The Cooper Arms

In March 1924 a twelve-story Italian Renaissance Revival tower was completed at the corner of Ocean Boulevard and Linden Avenue. It was Long Beach's first residential high-rise and, at $1,350,000, the most expensive development the city had yet seen. This history follows the Cooper Arms from the townsite lots before 1922 through its planning, financing and construction, the 1933 earthquake it rode out, its designation as a Long Beach Historic Landmark in 1979 and its listing on the National Register of Historic Places in 2000, to its centennial in 2024.

It is also a history of the people who lived and worked there. Drawing on archival newspapers, city directories, the National Register nomination and Los Angeles Times press negatives, it documents six sudden or violent deaths at the building between 1934 and 2005, including the 1935 shooting of Gladys Glena Fair in her own apartment, along with the shops and businesses on its ground floor.

More than eighty pages of archival photographs follow the building decade by decade, from the 1920s to the 2020s, and every finding is sourced.