User:Redondohistory/sandbox

The Lamp of Learning is part of the original street plan for the City of Redondo Beach in the form of the spirit of Chautauqua learning. Resembling the shape of Lake Chautauqua, the building plan was designed by William Hammond Hall and printed in 1887. As the California State Engineer, Hall who also designed Golden Gate Park in San Francisco as well as Vincent Park which serves as the base of the Lamp of Learning. Chautauqua is derived from the Iroquois word for “two moccasins tied together,” “bag tied at the middle,” “where the fish are taken out,” or “jumping fish," but no precise translation exists from Iroquois.  The Chautauqua Movement began in 1874 at Lake Chautauqua, New York. It was founded by John Heyl Vincent and Lewis Miller in the Methodist-Unitarian movement as an “outdoor Sunday School” to encourage religion and learning as an optimistic experience. Offshoots of the Chautauqua Movement formed throughout the United States as well as in Southern California, forming first in Long Beach before temporarily branching off to Redondo Beach due to a legal dispute in 1890 (or 1889) two years before incorporation.  The Redondo Beach eleven-sided assembly hall was a work of sand and pebbles mixed with English concrete, viewable by sea with a congregational capacity for 4,000. However, due to the flagging attendance, the meetings were short-lived, and in 1892 migrated back to Long Beach as the two chapters merged. The forerunner of the community college system, the Chautauqua divisions were created in various parts of the country to attempt to meet the needs of the local community, which craved education in Latin, economics, politics, international relations, music, poetry, and literature, et al. Today the streets of Fleming and Spencer have become the streets of El Redondo and Spencer, and situated at the edge of the curve is Redondo Union High School, which convened in 1905. The eleven-sided building was torn down in 1916.