As far back as the turn of the 20th century, when the first Norwegian Lutheran settlers came to the Conejo Valley, Lutherans had the dream of one day establishing a college of their own. U.S. Senator Leland Stanford had offered a lot near Palo Alto, California, to Swedish Lutherans, but withdrew the offer when asked to fund the construction. Decades later in 1928, a group of Los Angeles developers gave a site in Del Rey Hills in order to establish "Los Angeles Lutheran University". The land was donated by the Harry Culver Company, Dickinson & Gillespie, film director King Vidor, and Joseph Mesmer. Architects planned a Mediterranean-style campus with a campanile on the mesa's edge. The ground-breaking was scheduled for the summer of 1928, but according to a front-page article in the "Los Angeles Times", the 1929 stock market crash postponed the scheduled construction indefinitely. This site is now the current location of Loyola Marymount University.