded three times vertically to form a slim 8pp. pamphlet. Dampstain to top margin throughout, moderate soiling throughout especially along bottom margin, slight biopredation to one panel. About very good. Item #12988

A rare pamphlet touting the advantages of Eureka Villa, a 1920s real estate development near Los Angeles intended for African American home buyers. Sydney Dones was the developer, and head of the Eureka Villa Improvement Association, with offices in Los Angeles and Chicago. Eureka Villa was founded on about a thousand acres purchased by Dones and his fellow investors in 1924 near the long-abandoned Mexican mining town of Val Verde. The planned community was envisioned as an affordable and welcoming home and vacation destination for Black folks in southern California, who were otherwise excluded from most public amenities and priced well out of home ownership anywhere near the city. The present pamphlet or flyer includes a poem about the community by Dones himself, information on how to buy a lot, a short introduction by Dones, but is mostly comprised of a long series of detailed questions and answers about the development. An example of the latter: "Q. What work can we get near Eureka? A. Eureka is just one and a half hours' ride from Hollywood, where a large number of our people are employed, and too, there will be a number of people needed to build Eureka Villa." Just four copies reported in OCLC, at the Huntington, Bancroft, UC-San Diego, and Princeton.

Price: $1,250