Around 1950, when Ken Rudolph was about 8, his grandfather would gather up his grandchildren and take them to MacArthur Park.
They would walk to the east side of the lake, where an elaborate wharf and boathouse once stood, and head out onto the water. In an old family video from one of those outings, Rudolph can see himself steering the boat with his grandfather and cousins alongside him.
“It wasn’t every week, but these excursions happened quite often on Saturdays when the weather cooperated,” Rudolph said.
Rudolph turns 85 this month. If all goes according to the city’s plans, the boats he remembers from his childhood will soon be back on the lake.
The Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks wants to have the boats on the water before fall 2027 and is negotiating with a vendor to operate the rentals.
A sense of freedom and a sense of adventure
The boats are part of a larger city effort to draw more families and activity to a park that has struggled with drugs, homelessness and concerns about public safety.
“We can deal with the crises, put out the fires, deal with the public health crises and also bring good things to the community,” said Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, whose district includes the park.
For much of MacArthur Park’s history, boating was one of those things.
The former swampland was developed as Westlake Park in the 1880s, and by the 1890s, photographs show people boating on the lake and a boathouse along its shore, according to the Los Angeles Conservancy.
The park became a place where residents and visitors could spend much of the day, said Kim Cooper, co-founder of Esotouric, which leads tours exploring Los Angeles history. Boating offered inexpensive entertainment — and, for young couples, some privacy.
“You’re alone and you can talk and no one’s there,” Cooper said. “It was incredibly romantic and sweet.”
Wilshire Boulevard was extended through the park in 1934, dividing it in two as LA increasingly embraced the automobile. Old-fashioned pleasure parks like MacArthur Park suffered as a result, Cooper said.
Steve Sann remembers going with his father and sister in the late 1960s, buying popcorn for about 50 cents and feeding ducks and swans as they pedaled around the lake.
“When you’re a little boy the lake looks a lot bigger than it actually is and it’s almost like you’re in the ocean,” Sann, a Westwood resident, said. “There was just a sense of freedom and a sense of adventure.”
“It was something that was very affordable to middle-class families,” he added.
Sara Zapata Mijares remembers spending Sundays at MacArthur Park after moving to LA in 1969 at 16. Her father played baseball there with other members of the Yucatecan community.
For Mijares, whose Mundo Maya Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes Mayan culture and has held its annual Mundo Maya Day celebration at the park, getting onto the lake was a highlight.
“It was exciting to go to the park,” Mijares said. “It was beautiful, it was clean and there was entertainment.”
Jo Pitesky remembers fighting with her siblings over who got to steer and pedal when their parents took them to the park in the early to mid-1970s.
“As a kid, pedal boats were immense fun,” she said. “Your parents only buy a half-hour or hour pass and you think they’re being cruel and unusual, but at the end of the hour, your legs are just exhausted.”
Susan Torres remembers riding the boats with her father and sister as a teenager. Her father, an actor best known for playing Norman the Doorman on “The Suite Life of Zack & Cody,” often took them around LA. Torres returned for one last ride in 2009 while photographing the park for her senior journalism project.
“It was accessible and it was something really fun and we didn’t have to spend an arm and a leg to do something fun and different,” said Torres, who’s since moved to Washington.
By then, however, boating at MacArthur Park was nearing its end.
The boats had disappeared and returned before. Thirty pedal boats were brought back in 1997, roughly a decade after they were removed from the lake, with supporters hoping recreation would draw families back to a park struggling with drugs and crime.
Recreation and Parks ultimately discontinued its city-run pedal boat operations in 2009 after years of financial losses.
Health of the park
The idea behind bringing them back today has some echoes of that earlier effort.
Hernandez described the city’s approach to MacArthur Park as addressing several problems at once.
“I’m a believer that public safety is an ecosystem,” Hernandez said. “It includes infrastructure. It includes working street lights, walkable streets, but I also believe that we have to do the work to bring fun activities so that the community will want to take space in MacArthur Park.”
She pointed to street medicine teams that provide health care directly to unhoused people around the park, along with a planned health hub. A $40 million stormwater capture project will also add a pedestrian bridge, shaded seating, walking paths and a water feature to the park.
Recreation and Parks General Manager Jimmy Kim said a new contract for the park’s bandshell will bring more programming there, and boating could give people another reason to visit.
“I’m very much in the belief that the more types of amenities that you have where people could come and enjoy I think the better,” he said. “It could improve the park itself, the health of the park because more people will be here.”
The department plans to seek community input once it has an agreement with the boat operator.
Mijares would like to see boats inspired by the colorful trajineras of Mexico City, but said the city also needs to address conditions around the lake.
“If they’re planning to bring back the pedal boats, the major holistic cleanup needs to happen at MacArthur Park,” Mijares said. “Clean the water, invest and do right by the community. It has to be a concerted effort. The homelessness has to be addressed simultaneously.”
Cooper hopes the boats can restore at least one piece of what drew people to the park for generations.
“I hope they bring it back. I hope it’s very affordable,” Cooper said. “And I hope it combines with a real experience that feels like something special and something uniquely LA.”
Rudolph, who has lived in Westlake for more than a decade, expects to be around 87 when the boats return.
“If I have the energy, I will go and visit them and see how they are and maybe ride them one last time,” he said.
