The Pacific Electric Railway Company, nicknamed the Red Cars, was a privately owned mass transit system in Southern California consisting of electrically powered streetcars, interurban cars, and buses and was the largest electric railway system in the world in the 1920s. Organized around the city centers of Los Angeles and San Bernardino, it connected cities in Los Angeles County, Orange County, San Bernardino County and Riverside County.

The system shared dual gauge track with the  narrow gauge Los Angeles Railway, "Yellow Car," or "LARy" system on Main Street in downtown Los Angeles (directly in front of the 6th and Main terminal), on 4th Street, and along Hawthorne Boulevard south of downtown Los Angeles toward the cities of Hawthorne, Gardena, and Torrance.

Districts

The system had four districts:
 Northern District: San Gabriel Valley, including Pasadena, Mount Lowe, South Pasadena, Alhambra, El Monte, Covina, Duarte, Glendora, Azusa, Sierra Madre, and Monrovia.
 Eastern District: Pomona, San Bernardino, Arrowhead Springs, Riverside, Rialto and Redlands in the Inland Empire.
 Southern District: Long Beach, Newport Beach, Huntington Beach, San Pedro via Dominguez, Santa Ana, El Segundo, Redondo Beach via Gardena, and San Pedro Via Torrance.
 Western District: Hollywood, Glendale/Burbank, San Fernando Valley, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Manhattan/Redondo/Hermosa Beaches, Venice, Playa Del Rey.

History

Origins
Electric trolleys first appeared in Los Angeles in 1887. In 1895 the Pasadena & Pacific Railway was created from a merger of the Pasadena and Los Angeles Railway and the Los Angeles Pacific Railway (to Santa Monica.) The Pasadena & Pacific Railway boosted Southern California tourism, living up to its motto "from the mountains to the sea."

The Pacific Electric Railway was created in 1901 by railroad executive Henry E. Huntington and banker Isaias W. Hellman.  As a Vice President of the Southern Pacific Railroad (SP), operated by his uncle, Collis P. Huntington, Huntington had a background in electric trolley lines in San Francisco where he oversaw SP's effort to consolidate many smaller street railroads into one organized network. Hellman, the President of the Nevada Bank, San Francisco's largest, became one of the largest bond holders for these lines and he and the younger Huntington developed a close business relationship. The success of their San Francisco trolley adventure and Hellman's experience in financing some early Los Angeles trolley lines led them to invest in the purchase of some existing downtown Los Angeles lines which they began to standardize and organize into one network called the Los Angeles Railway. When uncle Collis died, Henry lost a boardroom battle for control of the Southern Pacific to Union Pacific President E. H. Harriman.  Huntington then decided to focus his energies on Southern California.

In May 1901, Hellman, who had been Southern California's leading banker for almost three decades (and owned much property down there), wrote Huntington that "the time is at hand when we should commence building suburban railroads out of the city." Hellman added that he had already tasked engineer Epes Randolph to survey and lay out the company's first line which would be to Long Beach. In that same year, Huntington and Hellman incorporated a new entity, the Pacific Electric Railway of California, formed to construct new electric rail lines to connect Los Angeles with surrounding cities. Hellman and his group of investors owned the controlling majority of stock (double that of Huntington's) and the newspapers of the time referred to it as the Huntington-Hellman syndicate. Using surrogates, the syndicate began purchasing property and rights-of-way. The company's first main project, the line to Long Beach, opened July 4, 1902.

Huntington experienced periods of opposition from organized labor with the construction of the new railways. Tensions between union leaders and like-minded Los Angeles businessmen were high from the early 1900s up through the 1920s. Strikes and boycotts troubled the Pacific Electric throughout those years until they reached the height of violence in the 1919 Streetcar Strike of Los Angeles. The efforts of organized labor simmered with the onset of World War I.

Railroads were one part of the enterprise. Revenue from passenger traffic rarely generated a profit, unlike freight. The real money for the investors was in supplying electric power to new communities and in developing and selling real estate. To get the railways and electricity to their towns, local groups offered the Huntington interest opportunities in local land. Soon Huntington and his partners had significant holdings in the land companies developing Naples, Bay City (Seal Beach), Huntington Beach, Newport Beach and Redondo Beach.

Harriman, who controlled the powerful Southern Pacific Railroad, was concerned with the competition that these new electric lines gave his steam railroad traffic, and had been prodding Huntington for joint ownership of the lines but Huntington refused to negotiate. In early 1903, Harriman proposed a franchise plan with three-cent fare plan to the Los Angeles City Council, a plan which, if accepted, would have handicapped the other railways severely. Huntington countered with a ticket book which gave the rider  of travel for $6.25 (), which undercut the Harriman strategy. The Council vetoed the franchise idea, unable to believe adequate service could be provided for such a low fare. Then, on April 14, 1903, Harriman bought Hook's Los Angeles Traction Company, which ran lines within the downtown area and, through its California Pacific subsidiary, was constructing a line from Los Angeles to San Pedro.

The final confrontation came over a bidding war for the 6th Street franchise, in which the franchise (thought to be worth maybe $10,000), finally went to the top bidder for $110,000 (equivalent to $ in ), with Harriman the secret winner. In May 1903, Huntington made an overnight trip to San Francisco and worked out an arrangement with Harriman.  The Pacific Electric would get the Los Angeles Traction Lines, SP's San Gabriel Valley Rapid Transit Railway line, the 6th Street franchise, and some downtown trackage. In return, Harriman got 40.3% of PE stock, an amount equal to Huntington's, with Hellman, Borel and De Guigne owning the remaining 20%. Huntington could expand the PE as he saw fit, but he was not to compete with existing SP lines. A byproduct of this sale was that Harriman sold the banking unit of his Wells Fargo Company to Hellman who merged it with his Nevada Bank operations and established the Pacific Coast's largest, most powerful bank.

Construction

On June 6, 1903, Huntington created the Los Angeles Inter-Urban Railway, capitalized at $10 million (equivalent to $ in ), with plans to extend lines to Santa Ana, Newport Beach, the San Fernando Valley, La Habra, Redlands and Riverside, with branches to Colton and San Bernardino. He simultaneously created the Los Angeles Land Company. Huntington owned almost all the stock in the companies, with token amounts allotted to company directors. Although the company allowed Huntington to proceed with construction plans unencumbered by outside interference, the poor state of the bond market meant that he had to turn to stockholders to finance expansion. In 1904 he acquired and finished the Los Angeles and Glendale Railway.  In June, LAIU assumed control of the Riverside and Arlington Railway and the Santa Ana and Orange Motor Railway, and soon after, PE and LAIU finished their extension to Huntington Beach and began building a line to Covina.

Huntington continued to expand and not declare profits. On December 7, 1904, the Hellman group sold the rest of their shares and bonds in PE and LAIU to Huntington and Harriman for $1.2 million (equivalent to $ in ). Huntington and Harriman were now equal partners in ownership of the Pacific Electric. The Hellman syndicate retained their 45% interest in the Los Angeles Railway, which they thought would eventually declare dividends.

By 1905, the Newport and Santa Ana lines were completed. In 1906, the Newport line was extended to Balboa, and in late 1906, lines to Sierra Madre and Oak Knoll in Pasadena were finished. The two firms controlled 449 miles of track, with the Pacific Electric at 197 miles and the LAIU, 252 miles. Huntington purchased the Los Angeles and Redondo Railway in July 1905, along with the Redondo Land Company, which owned 90% of the land in the beach community. This announcement precipitated a land boom in the area which resulted in a quick return of Huntington's entire investment in the area and in the railway.

On March 19, 1906, an agreement was reached to sell control of the Los Angeles Pacific Railroad lines, owned by Moses Sherman and Eli P. Clark, for a reported $6 million to Harriman (equivalent to $ in ); this turned over all the lines in downtown Los Angeles to Santa Monica and down the coast to Redondo Beach to the Southern Pacific. In January 1907, the Hellman syndicate, after seeing that Huntington ran the Los Angeles Railway similarly to PE, continually expanding and not declaring dividends, sold their 45% stake in the Los Angeles Railway to Harriman and the Southern Pacific.

The Covina line was completed in 1907, as well as a line from Monrovia to Glendora. The system reached La Habra in 1908.  By 1910 PE operated nearly  of track. Routes had been built into or passed through areas just beginning to grow.

1905 was the Pacific Electric's most profitable year, when the road made $90,711 (equivalent to $ in ). Profits from the Huntington Land and Improvement Company made up for the poor earnings of the interurban system, with profits of $151,000 in 1905 rising to $402,000 in 1907 (equivalent to $ and $ in ).  However, in 1909, earnings were only $75,000.

Huntington had begun long negotiations with Harriman about consolidating the Los Angeles electric railways beginning in 1907. There had always been a difference between the two men as to the purpose of the railway, with Huntington seeing the PE as a means to facilitate his real estate efforts, and Harriman seeing it as part of the Southern Pacific's overall transportation system in Southern California. Harriman left Huntington alone until 1910, when the former refused to allow the latter to run a line to San Diego that would have interfered with a competitive arrangement Harriman had worked out with the Santa Fe Railway.

In July 1908, Huntington leased all the lines of the Los Angeles Inter-Urban Railway to Harriman. In 1909 he sold the systems in Fresno and Santa Clara County to the Southern Pacific.  Talks paused after the death of Harriman on September 9, 1909, but resumed in early 1910. On September 27, 1910, Huntington and Southern Pacific management came to a final agreement. In a complicated stock and bond transaction, Huntington conveyed his 50% of Pacific Electric to the Southern Pacific, while he acquired SP's 45% interest in the Los Angeles Railway. In addition, Huntington conveyed the Los Angeles and Redondo Railway to the Southern Pacific. Huntington retained control of the Los Angeles Railway, the narrow gauge street car system known locally as "Yellow Cars," until a controlling interest in this company was sold off by Huntington's estate in 1945.

The Great Merger and the "New" Pacific Electric

In what was called the "Great Merger" of September 1, 1911, the Southern Pacific created a new Pacific Electric Railway Company, with all electrical operations now under the Pacific Electric name. The constituent railroads were:

 Original "old" PE owned by Huntington
 Los Angeles Inter-Urban Railway
 Los Angeles Pacific Railway
 Los Angeles and Redondo Railway
 San Bernardino Valley Traction Company
 San Bernardino Interurban Railway
 Redlands Central
 Riverside and Arlington Railway Company

Following these acquisitions, PE was the largest operator of interurban electric railway passenger service in the world, with 2,160 daily trains over  of track. It operated to many destinations in Southern California, particularly to the south and east.

The Southern Pacific now began to emphasize freight operations. From 1911, when revenue from freight was $519,226 ($ adjusted for inflation), freight revenue climbed to $1,203,956 in 1915 (equivalent to $ in ), 13% of total revenue.

During the 1920s profits were good and the lines were extended to the Pasadena area, to the beaches at Santa Monica, Del Rey, Manhattan/Redondo/Hermosa Beach and Long Beach in Los Angeles County, and to Newport Beach and Huntington Beach in Orange County. Extra service beyond the normal schedules was provided on weekends, particularly in the late afternoon when passengers wanted to return simultaneously. Comedian Harold Lloyd highlighted the popularity and utility of the system in an extended sequence in his 1924 film Girl Shy, where, after finding one Red Car too crowded, he commandeered another and drove at high speed through the streets of Culver City and Los Angeles.

PE operated frequent freight trains under electric power throughout its service area (as far as ) to Redlands, including operating electrically powered Railway Post Office routes, one of the few U.S. interurbans to do so. This provided important revenue. The PE was responsible for an innovation in grade crossing safety: the automatic electromechanical grade crossing signal, nicknamed the wigwag. This device was quickly adopted by other railroads. A few wigwags continue in operation .

During this period, the Los Angeles Railway provided local streetcar service in central Los Angeles and to nearby communities. These trolleys were known as the "Yellow Cars" and carried more passengers than the PE's "Red Cars" since they ran in the most densely populated portions of Los Angeles, including south to Hawthorne and along Pico Boulevard to near West Los Angeles to terminate at the huge Sears Roebuck store and distribution center (the L.A. Railway's most popular line, the "P" line). The Yellow Cars' unusual narrow gauge PCC streetcars, by now painted MTA two-tone green, continued to operate until the end of rail service in 1963.

Large profits from land development were generated along the routes of the new lines. Huntington Beach was incorporated in 1909 and developed by the Huntington Beach Company, a real-estate development firm owned by Henry Huntington, which still owns both land in the city and most of the mineral rights.

There are other local streetcar suburbs. Angelino Heights was built around the Temple Street horsecar, which was later upgraded to electric streetcar as part of the Yellow Car system. Highland Park was developed along the Figueroa Street trolley lines and railroads linking downtown Los Angeles and Pasadena. Huntington owned nearly all the stock in the Pacific Electric Land Company. West Hollywood was established by Moses Sherman and his partners of the Los Angeles and Pacific Railway. Moses Sherman, Harry Chandler, Hobart Johnstone Whitley, and others bought the entire southern San Fernando Valley in 1910. The electric railway and a $500,000 boulevard called Sherman Way connected the three townsites they were selling. These included Van Nuys, Marion (now Reseda), and Owensmouth (now Canoga Park). Parts of Sherman Way are now called Chandler Boulevard and Van Nuys Boulevard.

The railway company "connected all the dots on the map and was a leading player itself in developing all the real estate that lay in between the dots".

Decline

Huntington's involvement with urban rail was intimately tied to his real estate development operations. Real estate development was so lucrative for Huntington and SP that they could use the Red Car as a loss leader. However, by 1920, when most of the company's holdings had been developed, their major income source began to deplete. Many rural passenger lines were unprofitable, with losses offset by revenue generated from passenger lines in populated corridors and from freight operations. The least-used Red Car lines were converted to cheaper bus routes as early as 1925. In 1936, Pacific Electric acquired the Motor Transit Company, which operated intercity bus service within Southern California.

In the pre-automobile era, electric interurban rail was the most economical way to connect outlying suburban and exurban parcels to central cities.

Although the railway owned extensive private roadbeds, usually between urban areas, much PE trackage in urban areas such as downtown Los Angeles west of the Los Angeles River was in streets shared with automobiles and trucks. Virtually all street crossings were at-grade, and increasing automobile traffic led to decreasing Red Car speeds on much of its trackage.  At its nadir, the busy Santa Monica Boulevard line, which connected Los Angeles to Hollywood and on to Beverly Hills and Santa Monica, had an average speed of

Traffic congestion was of such great concern by the late 1930s that the influential Automobile Club of Southern California engineered an elaborate plan to create an elevated freeway-type Motorway System, a key aspect of which was the dismantling of the streetcar lines, replacing them with buses that could run on both local streets and on the new express roads.

When the freeway system was planned in the 1930s the city planners planned to include interurban tracks in the center margin of each freeway but the plan was never implemented. There was one exception that was within the Hollywood Freeway through Cahuenga Pass. The San Fernando Valley line from Hollywood took to the center of the Freeway over the pass and exited at Lankershim Boulevard. When that service was terminated, the freeway was expanded onto the former PE roadbed.

The Whittier & Fullerton line was cut in 1938, Redondo Beach, Newport Beach, Sawtelle via San Vicente, and Riverside in 1940. When the San Bernardino Freeway opened in 1941 but was not yet connected to the Hollywood Freeway, while the "Four Way" overpass was being constructed, westbound car traffic from the SB freeway poured onto downtown streets near the present Union Station. PE's multiple car trains coming and going from Pasadena, Sierra Madre, and Monrovia/Glendora used those same streets the final few miles from private right-of-way to reach the 6th and Main PE terminal and were bogged down within this jammed traffic. Schedules could not be met, plus former patrons were now driving. The San Bernardino line, Pomona branch, Temple City branch via Alhambra's Main Street, San Bernardino's Mountain View local to 34th Street, Santa Monica Boulevard via Beverly Hills, and all remaining Pasadena local services were all cut in 1941. Permission was received in September 1942 to abandon the shuttle line to General Hospital which company officials said had been operating at a loss for several months.

The Glendale line survived to the early 1950s due to the convenience of a subway into downtown Los Angeles and used the company's only modern equipment, a group of streamlined PCC cars. In 1940, Pacific Electric sold its Glendale, Burbank, and Pasadena operations to Pacific City Lines. San Bernardino operations were sold to San Bernardino Valley Transit.

PE carried increased passenger loads during World War II, when Los Angeles County's population nearly doubled as war industries concentrated in the region attracting millions of workers. There were several years when the company's income statement showed a profit when gasoline and rubber were rationed and much of the populace depended on mass transit. At peak operation toward the end of the war, the PE dispatched over 10,000 trains daily and was a major employer in Southern California. However, the equipment in use was old and suffered from deferred maintenance.

The nation's last interurban Railroad post office (RPO) service was operated by PE on its San Bernardino Line. This was inaugurated comparatively late, on September 2, 1947. It left LA's new Union Station interurban yard on the west side of the terminal, turned north onto Alameda Street at 12:45 pm and reached San Bernardino at 4:40 pm, taking three hours for the trip while making postal stops en route as required. It did not operate on Sundays or holidays. This last RPO was pulled off May 6, 1950.

Aware that most new arrivals planned to stay in the region after the war, local municipal governments, Los Angeles County and the state agreed that a massive infrastructure improvement program was necessary. At that time politicians agreed to construct a web of freeways across the region. This was seen as a better solution than a new mass transit system or an upgrade of the PE.

Freeway construction

Large-scale land acquisition for new freeway construction began in earnest in 1951. The original four freeways of the area, the Hollywood, Arroyo Seco (formerly Pasadena), Harbor, and San Bernardino, were in use or being completed. Partial completion of the San Bernardino Freeway to Aliso Street near downtown Los Angeles led to traffic chaos when inbound automobiles left the freeway and entered city streets.

The Southern District's passenger service to Santa Ana and Baldwin Park ended in 1950 as did the Northern District's Pasadena's Oak Knoll line, and the Sierra Madre line. The Western District's last line to Venice and Santa Monica also ended. The Pasadena and Monrovia/Glendora lines ended in 1951.

The various public agencies—city, county, and state—agreed with PE that further abandoning service was necessary and PE happily complied. PE management had earlier compared costs of refurbishing the Northern District interurban lines to Pasadena, Monrovia/Glendora, and Baldwin Park versus the alternative of converting to buses, and found in favor of the latter.

Remaining PE passenger service was sold off in 1953 to Metropolitan Coach Lines, which was given two years of rent-free usage of rail facilities. Jesse Haugh, of Metropolitan Coach Lines, was a former executive of Pacific City Lines which together with National City Lines acquired local streetcar systems across the country with the intention of shutting them down and converting them to bus operation in what became known as the Great American Streetcar Scandal.

Several lines operating to the north and the west which used the Belmont Tunnel from the Subway Terminal Building downtown ceased operation – the Hollywood Boulevard and Beverly Hills lines were shut down in 1954 and service to the San Fernando Valley, Burbank and Glendale using newly acquired PCC streetcars lasted only to 1955. The Bellflower line to the south closed in 1958 as the Golden State/Santa Ana (Interstate 5) neared completion.

Public ownership
The Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority was established in 1951 to study the possibility of establishing a publicly owned monorail line running north from Long Beach to downtown Los Angeles and then west to Panorama City in the San Fernando Valley. In 1954, the agency's powers were expanded to allow it to propose a more extensive regional mass-transit system. In 1957, it was given the authority to operate transit lines.

In 1958, the California state government through its Public Utility Commission took over the remaining and most popular lines from Metropolitan Coach Lines. The MTA also purchased the remaining streetcar "Yellow Car" lines of the successor of the Los Angeles Railway, then called Los Angeles Transit Lines. LARy/LATL had been purchased from the Huntington estate by National City Lines in 1945.  The MTA started operating all lines as a single system on March 3, 1958.

The Los Angeles-to-Long Beach passenger rail line served the longest, from July 4, 1902, until April 9, 1961. It was both the first and last interurban passenger line of the former Pacific Electric system. It was replaced by the Motor Coach 36f ("F" representing Freeway Flyer) route. The line, which used long stretches of open country running on private right-of-way, was later utilized when the Southern California RTD was designing and building the Metro Blue Line light rail line. The Blue Line, the first modern mass transit line in Los Angeles since the discontinuation of the Red Car service, was first opened in 1990.

The few remaining trolley-coach routes and narrow gauge streetcar routes of the former Los Angeles Railway "Yellow Cars" were removed in early 1963. The public transportation system continued to be operated by the Los Angeles MTA until the agency was reorganized and relaunched as the Southern California Rapid Transit District in September 1964.

The Interstate Commerce Commission approved the merger of Pacific Electric into the Southern Pacific Railroad on August 12, 1965.  Prior to the merger, PE's lucrative freight service had been by Southern Pacific diesel-electric locomotives on the heavy-duty PE rail-bed and rails and tripping the "Wig-Wag" crossing signals.

A Christmas tree lot was operated in the small stub yard at the northwest corner of Willow Street and Long Beach Boulevard – the stock arrived in and was stored in a steel sided box car until the Christmas trees were prepared for sale – the busy intersection was where dual trackage departed Long Beach Boulevard and joined the private right-of-way from Huntington Beach and Seal Beach towards Los Angeles. The crossing signal there was the first installation of the final design of the Magnetic Watchman wigwag  crossing signal and crossbucks. Oil tank cars were still shuttled to Signal Hill even as the surface street tracks were torn up from the center of Long Beach Boulevard long after the copper overhead catenary supply wires had been removed. Southern Pacific (now part of Union Pacific) continues to operate freight service utilizing former PE right-of-way.

Post-closure

Successors
During the 1970s, there was serious discussion about the need for additional mass transit systems based on environmental concerns, increasing population and the 1973 oil crisis. A 1974 inquiry in the Senate heard allegations about the role that General Motors and other companies, including Pacific City Lines, played in the dismantlement of streetcar systems across the United States and in particular in Los Angeles, in what became known as the Great American Streetcar Scandal. The plot of the 1988 movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit is loosely modeled on the alleged conspiracy to dismantle the streetcar lines in Los Angeles.

In 1976, the state of California formed the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission to coordinate the Southern California Rapid Transit District's (SCRTD, advertised and known locally by Angelenos as the RTD) efforts with those of various municipal transit systems in the area and to take over planning of countywide transportation systems. The SCRTD continued planning of the Metro subway (the Red Line), while the LACTC developed plans for the light rail system. Caltrans surveyed the condition of former Pacific Electric lines in 1982. Construction began in 1985. In 1988, the two agencies formed a third entity under which all rail construction would be consolidated, and in 1993, the SCRTD and the LACTC were merged into the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (LACMTA).

When the Metro Blue Line commenced commuter service in 1990 from downtown Los Angeles to Long Beach, electric rail passenger train service returned to Los Angeles, using much of the PE roadbed that ceased in 1965. Since then, the LACMTA has opened additional lines.

The Metro Red Line subway opened next in three parts between 1993 and 2000, first from Union Station in central Los Angeles connecting with short subway which forms the northern terminus of Metro Blue Line at 7th/Figueroa Metro Center station, and then west under Wilshire Boulevard onward to Western Avenue. Construction was halted in 1985 due to an unrelated explosion of methane fumes in an underground portion of a Ross Dress for Less store along the proposed route turning north at Fairfax Avenue to Hollywood, which was to service the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum Row and the La Brea Tar Pits. After then-Congressman Henry Waxman banned federal funding for subway construction underneath Wilshire Boulevard past Western Avenue, the subway had to be re-routed. The second portion was the result of this: the subway now traveled north under Vermont Avenue to Hollywood Boulevard turning west to Highland Avenue. When the Hollywood Freeway was built, two PE tracks remained in the center, entering the canyon to Cahuenga Pass under the freeway at what is now the northbound Highland Avenue onramp. PE trackage continued to provide mass transit efficiently until the line was abandoned; the former roadbed was eventually converted for highway use. RTD bus service replaced rail service and remained the highest daily passenger volume corridor. When the third expansion of the Red Line subway opened, most long-distance commuter bus routes from Downtown Los Angeles to the San Fernando Valley were trimmed to connect with the new subway stations, reducing diesel fumes and motor vehicle congestion. At the northernmost Metro Red Line terminus, North Hollywood, connections can be made to several MTA bus routes of the San Fernando Valley, including several routes along the private right-of-way Metro Rapidway Metro Orange Line (route 901) dedicated exclusively for MTA vehicles that replicates many PE thru lines by transferring buses.

The Metro Green Line opened in 1995. Its right-of-way was planned from inception to be entirely isolated and protected, running in the median of Interstate 105, the Century Freeway west from Norwalk, connecting at Rosa Parks Station with Metro Blue Line, then further west to Los Angeles International Airport, and then south on elevated tracks to Redondo Beach. The Century Freeway, named for Century Boulevard the equivalent of 100th Street, was the world's first freeway built to bypass and relieve traffic congestion from another freeway – the 91, Artesia Freeway. It reutilized a segment of the West Santa Ana Branch for its part of its route.

The Metro Gold Line opened in 2003, connecting downtown Los Angeles to Pasadena. Mostly at-grade, the line runs along the former Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad (AT&SF) historic Super Chief right-of-way, which was converted to dual track overhead electric light rail. California's oldest surviving iron railroad bridge, built across the Arroyo Seco (1895), was also included in the conversion. The Gold Line Eastside Extension now connects Union Station, Downtown Los Angeles to East Los Angeles. A second extension extended east from Pasadena, again utilizing the former AT&SF right-of-way in the median of Interstate 210.

Metrolink (Southern California) provides weekday interurban commuters with high speed reversible trains – consisting of Diesel Locomotives hauling double-deck high capacity passenger cars servicing much of Los Angeles County and operating to connections in Ventura County, San Bernardino County, Riverside County, Orange County, and San Diego County as well.

 Waterfront Red Car  was a streetcar line connecting the World Cruise Center south to Ports O' Call and the 22nd Street terminal, where a shuttle bus connected other attractions along the San Pedro waterfront. Two newly constructed Red Car replicas, #500 & #501, provided service along the line on cruise ship arrival/departure days as well as weekends – Friday, Saturday and Sunday. In addition, a restored 1907-vintage Pacific Electric car, No. #1508 originally rebuilt from two wrecks as a unique motor coach, was available for special rail excursions. It began operation as a tourist attraction on July 19, 2003. The last day of service was on September 27, 2015.  The Port of Los Angeles financed, constructed and operated the replica equipment on heritage PE track, one of many of its waterfront revival projects. A new pedestrian esplanade featuring public art and fountains, sculpture and fountains was built alongside the track from the World Cruise Center to the Maritime Museum and Fire Boat Station. It connected to the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium and other San Pedro attractions when using the Waterfront Red Car trolley/shuttle. There were plans to extend the Waterfront Red Car line approximately two more miles south to the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium and the tidepools of Cabrillo Beach, which never came to pass.  Plans for an extension of the line north into Wilmington to Avalon Boulevard along existing trackage were discussed as a part of the waterfront improvement plan. These same plans led to this line being discontinued in favor of redevelopment. Some transit advocates proposed linking this line to the Metro Blue Line Long Beach terminus, a very intensive and expensive expansion.

The E Line (formerly the Expo Line from 2012–2019) is a 22-mile (35 km) light rail line in Los Angeles County, California, running between Santa Monica to East Los Angeles. It is one of the six lines in the Los Angeles Metro Rail system and is operated by the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro).

The western portion of the E line was originally named the Expo Line after Exposition Boulevard, along which it runs for most of its route, the line was renamed the E Line in late 2019, while retaining the aqua-colored line and icons used to designate it on maps. After the Regional Connector opened on June 16, 2023, the original E Line was joined with the Eastside portion of the L Line to create the current extended E Line, which is colored gold on maps.

The K Line is a light rail line running north-south between the Jefferson Park and Westchester neighborhoods of Los Angeles, California, passing through various South Los Angeles neighborhoods and the city of Inglewood. It is one of six lines in the Los Angeles Metro Rail system operated by the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (LACMTA). It was opened on October 7, 2022, making it the system's newest line.

The current K Line represents the initial operating segment of the Crenshaw/LAX Line project, which began construction in 2014. A segment connecting to the C Line via a wye is expected to open in 2024; the C and K Lines will be integrated and services realigned at that time. The C Line's western terminus will be redirected to LAX/Metro Transit Center station and the K Line extended to Redondo Beach station. A connection to the new LAX Automated People Mover is planned for late 2024.

The Regional Connector Transit Project constructed a 1.9-mile (3.1 km) light rail tunnel for the Los Angeles Metro Rail system in Downtown Los Angeles. It connected the A and E lines with the former L Line. The A and E lines previously both terminated at 7th Street/Metro Center station, while the L Line ran through Little Tokyo/Arts District to either Azusa or East Los Angeles. The project provides a one-seat ride into the core of Downtown for passengers on those lines who previously needed to transfer, thus reducing or altogether eliminating many transfers of passengers traveling across the region via Downtown Los Angeles.

Proposed developments
More rail lines are in the planning and building stages. Light rail is being designed to connect the city center of San Bernardino with the University of Redlands via the Redlands Subdivision by 2021. It will also be the first line in the country with a zero-emission, battery-operated passenger train.

The "Foothill Extension" of the Gold Line has continued with Phase 2 to extend the service to Montclair. As of March 2020, there was some support for extending the Gold Line to Ontario International Airport, though there are neither plans nor funding for this segment as of 2022. The line opened to Azusa on March 5, 2016. Phase 2B of the Foothill Extension began construction on July 10, 2020.

In 2005, with growing congestion along Wilshire Boulevard to the Westside, then Congressman Henry Waxman introduced legislation to repeal the ban on federal dollars being used for subway tunneling underneath Wilshire Boulevard he had passed 20 years earlier. The ban resulted in the Red Line subway ending at Wilshire and Western Avenue before being re-routed up Vermont Avenue towards the Valley. In 2006, the MTA renamed the line from Union Station to Wilshire/Western the Purple Line to differentiate it from the Red Line, which splits at Wilshire/Vermont. As a result, in May 2012, the MTA approved plans to extend the Purple Line to the west as far as the VA Hospital in Westwood, on an alignment mostly following Wilshire Boulevard, the city's most densely populated corridor, as was originally planned in mass transit plans designed as early as the 1920s. In 2005, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa made as one of his most publicized campaign promises a pledge to set the wheels in motion for eventual construction of the "Subway to the Sea" as he called it. Construction finally began in 2014 on the Purple Line Extension, with the first phase to LaCienega Boulevard scheduled for completion in 2023, and full completion to the VA Hospital campus in West Los Angeles projected for the 2030s, though if additional funding can be found, the subway could be completed earlier.

Also under consideration is a new passenger rail line on the abandoned Harbor Subdivision railway corridor, connecting Carson to downtown Los Angeles via Torrance and the LA west side. Connections to the Harbor Subdivision from the World Cruise Center cruise ship terminal in the San Pedro District of Los Angeles Harbor to the Long Beach Transit Mall and the Metro Blue Line are also under evaluation.

The West Santa Ana Branch was acquired by local transit agencies with the intent to reactivate the line for rail transit. The West Santa Ana Branch Transit Corridor project aims install a new light rail line to Artesia. On the south end of the line, the Orange County Transportation Authority is constructing the OC Streetcar, a modern streetcar system expected to commence service in 2022.

Legacy

The Pacific Electric Trail is a 21-mile (34-kilometer) rail trail that has been constructed along the former San Bernardino Line. , approximately 21 miles (33-kilometer) have been completed, from the planned western terminus at Huntington Drive in Claremont () to the temporary eastern terminus at Cider Avenue in Rialto ()., as well as connection to a 6.9-mile (11-kilometer) rail trail project being planned to run from Claremont to San Dimas.

Plot elements of the 1988 movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit are loosely based on folklore about the decline of streetcars in LA.

A transportation attraction based on the PE, the Red Car Trolley, is located at Disney California Adventure Park at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim. It features two stylized replicas of PE rolling stock and is the first attraction in the park to provide transportation, running from Buena Vista Street to Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: Breakout! in Hollywood Land, with four stations. Construction began on January 4, 2010, and the attraction opened on June 15, 2012. The Ghost Town & Calico Railroad attraction at Knott's Berry Farm uses a PE depot formerly located at Hansen station along the ROW in Stanton as the main station building. The building was moved to the theme park in 1952.

The iconic red livery of the Red Cars is also said to be the inspiration for the livery of trains on the Keikyu Railway, a commuter railway out of Tokyo with origins in an interurban line.

Routes

Northern Division:
 Alhambra–San Gabriel
 Annandale
 Arlington–Corona
 Arrowhead
 Covina
 East Washington
 El Monte–Baldwin Park
 Highland
 Lamanda Park
 Monrovia–Glendora
 Mount Lowe
 North Lake
 Pasadena Short Line
 Pasadena via Oak Knoll
 Ontario–San Antonio Heights
 Pomona
 Pomona–Claremont
 Redlands
 Riverside–Arlington
 Riverside–Rialto
 San Bernardino–Riverside
 San Dimas
 San Dimas Local
 Shorb
 Sierra Madre
 Sierra Vista Local
 South Pasadena Local
 Upland–Ontario
 Upland–San Bernardino

Western Division:
 Brush Canyon
 Coldwater Canyon
 Echo Park Avenue
 Edendale Local
 Glendale–Burbank
 Hollywood
 Lankershim–Van Nuys
 Laurel Canyon
 Owensmouth
 Redondo Beach via Playa del Rey
 San Fernando
 Santa Monica Air Line
 Sawtelle
 Sherman
 Soldiers' Home
 Venice–Inglewood
 Venice–Playa del Rey
 Venice Short Line
 West 16th Street
 Western and Franklin Avenue
 Westgate

Southern Division:
 American Avenue
 Balboa
 Bellflower
 Catalina Dock
 East Seventh Street
 East Third Street
 Fullerton
 Hawthorne–El Nido
 Hawthorne–El Segundo
 Huntington Beach–La Bolsa
 La Habra–Fullerton–Yorba Linda
 Long Beach
 Long Beach–San Pedro
 Redondo Beach via Gardena
 San Pedro via Dominguez
 San Pedro via Gardena
 Santa Ana
 Santa Ana–Huntington Beach
 Santa Ana–Orange
 Seal Beach
 Seal Beach–Huntington Beach–Newport Beach
 Terminal Island
 Torrance
 Watts
 Whittier

Facilities

The Pacific Electric railway electrification system was based on 600 volt direct current power delivered to cars via overhead line. The San Bernardino Line operated partially at 1200 volts DC.

Some maintenance and operational sites include:
 West Hollywood Car Barn and Yard
 Ocean Park Car Barn and Yard
 Torrance Shops
 Pacific Electric Building (Station at 6th & Main Streets)
 Subway Terminal Building (Station at 4th and Hill Streets)
 Belmont Tunnel (Hollywood Subway)
 Substation No. 8
 Substation No. 14
 Redlands Trolley Barn

Fleet

The number of cars that Pacific Electric owned after the merger would require its own separate page.

Passenger cars

Work cars
 LAP trolley wire greaser 1898–1957
 PE tower car 1915–1957

Locomotives

 1600 class electric locomotives

Freight cars
 LA&R flat-top caboose 1896
 PE flat-top caboose PE 1939
 LS&MS caboose 1915
 LV caboose 1926
 RF&P caboose 1905
 SSC box car 1924

Buses
 GM yellow coach

See also

 Belmont Tunnel
 Historic Downtown Los Angeles Streetcar
 Pacific Electric Building
 Pacific Electric Railroad Bridge
 Redlands Trolley Barn
 San Diego Electric Railway
 Streetcars in Los Angeles
 Subway Terminal Building

Notes

Bibliography

Predecessor lines

External links

 Pacific Electric Railway system map, 1949
 Pacific Electric Railway Elec Railway Historical Association of So. California guide to PE traction heritage
 The Red Cars of Los Angeles (USC archives)
 Surviving Equipment of the Pacific Electric Railway

Photos
 Pacific Electric Railway Historical Society Online Image Archive
 DVD Documentary – This Was Pacific Electric – Complete documentary on the Pacific Electric. Movies, stills, and interviews.
 Pacific Electric photos (Jim Stubchaer)
 Pacific Electric Subway – Toluca Portal: 1925–1955 – 2008 photos (Harry Marnell)
 Pacific Electric Railway Monuments archival photographs
 Pacific Electric Subway photos (Elson Trinidad)
 Bill Volkmer collection of Red Car photos and post cards

Electric railways in California
Interurban railways in California
Light rail in California
Public transportation in Southern California
Defunct California railroads
Defunct public transport operators in the United States
Defunct companies based in Greater Los Angeles
Passenger rail transportation in California
History of Los Angeles
History of Los Angeles County, California
Public transportation in Los Angeles
Public transportation in Los Angeles County, California
Public transportation in Orange County, California
Public transportation in Riverside County, California
Public transportation in San Bernardino County, California
Transportation companies based in California
Railway companies established in 1901
1901 establishments in California
Railway companies disestablished in 1961
1961 disestablishments in California
Former Class I railroads in the United States
Predecessors of the Southern Pacific Transportation Company
Southern Pacific Railroad subsidiaries

Pacific Electric


John Macmillan Herdman (born 20 July 1941) is a Scottish novelist, short story writer and literary critic.  He is the author of seventeen books including five novels and various works of shorter fiction, a play, two critical studies and a memoir, and he has contributed to twenty  other books.  His work has been translated, broadcast and anthologized, and taught at universities in France, Australia and Russia.

Life and career

John Herdman was born in Edinburgh and educated there at Merchiston Castle School, and then at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he graduated with a double first in English in 1963 and afterwards did research in Scottish literature.  At a later date he returned to Cambridge to study church history for a Diploma in Theology, and in 1988 was awarded his Cambridge Ph.D for his published critical work.  In the late 1960s and 1970s he was much involved in Scottish nationalism, both political and literary, a period recalled in his memoirs Poets, Pubs, Polls and Pillar Boxes (Akros, 1999) and Another Country (Thirsty Books, 2013).  He has held a Creative Writing Fellowship at Edinburgh University (1977–79), Hawthornden Writer's Fellowships (1989 and 1995), and the William Soutar Fellowship in Perth (1990–91), and has been Writer in Residence at Champlain College, Trent University, Canada (1998).  He has received two Scottish Arts Council Book Awards and four bursaries.  He is married and lives in Edinburgh.

Writing

As a fiction writer, Herdman's main publications have been Descent (1968), A Truth Lover (1973), Memoirs of my Aunt Minnie / Clapperton (1974), Pagan's Pilgrimage (1978), Stories Short and Tall (1979), Imelda and Other Stories (1993), Ghostwriting (1995), Four Tales (2000), The Sinister Cabaret (2001), and My Wife's Lovers (2007).  A French edition of Imelda appeared in 2006.

These works have been seen as continuing the tradition of James Hogg and R.L. Stevenson in Scottish fiction, but Herdman's main affinities are perhaps with European writers of the nineteenth century and with Irish and European modernism.

His fictions have a metaphysical flavour and a preoccupation with psychological duality, as well as strong elements of the surreal, the satirical and the grotesque.   The books were widely commented upon in Scotland on publication, and studies of interest include Macdonald Daly's introduction to Four Tales (Zoilus Press, 2000), Jean Berton's articles on Ghostwriting in Études Écossaises nos. 8 and 9 (Université de Stendhal-Grenoble 3, 2002 and 2003-4), and Maïca Sanconie's Postface to the French edition of Imelda (Quidam Editeur, 2006).  Herdman has been interviewed by Macdonald Daly in Southfields six point one (1999), and by Isobel Murray and Bob Tait in Scottish Writers Talking 3 (John Donald, 2006).  His plays Clapperton's Day and Cruising were successfully produced on the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1985 and 1997 respectively, the latter being published in 1997.

As  critic, Herdman has published Voice Without Restraint: Bob Dylan's Lyrics and their Background (London and New York, 1982; Japanese translation, Tokyo, 1983), and The Double in Nineteenth Century Fiction (London, 1990, and New York, 1991), and contributed to various critical volumes on Scottish literary subjects.  He has written very widely on modern and contemporary Scottish writers, including Hugh MacDiarmid, Sorley MacLean, David Lindsay, William Soutar,  Fionn MacColla,  Norman MacCaig, Tom Scott, Duncan Glen and D.M. Black.  He edited two volumes of The Third Statistical Account of Scotland: Vol. 22 (The County of Berwick) (1992), and Vol. 28 (The County of Roxburgh) (1992).  He is a past editor of Catalyst for the Scottish Viewpoint, and between 2004 and 2012 was co-editor (with Walter Perrie) of Fras and Fras Publications.

Bibliography

Fiction
 Descent (1968)
 A Truth Lover (1973)
 Memoirs of my Aunt Minnie / Clapperton (1974)
 Pagan's Pilgrimage (1978)
 Stories Short and Tall (1979)
 Imelda and Other Stories (1993)
 Ghostwriting (1995)
 Four Tales (2000)
 The Sinister Cabaret (2001)
 Imelda (French translation 2006)
 My Wife's Lovers (2007)

Non-fiction
 The Double in Nineteenth Century Fiction (1981)
 Voice Without Restraint: Bob Dylan's Lyrics and their Background (1982)

Anthologies etc
 Murray, Isobel (ed) Scottish Writers Talking 3: Interviews With Janice Galloway, John Herdman, Robin Jenkins, Joan Lingard, Ali Smith
 Royle, Trevor (ed) Conversations with Scottish Writers No 4

Articles
 Fionn MacColla: Art and Ideas, in Hearn, Sheila G. (ed.), Cencrastus No. 13, Summer 1983, pp. 11 - 13,

Reviews
 review of Mercier and Camier by Samuel Beckett, in Burnett, Ray (ed.), Calgacus 1, Winter 1975, p. 58,
 review of Kafka in Context by John Hibberd, in Burnett, Ray (ed.), Calgacus 3, Spring 1976, pp. 53 & 54,
 review of The Life and Work of David Lindsay by Bernard Sellin, in Murray, Glen (ed.), Cencrastus No. 8, Spring 1982, pp. 43 & 44,
 review of Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez, in Hearn, Sheila G. (ed.), Cencrastus No. 11, New Year 1983, pp. 38 & 39,

Further reading

1.  References in books and periodicals
 Alan Bold, Modern Scottish Literature, 1983, pp 259-60
 Douglas Gifford in Scottish Writing and Writers, ed. Norman Wilson (Ramsay Head Press), 1977, pp 16-17
 Edwin Morgan, Twentieth Century Scottish Classics (Book Trust Scotland pamphlet), 1987, p 9
 Roderick Watson, The Literature of Scotland, 1984, p 456; 2nd Edition, 2007, vol. II, The Twentieth Century, pp 260-61
 David Punter, "Heartlands: Contemporary Scottish Gothic", in Gothic Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1999,pp 101-18

2. Separate articles on John Herdman
 John Orr, Dark Horror and Black Humour: John Herdman and the Double in Scottish Fiction, in Cencrastus No. 7, Winter 1981-82, pp 26-29
 Hugh Macpherson, Scottish Writers: John Herdman, in Scottish Book Collector, Vol. 3, No. 7, Oct.-Nov. 1992, pp 23-26 (this includes a Bibliography)
 Jennie Renton, A Window on John Herdman, in Scottish Book Collector, Vol. 5, No. 7, Winter 1996-97, pp 23-24
 Unpublished MA Dissertation University of Aberdeen, 1984: Richard Gordon, Seriousness and Saving Irony in the Fiction of John Herdman
 Macdonald Daly, Interview with John Herdman (with a Bibliography), in Southfields, six point one, 1999, pp. 85-101
 Jean Berton, De l'élimination de l'auteur dans Ghostwriting de John Herdman, in Études Écossaises, Numéro 8, Université de Stendhal-Grenoble 3, 2002, pp 131-145
 Jean Berton, Les Fantômes du Nouvel-Âge dans Ghostwriting de John Herdman, in Études Écossaises, Numéro 9, Université de Stendhal-Grenoble 3, 2003-4, pp 323-340
 Isobel Murray and Bob Tait, Interview with John Herdman, in Scottish Writers Talking 3, ed. Isobel Murray, John Donald, Edinburgh, 2006, pp 59-100
  Maïca Sanconie, Postface to Imelda, trans. Maïca Sanconie, Quidam Editeur, Paris, 2006, pp 147-154
 Roderick Watson The Literature of Scotland: The Twentieth Century, Macmillan International Higher Education, 1984 pp 260, 261

Reviews and review articles in periodicals

 Douglas Eadie, review of A Truth Lover, Scottish International Volume 6, No. 7, September 1973, pp 38-40
 Frederic Lindsay, Both Sides of the Whale (review article on A Truth Lover), Akros, Vol. 8, No. 23, Dec. 1973, pp 38-42
 Bob Tait, Round the World in Eighty Ways (review article on Pagan's Pilgrimage), Akros, Vol. 13, No. 39, Dec. 1978, pp 126-31
 David Campbell, review of Pagan's Pilgrimage, New Edinburgh Review, Nos. 41-42, 1978, pp 66-67
 Peter Womack, Notes to Lyrics, review of Voice Without Restraint, in Cencrastus No. 9, Summer 1982, p.44,
 Tom (now known as Thom) Nairn, Innocence and Deviance (review of Three Novellas), in Cencrastus No. 27, Autumn 1987, pp 23-24,
 Douglas Gifford, review of Three Novellas, Books in Scotland, No. 26, Winter 1987, p 14
 John Burns, review of Three Novellas, Chapman No. 52 (Vol. 10, No. 3), Spring 1988, pp 91-92
 Douglas Gifford, review of Imelda and Other Stories, Books in Scotland No. 47, Autumn 1993, pp 1-2
 Angela Finlayson, review of Imelda and Other Stories, Chapman No. 81, 1995, pp 91-92
 Douglas Gifford, review of Ghostwriting, Books in Scotland No. 59, Autumn 1996, pp 3-4
 Gavin Wallace, review of Ghostwriting, Chapman No. 87, Autumn 1997, pp 95-97
 Isobel Murray, review of The Sinister Cabaret, Scottish Studies Review, Vol. 3, No. 1, Spring 2002, pp 138-140
 Andy Gloege, review of My Wife's Lovers, Edinburgh Review No. 121 ("Made in Poland"), 2007,pp.183-4
 Josef Raszkowski, review of Stories Short and Tall, in Cencrastus No. 2, Spring 1980, p. 41,
 Alan Taylor, Days of Poetry and Passion (review article on Another Country), The Herald (The Arts supplement), October 5, 2013

References

Citations

External links
 Official website
 John Herdman: Another Country (Thirsty Books) by Alan Taylor
 Page on Scottish Book Trust
 Dark Tales from a Neglected Master
 Best Scottish Books of 2013
 'The Heretics' celebrate historic Edinburgh comeback

1941 births
Living people
Scottish novelists
Writers from Edinburgh
20th-century Scottish novelists
21st-century Scottish novelists
20th-century British novelists
21st-century British novelists
Scottish dramatists and playwrights
Alumni of Magdalene College, Cambridge
People educated at Merchiston Castle School

John Herdman (author)


Amy Marcy Cheney Beach (September 5, 1867December 27, 1944) was an American composer and pianist. She was the first successful American female composer of large-scale art music. Her "Gaelic" Symphony, premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1896, was the first symphony composed and published by an American woman. She was one of the first American composers to succeed without the benefit of European training, and one of the most respected and acclaimed American composers of her era. As a pianist, she was acclaimed for concerts she gave featuring her own music in the United States and in Germany.

Biography

Early years and musical education
Amy Marcy Cheney was born in Henniker, New Hampshire, on September 5, 1867 to Charles Abbott Cheney (nephew of Oren B. Cheney, who co-founded Bates College) and Clara Imogene (Marcy) Cheney. Artistic ability ran in the family: Clara was reputedly an "excellent pianist and singer," while Amy showed every sign of being a child prodigy. She was able to sing forty songs accurately by age one, she was capable of improvising counter-melody by age two, and she taught herself to read at age three. At four, she composed three waltzes for piano during one summer at her grandfather's farm in West Henniker, NH, despite the absence of a piano; instead, she composed the pieces mentally and played them when she returned home. She could also play music by ear, including four-part hymns. The family struggled to keep up with her musical interests and demands. Her mother sang and played for her, but attempted to prevent the child from playing the family piano herself, believing that to indulge the child's wishes in this respect would damage parental authority. Amy often commanded what music was played in the home, becoming enraged if it did not meet her standards.

Amy began formal piano lessons with her mother at age six, and soon gave public recitals of works by Handel, Beethoven, and Chopin, as well as her own pieces. One such recital was reviewed in arts journal The Folio, and multiple agents proposed concert tours for the young pianist, which her parents declined – a decision for which Amy was later grateful.

In 1875, the Cheney family moved to Chelsea, a suburb just across the Mystic River from Boston. They were advised there to enroll Amy in a European conservatory, but opted instead for local training, hiring Ernst Perabo and later Carl Baermann (himself a student of Franz Liszt) as piano teachers. In 1881–82, the fourteen-year-old also studied harmony and counterpoint with Junius W. Hill. This would be her only formal instruction as a composer, but "[s]he collected every book she could find on theory, composition, and orchestration ... she taught herself ... counterpoint, harmony, fugue," even translating Gevaert's and Berlioz's French treatises on orchestration, considered "most composers' bibles," into English for herself.

Early career
Amy Cheney made her concert debut at age sixteen on October 18, 1883, in a "Promenade Concert" conducted by Adolph Neuendorff at Boston's Music Hall, where she played Chopin's Rondo in E-flat and was piano soloist in Moscheles's piano concerto No. 3 in G minor, to general acclaim: as biographer Fried Block comments, "[i]t is hard to imagine a more positive critical reaction to a debut," and her audience was "enthusiastic in the extreme." The next two years of her career included performances in Chickering Hall, and she starred in the final performance of the Boston Symphony's 1884–85 season.

Amy would later recall one rehearsal for a Mendelssohn concerto in 1885, when the conductor slowed the orchestra during the last movement, attempting to go easy on the teenage soloist. When she began the piano part, however, she played at full prescribed tempo: "I did not know that he was sparing me, but I did know that the tempo dragged, and I swung the orchestra into time".

Marriage
Amy was married the same year (1885) to Dr. Henry Harris Aubrey Beach (1843–1910)), a Boston surgeon, Harvard lecturer, and amateur singer twenty-four years her senior (she was eighteen at the time). Her name would subsequently be listed on concert programs and published compositions as "Mrs. H. H. A. Beach."

The marriage was conditioned upon her willingness "to live according to his status, that is, function as a society matron and patron of the arts. She agreed never to teach piano, an activity widely associated with women" and regarded as providing "pin money." She further agreed to limit performances to two public recitals per year, with profits donated to charity, and to devote herself more to composition than to performance (although, as she wrote, "I thought I was a pianist first and foremost.") Her self-guided education in composition was also necessitated by Dr. Beach, who disapproved of his wife studying with a tutor. Restrictions like these were typical for middle- and upper-class women of the time: as it was explained to a European counterpart, Fanny Mendelssohn, "Music will perhaps become his [Fanny's brother Felix Mendelssohn's] profession, while for you it can and must be only an ornament.".

In recollecting her married life in 1942, Beach stated, "I was happy and he was content" and "I belonged to a happy period that may never come again." Performing in Germany after Henry's death in 1910, she dropped the "Mrs. H. H. A." for "Amy", apparently because the "Mrs." mystified German audiences, but thereafter she used Mrs. H. H. A. Beach for the rest of her life.

Rise to prominence
A major compositional success came with her Mass in E-flat major, which was performed in 1892 by the Handel and Haydn Society orchestra, which since its foundation in 1815 had never performed a piece composed by a woman. Newspaper music critics responded to the Mass by declaring Beach one of America's foremost composers, comparing the piece to Masses by Cherubini and Bach.

Beach followed this up with an important milestone in music history: her Gaelic Symphony, the first symphony composed and published by an American woman. It premiered October 30, 1896, performed by the Boston Symphony "with exceptional success," although "whatever the merits or defects of the symphony were thought to be,  critics went to extraordinary lengths in their attempts to relate them to the composer's sex." Composer George Whitefield Chadwick (1854–1931) wrote to Beach that he and his colleague Horatio Parker (1863–1919) had attended the Gaelic Symphony's premiere and much enjoyed it: "I always feel a thrill of pride myself whenever I hear a fine work by any of us, and as such you will have to be counted in, whether you [like it] or not – one of the boys." These "boys" were a group of composers unofficially known as the Second New England School, and included not only Chadwick and Parker but also John Knowles Paine (1839–1926), Arthur Foote (1853–1937), and Edward MacDowell (1860–1908). With the addition of Beach, they collectively became known as the Boston Six, of whom Beach was the youngest.

In 1900, the Boston Symphony premiered Beach's Piano Concerto, with the composer as soloist. It has been suggested that the piece suggests Beach's struggles against her mother and husband for control of her musical life. In all, Beach was one of the first American women who received large popularity for composing symphonies.

Widowhood, years in Europe
Beach's husband died in June 1910 (the couple had been childless) and her mother 7 months later. Her father, Charles Cheney, had died in 1895. Beach felt unable to work for a while. She went to Europe in hopes of recovering there. In Europe she changed her name to "Amy Beach". She travelled together with Marcella (Marcia) Craft, an American soprano who was "prima donna of the Berlin Royal Opera." Beach's first year in Europe "was of almost entire rest."  In 1912 she gradually resumed giving concerts, Her European debut was in Dresden, October 1912, playing her violin and piano sonata with violinist "Dr. Bülau," to favorable reviews.
In Munich in January 1913, she gave a concert, again with her violin sonata, but now with three sets of songs, two of her own and one by Brahms, and solo piano music by Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms. Two critics were rather unfavorable, one calling Beach's songs "kitschy." She was unfazed, saying the audience was "large and very enthusiastic." Demand arose for sheet music of Beach's songs and solo piano pieces, beyond the supply that Beach's publisher Arthur P. Schmidt had available for German music stores. Later In January, still in Munich, she performed in her Piano Quintet; a critic praised her composing, which he did not like all that well, more than her playing.  In a further concert in Breslau, only three of Beach's songs were on the program, fewer than in Munich.

In November–December 1913 she played the solo part in her Piano Concerto with orchestras in Leipzig, Hamburg, and Berlin. Her Gaelic Symphony was also performed in Hamburg and Leipzig.    A Hamburg critic wrote "we have before us undeniably a possessor of musical gifts of the highest kind; a musical nature touched with genius." She was greeted as the first American woman "able to compose music of a European quality of excellence."

Return to America and later life
Beach returned to America in 1914, not long after the beginning of World War I. Beach and Craft made pro-German statements to the American press, but Beach said her allegiance was to "the musical, not the militaristic Germany." She gave some manuscripts of music she had written in Europe to Craft, who brought them back to the U.S.  Beach delayed her own departure until September 1914 and so had a further trunkful of manuscripts confiscated at the Belgian border. Beach eventually recovered the trunk and contents in 1929.

In 1915, the Panama–Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco commemorated the opening of the Panama Canal and the city's recovery from the 1906 earthquake and fire. Amy Beach was honored often by concerts of her music and receptions during 1915, and her Panama Hymn was commissioned for the occasion. In 1915, and again in 1916, Beach visited her aunt Franc and cousin Ethel in San Francisco, who by then were her closest living relatives. About August 6, 1916, Beach, Franc, and Ethel left San Francisco together, leaving Franc's husband Lyman Clement behind, a "fifty-year-old marriage broken apart", for unknown reasons. The three women took up residence in Hillsborough, New Hampshire, where Franc and Beach's mother had been born. Lyman Clement "was settled" in a Veterans' Home in California from 1917 until his death in 1922. After 1916, "Hillsborough was Beach's official residence: there she voted in presidential elections." In 1918, her cousin Ethel "developed a terminal illness," and she spent time taking care of her, as Franc, at age 75, "could hardly" do so by herself.

Aside from concert tours and the time of Ethel's illness until her death in 1920, Beach also spent part of her time in New York City. Someone had asked her if she was the daughter of Mrs. H. H. A. Beach. She resumed using that married name, but used "Amy Beach" on bookplates and stationery. For a few summers, she composed at her cottage in Centerville, Massachusetts on Cape Cod.

While continuing to get income from her compositions published by Arthur P. Schmidt, during 1914–1921 she had new compositions published by G. Schirmer. The Centerville cottage had been built on a five-acre property Beach had bought with royalties from one song, Ecstasy, 1892, her most successful up until then.

From 1921 on she spent part of each summer as a Fellow at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire, where she composed several works and encountered other women composers and/or musicians, including Emilie Frances Bauer, Marion Bauer, Mabel Wheeler Daniels, Fannie Charles Dillon, and Ethel Glenn Hier, who "were or became long-time friends" of Beach. But there were "generational and gender divisions" among the Fellows in music, with some feeling that Beach's music was "no longer fashionable".

In 1924 Beach sold the house in Boston she had inherited from her husband. Her aunt Franc had become "feeble" around 1920, developed dementia in 1924, and died in November 1925 in Hillsborough, after which Beach had no surviving relatives as close as Ethel and Franc had been. In the fall of 1930 Beach rented a studio apartment in New York. There she became the virtual composer-in-residence at St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church. Her music had been used during the previous 20 years in services at the church, attributed to "H. H. A. Beach", with "Mrs." added only from 1931 on.

She used her status as the top female American composer to further the careers of young musicians. While she had agreed not to give private music lessons while married, Beach was able to work as a music educator during the early 20th century.  She served as President of the Board of Councillors of the New England Conservatory of Music.  She worked to coach and give feedback to various young composers, musicians, and students. Beach acted as a mentor for these young composers encouraging them to spend time perfecting their craft through laborious practices. Written in her document, "Music's Ten Commandments as Given for Young Composers," Beach suggested young musicians spare no time analyzing works from every genre, their technical progress, and to employ variety whenever possible. From 1904 to 1943, Beach published numerous articles focusing on programming, preparation, and studying techniques for serious piano players, basing many of her findings on her own practice routine. Given her status and advocacy for music education, she was in high demand as a speaker and performer for various educational institutions and clubs, such as the University of New Hampshire, where she received an honorary master's degree in 1928. She also worked to create "Beach Clubs," which helped teach and educate children in music. She served as leader of some organizations focused on music education and women, including the Society of American Women Composers as its first president.

Beach spent the winter and spring of 1928–29 in Rome. She went to concerts "almost daily" and found Respighi's Feste Romane, just written in 1928, to be "superbly brilliant," but disliked a piece by Paul Hindemith. In March 1929 she gave a concert to benefit the American Hospital in Rome, in which her song "The Year's at the Spring" was encored and a "large sum of money" was raised.  Beach, like her friends in Rome, briefly became an admirer of the Italian dictator Mussolini. She returned to the United States with a two-week stopover in Leipzig, where she met her old friend, the singer Marcella Craft.

She was a member of Chapter R (New York City) of the P.E.O. Sisterhood. Late in her life, she collaborated on the "Ballad of P.E.O." with the words written by Ruth Comfort Mitchell, Chapter BZ/California. Heart disease led to Beach's retirement in 1940 and her death in New York City in 1944. Amy Beach is buried with her husband in the Forest Hills Cemetery in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts.

Compositions

Beach was a member of the "Second New England School" or "Boston Group"; the other members were composers John Knowles Paine, Arthur Foote, George Chadwick, Edward MacDowell, George Whiting, and Horatio Parker. Her writing is mainly in a Romantic idiom, often compared to that of Brahms or Rachmaninoff. In her later works she experimented, moving away from tonality, employing whole tone scales and more exotic harmonies and techniques.

Beach's compositions include a one-act opera, Cabildo, and a variety of other works.

Symphonic works
Beach wrote the Gaelic Symphony (1896) and the Piano Concerto in C-sharp minor. Another orchestral piece, Bal masque, has a solo piano version. Two further pieces, Eilende Wolken and Jephthah's Daughter, are for orchestra with voice.

Choral works
Beach's sacred choral works are mainly for four4 voices and organ, but a few are for voices and orchestra, two being the Mass in E-flat major (1892) and her setting of St. Francis's Canticle of the Sun (1924, 1928), first performed at St. Bartholomew's in New York. A setting of the Te Deum with organ was first performed by the choir of men and boys at Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Boston. The Capitol Hill Choral Society of Washington, D.C., recorded the Canticle of the Sun, seven Communion Responses, and other pieces by Beach in 1998, led by its Musical Director Betty Buchanan, who founded the Society in 1983.

There are some tens of secular choral works, accompanied by orchestra, piano, or organ. Publisher Arthur P. Schmidt once complained to Beach that her "choral pieces had practically no sale".

Chamber music
Beach's chamber music compositions include a violin sonata (recorded on seven different labels), a romance and three further pieces for violin and piano, a piano trio, a string quartet, and a piano quintet.

Of the over 300 works by Amy Beach which were published during her lifetime and included almost every genre, the largest category is her art songs and vocal chamber music. Beyond these, she wrote many chamber works and transcriptions for piano, including Variations on Balkan Themes, Beach's "longest and most important solo" piano work, which was composed in 1904, in response to revolts in the Balkans against the then ruling Ottoman Empire. Twelve are instrumental chamber works. One notable aspect of Beach's musicianship was her role as a virtuoso pianist, in which she regularly performed both her own compositions and those of others. She toured extensively in Germany, New England, and all the way to the Pacific Coast, where she brought European-American concert music to the western states. Among two of Beach's most frequently performed instrumental works are the Sonata in A Minor for Piano and Violin, Op. 34 and the Quintet in F# minor, Op. 67, as both were programmed extensively in the United States and Germany. Another noteworthy work which illustrates Beach's skill and adherence to tradition as a composer is her String Quartet, Op. 89.

Sonata in A minor for piano and violin, Op. 34
In January 1897 Beach played with Franz Kneisel the premiere of her Sonata for Piano and Violin, Op. 34, which she had composed in the spring of 1896. Franz Kneisel was a leading violinist in Boston and beyond, having been hired at about age 20 by Wilhelm Gericke, conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, as concertmaster of the orchestra. Soon after arriving in Boston, he formed the Kneisel String Quartet with three other string players of the Boston Symphony. (The Quartet lasted until 1917. Meanwhile, Kneisel moved to New York in 1905.) In 1894 Beach had joined the quartet in performing Robert Schumann's Piano Quintet in E-flat, Op. 44. The Sonata is written in four movements, which are interconnected musically by using the first movement's opening theme as a germinating source to be developed on in the following three. They are thoroughly crafted to follow conventions of the form while implementing each musical element in a precise and well-constructed way.

The premiere was quickly followed by several other recital performances of the piece in various New York cities, where critical reception was mixed; some reviewers described the piece as immature and lacking in substance, although they acknowledged her skillful use of contrapuntal movement and affective principal themes. The third movement, Largo con dolore, was the most controversial among critics, with some praising its beauty and passionately evocative nature, while others derided its length as being too far extended and monotonous. Audiences, however, were captivated and spellbound by the slow movement; at one performance it was reported that they broke out into enthusiastic applause in between the third and fourth movements out of an abundance of emotion. In Europe, the piece was generally well received. The composer and pianist Teresa Carreño performed the piece with violinist Carl Halir in Berlin, October 1899 and wrote to Beach:I assure you that I never had a greater pleasure in my life than the one I had in working out your beautiful sonata and having the good luck to bring it before the German public...(I)t really met with a decided success and this is said to the credit of the public.Reviewers in Berlin were fairly positive in their response to the Sonata, hailing its technical development and brilliant use of the violin and piano as individual parts. Where criticized, they noted that it was perhaps too virtuosic for chamber music, while another reviewer for the Berliner Volks-Zeitung characterized Beach's compositional style as being too derivative of Schumann and Brahms—yet allowed Beach's gender as a caveat for this supposed shortcoming (sexism was common and extreme in classical music). He wrote:In style, she is not individual; her dependence upon Schumann and Brahms is unmistakable, which is a weakness, for which the feminine character furnishes ground and excuse. The sonata is sonorous and graceful in both violin and piano parts, though the latter in the last movement somewhat oversteps the allotted bounds of chamber music.

Quintet in F-sharp minor for Piano and Strings, Op. 67
In 1900, with the Kneisel Quartet, Beach performed the Brahms Piano Quintet in F minor, Op. 34. Beach wrote her own three-movement Quintet for Piano and Strings in F-sharp minor, Op. 67, in 1905. The quintet came to be frequently performed during Beach's lifetime, both in concert and over the radio. These performances were often given by established string quartets accompanied by the pianist-composer, including numerous times during an extended tour with the Kneisel Quartet in 1916–17. This was the 33rd and last season for the quartet. Beach performed her quintet with them in Boston, Brooklyn, Chicago, and Philadelphia.

Among all of Beach's chamber works, this work has been described as one of the most distinctly representative of a Brahmsian influence in her music, from the jagged chromatic melody and contrasting lyrical passages, irregularly phrase lengths, its key changes and lush texture, to its strict adherence to the sonata-allegro form. The primary theme throughout all three works, in fact, is borrowed from the last movement of the Brahms quintet, albeit adapted and reworked in a variety of ways. All three movements feature frequent distinct developments in meter, tempo, and key signature. The entire work carries an affective character of lamentation throughout, demonstrated not only by the overall emotive qualities of the work itself but also its use of the Phrygian tetrachord cadence frequently associated with mourning, which in this work outlines the notes F#-E-D-C#.

Generally speaking, the work was received quite well by audiences and reviewers as belonging to an important compositional tradition. Critics noted its aesthetically flexible imagination while adhering to traditional expectations, bringing a variety of expressive moods and tone colors to a work of substantial form. They also commented on the modernity and skill the work displayed in that it achieved a highly expressive nature and orchestral texture while maintaining the intimate, technically developed character of the chamber ensemble voicing. This work added to her reputation as a composer of serious high art music, although still deemed slightly beneath the works of similar male composers by some reviewers.

String Quartet, Op. 89
Beach's String Quartet is a single movement and deemed as one of her more mature works. It was originally labeled as Op. 79, but over the course of a decade, the work evolved, and Beach finally re-designated the piece as Op. 89 in 1929. The significance Beach bestowed this piece is unique given that it did not feature a piano part which she would perform, as she did with many of her other works. Because of the timing of the piece's composition, there is some evidence that Beach may have been inspired to write the work as part of Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge's chamber music competition in 1922. Numerous painstaking attempts demonstrate both Beach's devotion to the composition of this piece and her unfamiliarity with writing in this genre. The final work, completed in Rome, consists of a single movement divided into three sections, and thematically speaking, follows an arch form (A B C B1 A1). The piece uses three different Eskimo or Inuit melodies throughout the work: "Summer Song", "Playing at Ball", and "Itataujang's Song", taken from Franz Boas' book on the Alaskan Inuit tribes. Beach integrates these borrowed tunes within a framework of Austro-Germanic extended quasi-tonality and dissonance, first through more straightforward statements of the melodies and then as assimilated into a horizontal harmonic structure. Elements of the melodies are abstracted and developed into contrapuntal lines which propel the work forward in the absence of clear tonal direction. The texture and harmony is fairly stark in places, lacking the lush Romanticism of her earlier works and representing more Modernist inclinations of a developing composer.

The piece was premiered at the American Academy in April 1929, but Beach reported little on whether or not this performance was satisfactory. Nonetheless, it was followed by a number of private performances and small recitals in New York, Cincinnati, and Massachusetts. A 1937 performance arranged by Roy Harris was particularly disappointing, as the performers were ill-prepared and sight-read the work poorly. No performance of the quartet was fully satisfactory to Beach, and the work did not gain the recognition that she seemed to hope it would gather.

Because the quartet was so different from many of Beach's previous works, and given that Beach was unable to perform it herself, there is little known concerning both audience and critic response to the piece. Composer and biographer Burnet Corwin Tuthill offered praise of it, saying that while it was unusual for Beach and lacked the emotionalism usually prevalent in her music, it demonstrated remarkable technical sophistication and skill in its handling of both string writing and engagement with thematic material that was not European in origin. In fact, Beach's use of Inuit and Native American tunes became a marked feature in several of her other works, which she used as a means of bringing stylistic modernity to her sound through the appropriation and recontextualization of these melodies.

Solo piano music

 Valse Caprice, Op. 4 (1889)
 Ballade, Op. 6 (1894)
 Sketches, Op. 15 (1892)
 Bal Masque, Op. 22 (1894)
 Children's Carnival Op. 25 (1894)
 Three Pieces, Op. 28 (1894)
 Children's Album, Op. 36 (1897)
 Scottish Legend and Gavotte Fantastique, Op. 54 (1903)
 Variations on Balkan Themes, Op. 60 (1904)
 Four Eskimo Pieces, Op. 64 (1907)
 Suite Francaise, Op. 65 (1905)
 Prelude and Fugue, Op. 81 (1914)
 From Blackbird Hills, Op. 83 (1922)
 Fantasia Fugata, Op. 87 (1917)
 Far Hills of Eire, O, Op. 91 (1923)
 Hermit Thrush at Eve, at Morn, Op. 91 (1922)
 From Grandmother's Garden, Op. 97 (1922)
 Farewell Summer, Dancing Leaves, Op. 102 (1924)
 Old Chapel by Moonlight, Op. 106 (1924)
 Nocturne, Op. 107 (1924)
 A Cradle Song of the Lonely Mother, Op. 108 (1914)
 Tyrolean Valse Fantaisie, Op. 116 (1924)
 From Six to Twelve, Op. 119 (1932)
 Three Pieces, Op. 128 (1932)
 Out of the Depths, Op. 130 (1932)
 Five Improvisations, Op. 148 (1924–26)
 A Bit of Cairo (c. 1928)

Songs
Beach was most popular for her about 150 songs. The words of about five each are her own and those of H. H. A. Beach, for the rest by other poets. "The Year's At the Spring" from Three Browning Songs, Op. 44 is perhaps Beach's best-known work. Despite the volume and popularity of the songs during her lifetime, no single-composer collection of Beach's songs exists. Some may be purchased through Hildegard Publishing Company and Masters Music Publication, Inc.

In the early 1890s, Beach started to become interested in folk songs. She shared that interest with several of her colleagues, and this interest soon came to be the first nationalist movement in American music. Beach's contributions included about thirty songs inspired by folk music, including Scottish, Irish, Balkan, African-American, and Native American origins.

Writings
Beach was a musical intellectual who wrote for journals, newspapers, and other publications.  She gave advice to young musicians and composers – especially female composers.  From career to piano technique advice, Beach readily provided her opinions in articles such as "To the Girl who Wants to Compose" and "Emotion Versus Intellect in Music." In 1915, she had written Music's Ten Commandments as Given for Young Composers, which expressed many of her self-teaching principles.

Late 20th century and early 21st century revival and reception
Despite her fame and recognition during her lifetime, Beach was largely neglected after her death in 1944 until the late 20th century.  Efforts to revive interest in Beach's works have been largely successful during the last few decades.

Gaelic Symphony
The symphony has received praise from modern critics, such as Andrew Achenbach of Gramophone, who in 2003 lauded the work for its "big heart, irresistible charm and confident progress." In 2016, Jonathan Blumhofer of The Arts Fuse wrote: To my ears, it is by far the finest symphony by an American composer before Ives and, by a wide margin, better than a lot that came after him. It surely is the most exciting symphony penned by an American before World War I. [...] Her command of instrumentation throughout the Symphony was consistently excellent and colorful. The manner in which she balanced content and form succeeds where her contemporaries like George Whitefield Chadwick, John Knowles Paine, and Horatio Parker so often came up short: somehow Beach's Symphony is never daunted by the long shadows Brahms and Beethoven cast across the Atlantic. It's a fresh, invigorating, and personal statement in a genre that has offered plenty of examples of pieces that demonstrate none of those qualities.

Piano Concerto
Beach's Piano Concerto has been praised as an overlooked masterwork by modern critics. In 1994, Phil Greenfield of The Baltimore Sun called it "a colorful, dashing work that might become extremely popular if enough people get a chance to hear it.  In 2000 Joshua Kosman of the San Francisco Chronicle also lauded the composition, writing:

Andrew Achenbach of Gramophone similarly declared it "ambitious" and "singularly impressive... a rewarding achievement all round, full of brilliantly idiomatic solo writing ... lent further autobiographical intrigue by its assimilation of thematic material from three early songs".

Tributes and memorials
In 1994, the Boston Women's Heritage Trail placed a bronze plaque at her Boston address, and in 1995, Beach's gravesite at Forest Hills Cemetery was dedicated. In 1999, she was put into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 2000, the Boston Pops paid tribute by adding her name as the first woman joining 87 other composers on the granite wall of Boston's Hatch Shell.
In honor of Beach's 150th birthday Marty Walsh, Mayor of the City of Boston, declared September 5, 2017, to be "Amy Beach Day." Also commemorating Beach's sesquicentennial, The New York Times published an article by William Robin, "Amy Beach, a Pioneering American Composer, Turns 150".

Discography

Solo piano music
 Piano Music, Vol. 1, The Early Works, Kirsten Johnson, piano, Guild GMCD 7317
 Piano Music, Vol. 2, The Turn of the Century, Kirsten Johnson, piano, Guild GMCD 7329
 Piano Music, Vol. 3, The Mature Years, Kirsten Johnson, piano, Guild GMCD 7351
 Piano Music, Vol. 4, The Late Works, Kirsten Johnson, piano, Guild GMCD 7387
 By the Still Waters, Joanne Polk, piano, Allmusic Z6693
 Under the Stars, Joanne Polk, piano, Arabesque, B000005ZYW
 Fire Flies, Joanne Polk, piano, Arabesque, Z6721 (1998).

Other chamber music
Amy Beach, Sonata for violin and piano in A minor, Op. 34:
 Recorded on the following labels: Albany No. 150, Arabesque No. 6747, Centaur Nos. 2312, 2767, Chandos No. 10162, Koch Nos. 7223, 7281, NWW No. 80542, Summit No. 270, White Pine no. 202.  More details on Chandos 10162:
 Amy Beach, Sonata for Violin and Piano in A minor; Quartet for Strings; Pastorale for Wind Quintet; and Sketches (4) for Piano, Dreaming. Performed by the Ambache Chamber Ensemble. Chandos Records 10162
 Centaur 2312 also has the Barcarolle for violin and piano, the three pieces for violin and piano Op. 40, the Romance Op. 23, and the Invocation Op. 55, all performed by Laura Klugholz, violin/viola, and Jill Timmons, piano
 Mrs. H.H.A. (Amy) Beach (1867–1944), music for two pianos. Virginia Eskin and Kathleen Supové, pianists. Koch 3-7345-2
 Amy Beach, Piano Quintet in F# minor, Op. 67. Old Stoughton String Quartet. AMRC 0040. Ambache Ensemble Chandos Records 9752
 Amy Beach, Songs. Sung by mezzo-soprano Katherine Kelton and accompanied by pianist Catherine Bringerud. Naxos 8559191
 Chamber Music CDs: 2 Ambache Ensemble recordings on Chandos Records (9752 & 10162), both awarded rosettes in the Penguin Guide: 1) Piano Quintet, Op 67; Theme & Variations, Op 80; Piano Trio, Op 50. 2) String Quartet. Op 89; Violin Sonata, Op 34; Pastorale, Op 151; Dreaming, Op 50 No 3.

Orchestral music, possibly with chorus
 Amy Beach, Canticle of the Sun, Op. 123; Invocation for the Violin, Op. 55; With Prayer and Supplicaton, Op. 8; Te Deum, from Service in A, Op. 63; Constant Christmas, Op. 95; On a Hill; Kyrie eleison, Op. 122; Sanctus, Op. 122; Agnus Dei, Op. 122; Spirit of Mercy, Op. 125; Evening Hymn, Op. 125; I Will Give Thanks, Op. 147; Peace I leave With You, Op. 8. Performed by Capitol Hill Choral Society, Betty Buchanan, music director,  Albany Records, 1998, TROY295
 Amy Beach, Grand Mass in E-flat major. Performed by the Stow Festival Chorus and Orchestra. Albany Records, 1995. TROY179
 Amy Beach, Grand Mass in E-flat major, Performed by the Michael May Festival Chorus. Compact disc. Newport Classic, 1989, 60008
 Amy Beach, Piano Concerto in C sharp minor with pianist Alan Feinberg and the Symphony in E minor ("Gaelic"). Performed by the Nashville Symphony Orchestra conducted by Kenneth Schermerhorn. Naxos 8559139.  Note: one review of this mentions "Symphony No. 2" but Beach only wrote one symphony, the Gaelic.
 Amy Beach, Piano Concerto in C sharp minor with pianist Mary Louise Boehm (the first performer to revive this work, in 1976). Performed by the Westphalian Symphony Orchestra conducted by Siegfried Landau.  Turnabout QTV, 1976, 34665; reissued on Vox Turnabout CD 7196

Sources
 Fried Block, Adrienne (1998), Amy Beach, Passionate Victorian, Oxford University Press, New York,
 Fried Block, Adrienne (2001). "Beach [née Cheney], Amy Marcy [Mrs H.H.A. Beach]". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan Publishers.

References

Further reading
 Amy Beach. The Sea-Fairies: Opus 59, edited by Andrew Thomas Kuster (Madison, WI: A-R Editions, 1999)
 Beach, Mrs. H. H. A. and Francis, of Assisi, Saint, The Canticle of the Sun Betty Buchanan (ed.), Matthew Arnold (tr.) (Madison, WI: A-R Editions, 2006) Recent researches in American music, v. 57.
 Brown, Jeanell Wise. "Amy Beach and Her Chamber Music: Biography, Documents, Style". Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, 1994.
 Fried Block, Adrienne: "Amy Beach", Grove Music Online (subscription required) ed. L. Macy (Accessed October 1, 2006),
 Fried Block, Adrienne, ed. (1994). Quartet for Strings (In One Movement), Opus 89. Music of the United States of America (MUSA) vol. 3. Madison, Wisconsin: A-R Editions.
 Gates, Eugene. "Mrs. H. H. A. Beach: American Symphonist." Kapralova Society Journal 8, No. 2 (Fall 2010): 1–10.
 Jenkins, Walter S. The Remarkable Mrs. Beach, American Composer: A Biographical Account Based on Her Diaries, Letters, Newspaper Clippings, and Personal Reminiscences, edited by John H. Baron. Warren, MI: Harmonie Park Press, 1994.
 Jezic, Diane Peacock. "Women Composers: The Lost Tradition Found, Second Edition". New York: The Feminist Press, 1994.
 Robin. "Amy Beach, a Pioneering American Composer, Turns 150". The New York Times 1 September 2017.

External links

 www.amybeach.org – biography, bibliography, discography, manuscripts, photos, etc.

 Amy Beach at Music of the United States of America (MUSA)
 Sheet Music for "June", op. 51, no. 3, words by Erich Jansen; English text by Isidora Martinez; A.P. Schmidt Company, 1903.
 The Amy Cheney Beach Collection  at the Miller Nichols Library of the University of Missouri – Kansas City
 The Amy Cheney Beach Collection at the University of New Hampshire Library
 Mrs. H. H. A. Beach: American Symphonist by Eugene Gates, Kapralova Society Journal.

 , WNCN-FM, April 1, 1983
 "The Lotos Isles" on The Art Song Project
 Performances of Amy Beach's piano music
 Image of Marcella Craft & Amy Beach, February 14, 1913, Munich, Germany. Photographer, H. Wiedenmann
 Link to Amy Marcy Beach interment entry at findagrave.com

1867 births
1944 deaths
19th-century American composers
19th-century American pianists
19th-century American women pianists
19th-century American women musicians
19th-century classical composers
19th-century classical pianists
19th-century women composers
20th-century American composers
20th-century American pianists
20th-century American women pianists
20th-century classical composers
20th-century classical pianists
20th-century women composers
American classical pianists
American women classical composers
American classical composers
American opera composers
American Romantic composers
American women classical pianists
Child classical musicians
Composers for piano
Women opera composers
MacDowell Colony fellows
People from Centerville, Massachusetts
People from Henniker, New Hampshire

Amy Beach


The fourth Langerado music festival was once again held at Markham Park in Sunrise, Fl on March 11 and March 12, 2006. The fourth installment of this festival series expanded further, with several pre and post festival shows. On March 10, the festival kicked off with a separately ticketed event at the Markham Park grounds called the "Langerado Sound Check" and featured a handful of artists not performing on the actual two-day festival. Each evening on all three days of the Langerado weekend, multiple late-night shows took place at venues such as the Culture Room and the Revolution. The festival drew a reported 12,000 attendees each day.

Lineup
The lineup for the 2006 Langerado Music Festival included Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals, The Black Crowes, The Flaming Lips, Wilco, the Meters, G. Love & Special Sauce, Robert Randolph & the Family Band, Keller Williams, Burning Spear, Slightly Stoopid, the Disco Biscuits, Umphrey's McGee, Michael Franti & Spearhead, the Secret Machines, Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra, Drive-By Truckers, Mofro, Brazilian Girls, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Kinky, Lake Trout, Lotus, Kid Koala, Lyrics Born, Los Amigos Invisibles, RJD2, Steel Train, Brothers Past, Rose Hill Drive, The Spam Allstars, the New Mastersounds, Perpetual Groove, and the Pnuma Trio.

External links
 Langerado: Just a Music Festival
 The Lasting Impressions of Langerado
 Markham Moments: Rob's 'Rado Recap
 Lips, Crowes Rock Latest Langerado - Rolling Stone
 Ice Cream Man Review
 Langerado 2006 Photo Gallery - Michael Jurick Photography

Langerado
Langerado Music Festival
2006 in American music
2006 music festivals
Langerado

2006 Langerado Music Festival


The Lehoullier Building is a historic mill tenement house at 161-169 Main Street in Somersworth, New Hampshire. Built in 1843, it is one of two surviving tenement houses of the many that once lined Main Street near the Great Falls Manufacturing Company. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.

Description and history
The Lehoullier Building is located on the west side of Main Street, at its junction with Fayette Street. It is a brick building with a gabled roof and five irregularly placed chimneys. It is set on a sloping lot, presenting three stories to Main Street and two to the rear. It is nine bays wide, representing an original division into three separate townhouse-style units. Each unit has since been further subdivided into two units, for a total of six. The ground floor of each section has a center entrance flanked by paired sash windows. The second-floor units, accessed by a two-story porch, have entrances in either the left or right bay. A hip roof covers the porch, and there are smaller sash windows in the third floor bays.

The tenement was built by Thomas Parks and Job Harris c. 1843 under a grant from the Great Falls Manufacturing Company, which operated the major textile mills in Somersworth. It is one of two surviving tenement houses that once lined Main Street, and is, along with the mills themselves, one of the few surviving reminders of the city's textile manufacturing past. During the 20th century, the building underwent a number of alterations, many of which have since been reversed by restoration. The ground-floor spaces were adapted for commercial use, and the upper-floor exteriors were rearranged to provide access to the upper units from the back of the building.

See also
National Register of Historic Places listings in Strafford County, New Hampshire

References

Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in New Hampshire
Greek Revival houses in New Hampshire
Houses completed in 1843
Houses in Strafford County, New Hampshire
1843 establishments in New Hampshire
National Register of Historic Places in Strafford County, New Hampshire
Somersworth, New Hampshire

Lehoullier Building


A Truce, and Other Stories is a collection of six short stories by Mary Tappan Wright. It was first published in hardcover by Charles Scribner's Sons in 1895 and was reprinted by Fleabonnet Press, in November 2008. The stories had previously been published in Scribner's Magazine between 1890 and 1894.

This collection was the author's first published book. She went on to publish four novels and over a dozen additional short stories over the course of her writing career, though none of her other short stories were collected into book form during her lifetime.

Contents
"A Truce" (e-text from Making of America)
"As Haggards of the Rock" (e-text from Making of America)
"A Portion of the Tempest" (e-text from Making of America)
"From Macedonia" (e-text from Making of America)
"Deep as First Love" (e-text from Making of America)
"A Fragment of a Play, with a Chorus" (e-text from Making of America)

Reception
According to its review in The Bookman, "To call this volume a collection of dramatic fragments or episodes would be nearer the truth than to style these vistas of life, stories. In sculpture they resemble the torso, in music a song sometimes begun, but never ended. ... But it is this very dramatic and fragmentary form which gives her character-studies their peculiar force and charm. There is a blending of realism and romance, of comedy and tragedy, of smiles and tears which makes havoc with the reader's emotions. It is especially in her power to discern the tragedy of the commonplace, and the pleasure she takes in reducing us to a strange despair at the sorry spectacle of a relentless, ironic nemesis playing fast and loose about us, that she fascinates and holds our interest whether we will or no. Even in her humour there is a touch of impatience and sternness. We discern in her the severity and tragic fire of the Greek spirit refined and softened as it mingles with the gentleness of the woman."

External links
 e-text of the collection.
 "A Truce, and Other Stories" - an 1895 review in The Bookman, v. 1, pp. 347–348.

1895 short story collections
American short story collections
Works originally published in Scribner's Magazine

A Truce, and Other Stories