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Auto Club of Southern California Archives
With the recent stage offering inspired by the history of Los Angeles' long-gone Bimini Baths, Matthew W. Roth at the Auto Club of Southern California Archives found this 1927 photos of the baths that stood on 2nd Street just east of Vermont.
Roth writes that the photo shows the 1906 Mission-style building designed by architect Thornton Fitzhugh, who may be best known for downtown's 1904 Pacific Electric Building. The original Bimini Baths building had opened in 1903 and burned in 1905. "The baths went bankrupt in 1951 and the Fitzhugh building met the wrecker’s ball five years later." Roth says.
“'Bimini' was a reference to the Caribbean island where Ponce De Leon sought the Fountain of Youth, and though the building perished, the quest for youthfulness seems to have survived in LA," Roth notes.
Also known as the Bimini Hot Springs and Sanitarium, the facility was built on the site of a natural hot springs along a creek that flowed out of what is now the Franklin Hills. Bimini offered the public swimming pools, a swimming plunge and Turkish baths. Water was pumped across the street to a hotel, and also bottled for delivery to Los Angeles residents.
Bimini Slough Ecology Park currently occupies the site.
