The Telephone Shapes Los Angeles: Communications and Built Space (1880-1950)

This dissertation seeks to establish the telephone as a critical but unrecognized component in the development of Los Angeles into a major metropolis. It begins in 1880, when telephone lines bound the greater Los Angeles area into a comprehensible whole, and concludes in the early 1950s, when telephony became closely aligned with domestic activity in the home. It takes as starting point the view that it are the social conditions of production under capitalism that largely determine the physical configuration of settlement patterns and telephone infrastructure can be understood as a valuable component of that process. For example, the dissertation considers how the establishment of an extensive telephone "network" was the first significant step toward drawing Los Angeles together as a unified region, both physically and psychologically. In so doing, it also refutes generalized interpretations of Los Angeles as a "fragmented" city by detailing how patterns of telephone installation reveal a vast, but coordinated metropolis comprised of a strong central city linked to other "hubs" of production and settlement.