The Vernon Arena, located just south of

downtown Los Angeles Downtown Los Angeles (DTLA) contains the central business district of Los Angeles. In addition, it contains a diverse residential area of some 85,000 people, and covers . A 2013 study found that the district is home to over 500,000 jobs. It is ...

, California, was a major early 20th-century west coast of the United States boxing venue. For much of its history the Vernon Arena was a "pavilion"—an outdoor boxing ring surrounded by seating for spectators—but the Vernon Coliseum, which stood from 1924 to 1927, was an indoor arena with capacity to host about 8,000 people.

History

Vernon Arena is largely significant because of the work of two fight promoters: "Uncle Tom" McCarey and Jack Doyle.

Jefferies, Long & McCarey era

The original Vernon boxing "pavilion" was constructed by boxer Jim Jeffries and ubiquitous West Coast hotel-restaurant-club impresario Baron Long around 1908. Jeffries himself refereed some of the first fights at the venue, although Vernon fights were not financially successful under Jefferies. The first Vernon boxing arena was being leased by McCarey from owner Jeffries when it caught fire and burned on September 16, 1911. A newspaper profile of McCarey published 1913 reported that he had "controlled the boxing situation" in the city for a dozen years past. According to a history of California boxing, "The Jeffries Club staged a number of notable fights but finally succumbed to the stiffer competition of McCarey's downtown club and went out of business, the plant being taken over by McCarey and operated rather spasmodically for championship bouts for a while until he gave up the Naud Junction location entirely and confined his efforts to putting on 15, 20, and 25 round contests in the Vernon arena." McCarey's Vernon arena was located at 26th and Santa Fe. McCarey departed Los Angeles for New Orleans in December 1914, following the passage of 1914 California Proposition 20. The state of California banned prize fighting (temporarily as it turned out) effective January 1, 1915. The Vernon arena built by Long and Jeffries burned in October 1915.

Doyle era

Crop of 1923 Central Manufacturing District of Los Angeles map showing Vernon rail lines and streets

In the late teens, Doyle replaced McCarey as Vernon's boss of boxing. Doyle had long run a famous bar in Vernon (the city was a wet

enclave An enclave is a territory (or a small territory apart of a larger one) that is entirely surrounded by the territory of one other state or entity. Enclaves may also exist within territorial waters. ''Enclave'' is sometimes used improperly to deno ...

within dry Los Angeles). According to Los Angeles historian Cecilia Rasmussen, Doyle's first venture in Vernon was "a gigantic saloon, where 37 bartenders rang up liquor sales on 37 cash registers at a 100-foot-long bar. Behind it hung a sign—'If Your Children Need Shoes, Don't Buy Any Booze'—and in the ceiling were peepholes from which to keep an eye on the barmen, patrons, and pickpockets." Doyle's bar closed in 1919 due to the national prohibition on the sale of alcohol, but he had already set up a training camp that was located out back, past the card room. The two-story hotel structure that a contractor reported he had completed at 38th and Santa Fe in June 1916 may have been the facility known as Jack Doyle's Training Camp. A show-business history published 1934 stated, "All the big fighters of the day, as well as preliminary boys, has-beens, and hope-to-bes, trained at Jack Doyle's camp. The crowds that gathered to watch were drawn from what reporters are wont to call 'all walks of life.' There were pickpockets, fences, promoters, and we-boys. Also there were such celebrities as Earl Rogers, famed criminal attorney and father of Adela Rogers St. Johns, Mr. and Mrs. Jack Cudahy, Anita Baldwin, and the entire movie crowd." According to boxer-actor-trainer Dewitt Van Court, "The camp was patronized by the finest boxers in the land and their popularity drew such huge crowds, particularly on Sundays, that Doyle had to erect a regular arena and surround it with stands which would accommodate several hundred people. To pay for the stands, Doyle charged a nominal admission, and the crowds grew so large that he finally enlarged it to seat several thousand and roofed it over." Doyle's Vernon Arena became the center of boxing in Los Angeles. According to the ''Los Angeles Times'', "With 'Wad' Wadhams as matchmaker, seven four-round bouts were staged at the Doyle Arena every Tuesday night from 1916 to 1923." With prizefighting illegal, the fighters were officially all "amateurs" engaged in "exhibition" matches. The prizes were medals and "maybe a little 'expense' money". In 1921 fight tickets were priced $1 to $3, and there was a section of the arena reserved for ladies. The last fight at Doyle's original outdoor arena was held August 21, 1923.

Doyle's "Coliseum"

Doyle began planning an indoor arena as early as 1920, intending for a building that fronted on 38th Street "near the north entrance of Maier park itha frontage of 160 feet and a depth of 138 feet." Doyle's ''Vernon Coliseum'', as he called it, was opened August 28, 1923, with capacity for 8,000 spectators. With the passage of California Proposition 7, prizefighting was made legal again. In the interim between the passage of Prop 7 and January 13, 1925, the date of the first fight under the new law, a planned 10-round bout between Jimmy McLarnin and Fidel LaBarba, Doyle added another 2,000 seats to the coliseum. Promoter Jack Doyle moved his operation to the Olympic Auditorium in autumn 1926. The indoor arena was destroyed in a fire on July 23, 1927. The fire started in a neighboring "sawdust and shavings" mill, and also destroyed the grandstand of the Maier Park stadium where the Vernon Tigers had once played baseball.

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