By: William Lobdell

Lido Isle is one of Newport Beach’s most desirable communities, but for the first half-century of its existence, that was hardly the case. Today, the island has about 800 picturesque homes (250 on the bayfront) on more than 100 acres, but for decades, no one wanted to buy property there at virtually any price. To understand why, here are seven things to know about the history of Lido Isle.

1. From the late 1800s to the 1920s, the then-large mudflat went through a series of owners who basically got the land thrown in as part of other deals.

A series of unimpressed owners didn’t know what to do with often-submerged property near what was once the mouth of the Santa Ana River. One such owner was J.P. Greenley, who, by 1904, controlled a large chunk of the Balboa peninsula along with Lido Isle. The company that owned the Pacific Electric Red Car Trolley approached Greenley and asked him to sell a right of way down the peninsula trolley line. Greenley struck a deal and, as an afterthought, tossed in Lido Isle.

And that, by the way, was how the island got its first name: Pacific Electric Island or simply Electric Island. It was also known in the early years as Huntington Island (Henry Huntington owned the trolley company) and Parkinson Island. Parkinson was another owner of the island. We’ll find out about him next.

2. Lido Isle was originally planned as the industrial hub of a commercial Newport harbor. In the early 20th Century, city boosters had visions of turning Newport Bay into a massive commercial harbor with Lido Isle at its center. Plans called for the island to have wharves, factories, warehouses, railroad spurs—the works.

In 1923, Lido Isle’s latest owner, W.K. Parkinson, dredged the bay to make the property suitable for being the hub of the harbor. But before his vision could be realized, Parkinson passed away.

His widow lived in a mansion in Glendale about 50 miles from Newport and didn’t share her late husband’s passion for the property. So, Lido Island remained undeveloped for several more years.

3. Lido Isle owes its ample charm to a Swiss architect named Franz Herding. Three years after her husband died, W.K. Parkinson’s widow sold Lido Isle to William Clark Crittenden for about $1.2 million.

Crittenden envisioned the island as a residential community, and, in a stroke of absolute genius, he hired Franz Herding in 1927 to design a world-class island community on a blank slate of an island that didn’t even have a bridge yet. Herding modeled the development after the Lido di Venezia, the Italian resort on the Adriatic Sea near Venice, and gave the island its fourth and final name: Lido Isle.

Lido Isle today looks a lot like the plans Herding drew up: nearly 800 homes influenced by Mediterranean architecture—tiled roofs, courtyards, gardens—plus an avenue that looped around the island, and a series of wide pedestrian walkways that crossed the width of the island.

He named the streets after European cities and resorts and arranged them in alphabetical order, with Via Antibes being the first street after you crossed the bridge to the island and Via Zurich being the last street. He also talked Crittenden into setting aside 13 bayfront lots on both sides of the island for public parks, along with tennis courts and a clubhouse. All this would make Lido Isle Newport Beach’s —and one of California’s—first master-planned community.

4. Initially, no one wanted to buy a home lot on Lido Isle. By 1928, the Lido Isle clubhouse and six model houses had been built, but that would be all of the development for a few years because no buyers could be found.

At the time, the island was remote, and the parcels were priced too high–$6,200 for a dirt lot or $144,000 in today’s money. It didn’t help that there was no bridge. Prospective residents had to be ferried to and from the island in Chris-Craft speed boats.

To make matters worse, the Great Depression hit. After three years, the island had exactly zero sales. Crittenden quickly gave up, and yet another developer, a group of Los Angeles businessmen, bought Lido Isle for $2.5 million in 1930. Since the 1880s, Lido Isle had changed ownership at least six times, and there were still two more to come.

5. In 1930, Newport Beach undertook what was billed as the largest public works project ever in California to make the Lido Isle development more attractive to buyers. The city advanced the Los Angeles syndicate $1.2 million ($20 million today) to build streets, sidewalks, sea walls, piers, and a bridge. Before the bridge was completed, the city built a dirt causeway to Lido Isle, using mud from the harbor’s bottom.

Also included in the project was the installation of underground utilities–an unheard of practice at the time. The Griffith Co. landed the huge public works contract (and that company would become the island’s final owner). To get the public works job done as soon as possible, the Griffith Company used seaplanes to fly up to 300 workers back and forth from Los Angeles each day.

6. Weary of no lot sales and growing debt, the owners of Linda Isle held a massive liquidation sale that lasted for years. The Los Angeles syndicate that bought Lido Isle soon went belly up, and Title Insurance and Trust Co., the largest debt holder, was left holding the bag—or more accurately, a mostly deserted island. And two years after that, the island’s lots were snapped up by the Griffith Co.

Both Title Insurance and Trust and the Griffith Co. had the same idea: sell the home lots as quickly as possible and by any means necessary. So, a massive liquidation sale was held that lasted for years. A tent was set up on the island, salesmen were recruited in newspaper ads, and prices were slashed by as much as 80%, allowing buyers to purchase a home lot for as little as $550. If you didn’t have the cash, no problem. You could make monthly payments of $11 per month. Another promotion gave buyers a free inner lot if they bought one on the bayfront.

On top of all this, Franz Herding, the development’s renowned architect, would design a buyer’s home–for free. As the marketing slogan stated, “A little buys a lot.”

But two years after the liquidation sale started, just 38 out of the 800 home lots had been sold. In 1935, a salesman with the awesome name of Paul A. “Pappy” Palmer arrived on the scene and boasted he could sell all the lots in five years. It took Pappy Palmer nearly 20.

William Lobdell is an award-winning journalist and host of the local history podcast, “Newport Beach in the Rearview Mirror,” which can be found on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Subscribe to follow along as he shares some of the most fascinating stories about our beloved town. You can also follow him on Instagram @newport_in_the_rearview_mirror.