The Conservancy’s Spirit of Preservation Gala

When: This event is in the past
March 31 6:30pm – 9:00pm, 2019

Location: East Wing Music Hall (adjacent to The Broad Stage) 1310 11th Street Santa Monica, CA 90401

Join the Conservancy at our Spirit of Preservation Gala honoring Ernest Marquez and Doris Sosin for their extraordinary accomplishments and contributions toward preservation. Enjoy cocktails and music under the canopy followed by dinner and our program.

Proceeds from the gala support the Conservancy’s programming and mission to educate and advocate for preservation in Santa Monica. Additional details and online ticketing coming soon.

Ernest Marquez is a descendant of Mexican land grantees who owned Rancho Boca de Santa Monica, comprising what is now Santa Monica Canyon and parts of Santa Monica and Pacific Palisades. Marquez compiled over 10,000 photographic prints, rare negatives and ephemera focused on the development of Santa Monica and Los Angeles from the 1860s to 1980s. The Ernest Marquez Photograph Collection is housed at The Huntington Library. He is also the author of several notable books, including the bestselling Santa Monica Beach: A Collector’s Pictorial History.

Doris Sosin is a co-founder and long-time supporter of the Santa Monica Conservancy as well as the founder and first president of the North of Montana Association, a city-recognized neighborhood organization. She has served on the City’s Urban Forest Task Force and Recreation and Parks Commission where she conceived of and successfully advocated for the City’s first long-range Parks and Recreation Master Plan. Sosin was formerly Curator of Textiles at the Skirball Museum.

More Information about Ernest Marquez

Ernest Marquezhas devoted much of his adult life to the research, documentation and preservation of the Los Angeles area’s rich local heritage, including that of his own pioneering family in Santa Monica.

A descendant of Mexican land grantees who owned the 6,700-acre Rancho Boca de Santa Monica, Marquez has compiled over 10,000 photographic prints, rare negatives, post cards and other media that record the development of the region’s development from the 1860s to 1980s. The Ernest Marquez Photograph Collection is housed at The Huntington Library in San Marino, one of the most important private collections of its type in existence.

Marquez is also the author of several historically themed books, including the bestselling Santa Monica Beach: A Collector’s Pictorial History (2004) and Noir Afloat: Tony Cornero and the Notorious Gambling Ships of Southern California (2011). In 2008, he co-authored Port of Los Angeles: An Illustrated History From 1850-1945. Most of the pictures in the book came from Marquez’s private collection.

A former Navy man and magazine cartoonist, Marquez spent most of his working life as a graphic designer in the local aerospace industry before retiring in 1980 after three decades at one company. It was during that time that he became an avid researcher of Los Angeles area history, gradually building his extensive collection.

Marquez was born in 1924 and grew up in Santa Monica Canyon on a small portion of his family’s Mexican land grant. He joined the Navy during World War II and served for four years on an aircraft carrier in the North Atlantic, battling German U-boats to protect the supply lines to Europe. After the war, he moved to New York, where he became a popular cartoonist. His work appeared in the major magazines of the time, including the New Yorker, Saturday Evening Post and Collier’s Magazine. He returned to California in 1952 with his wife, Lois Burke.

Soon after, Marquez began his decades-long career as a graphic designer for an aerospace company but also became obsessed with local history, amassing his prized collection of photos and writing or contributing to six books. One of the books hearkened back to his youth in Santa Monica Canyon. Many years after his mother’s death, Marquez discovered that she had kept every piece of his childhood artwork. In 2012, he turned that into the self-published book Memories of Canyon School 1930-1936.

Marquez was also instrumental in saving his family’s cemetery in Santa Monica Canyon, now a historic landmark. It’s one of two pieces of land from the original rancho still owned by the Marquez family. Now 94, Marquez is finishing his life’s work — a history of the Marquez family in California, beginning with their arrival in the late 1700s.

More Information about Doris Sosin

A Philadelphia native and daughter of a Navy admiral, Doris Sosin moved to Southern California after graduation from Hood College in Maryland and went on to earn two master’s degrees in art and education from UCLA.

Sosin is a Santa Monica community activist, preservationist and arts advocate, and co-founder of the Santa Monica Conservancy, the only organization dedicated to preserving the city’s historic places. From the Conservancy’s first meetings in private homes in 2002 to its current headquarters in a historic Ocean Park house, Sosin has worked tirelessly to advocate for the preservation and adaptive reuse of the structures that make Santa Monica such a unique community. She was given the Conservancy’s President’s Award in 2015 for her “dedication to the importance of preserving the legacy of Santa Monica’s historic places for our children and grandchildren.” And Sosin served on the Honorary Committee for 415 PCH, an organization that pushed for the saving of the Marion Davies Estate and its transformation into the Annenberg Community Beach House. In 2012, Doris was honored by the Santa Monica Chapter of the League of Women Voters in 2012 as one of the women who shape Santa Monica.”

A longtime resident of Santa Monica, Sosin is also founder of the North of Montana Neighborhood Association. As NOMA’s first chair, she successfully worked on an ordinance to restrict the size of emerging mega mansions that were changing the character and density of the neighborhood.

In 2003, Sosin became a member of the Santa Monica Recreation and Parks Commission. During her time there, she conceived of and successfully advocated for the city’s first long-range parks and recreation master plan. A devoted gardener and protector of the city’s cherished tree canopy, she also served on the city’s Urban Forest Task Force. In 2012, Doris was honored by the Santa Monica Chapter of the League of Women Voters in 2012 as one of the women “who shape Santa Monica.”

Sosin has always been a strong advocate of the arts and education. Using exhibits from local museums, she created an innovative art museum for the Los Angeles Unified School District that provided docent training opportunities for students. She also has been an influential force and donor at the Santa Monica College Performing Arts Center.

. . .

Lauren Bloch
James D. Cherry
Chez Jay
Jessica & Alan Davis
DSJ Printing
Exec-U-Mail Direct
Ronald Goldman
Howard Laks Architects
Margarita Jerabek, Ph.D., Architectural Historian &
Roger Winston Bray, Architect, AIA, NCARB
Roger Genser, Prints & the Pauper
Susan Siegel
Barbara Solomon
Donald Solomon
Eunice White, M.A.

The Conservancy’s Spirit of Preservation Gala

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