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Erle Stanley Gardner Building. One
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Excerpt from:
www.literarytraveler.com/literary_articles/erle_gardner_v…
Erle Stanley Gardner.
You might wonder what Erle Stanley Gardner, destined to become the world’s best-selling mystery writer, saw in this place in 1921.
We certainly did.
At that point in time, San Buenaventura was a burgeoning village struggling to take advantage of an oil boom that marked and desecrated much of Central and Southern California. What Gardner saw was the remnants of a village that, pre-oil boom, had been gracefully growing to a small town. But suddenly, due to gooey hydrocarbons, it became an excellent blossoming economy in which to establish a law practice.
The question: why did Gardner come to San Buenaventura? The answer: money.
It wasn’t until he was well-established in that field that he switched from briefs, contracts and agreements to the world of novels.
At that time, prior to his birth as a novelist – typical of other oil boom towns – San Buenaventura reeked of hydrocarbons, sweaty men in coveralls. Smoke billowing from diesel engines driving pumping units. Trucks hauling the foulest kind of liquid gold, and of money. Not an altogether offensive smell to many, but as you age and reflect on what makes a place truly desirable to establish a real home or merely visit, you look for something more.
Erle Stanley Gardner found much more in San Buenaventura. And so did we.
A few meandering steps toward the ocean and spacious white sand beaches, and there’s the historic Erle Stanley Gardner Building, where Gardner maintained an office. Here he began his stellar writing career, becoming the world’s best-selling mystery writer under his name and several pseudonyms.
A dapper fellow, Gardner could often be seen walking up the hill to the courthouse, a white Panama pulled low over his eyes, trailing smoke from a cigarette in a luxurious ivory cigarette holder.
A stylish building, in a prime location on the corner of Ventura’s two main streets, the Gardner Building has been home to offices and antique stores in the years since the writer left. In 1933 Gardner made his transition to full time writer and novelist when The Case of the Velvet Claws was published. In 1937, he moved to Temecula, California. He went on to write under several pseudonyms: A.A. Fair, Kyle Corning, Charles M. Green, Carleton Kendrake, Charles J. Kenny, Les Tillray, and Robert Parr. Gardner wrote for the pulps: westerns, history, travel, and mysteries inventing a rogue’s gallery of characters, notably Lester Leith, the gentleman thief.
To Gardner’s credit he devoted thousands of hours to a project he called "the court of last resort." The project reviewed, and in many instances sought to reverse, the convictions of incarcerated convicts. Poor legal representation or careless/illegal actions on the part of police and prosecutors denied these convicts of fair trials. More often than not, the convicts suffered the consequences of misinterpretations of medical or other forensic science evidence.
This project of Gardner’s led to the creation of his character Perry Mason, who was portrayed in various Hollywood films and became a hit TV series starring Raymond Burr.
Gardner wrote over eighty novels about Perry Mason.
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