Indeed it is, last I remember. I think it's called "Cave." The building next door to it burned down in a fire 2 or 3 years ago, it had housed a very trendy club, of which the name escapes me at the moment. So that much storied intersection of Hollywood and Vine currently has a huge vacant lot at the northwest corner.

The Hotel Bristol, located in downtown LA at 423 W. 8th Street, 1953
http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/980...ristol1953.jpg
USC Archive

This building still exists. And the area, being run-down, totally makes for a great film noir vibe, even when walking through the block in the middle of the day. Looking up the history of this building, from what I've gathered, it was built in 1906 and was originally the Hotel Woodward. Some time in the 1920s it became the Hotel Bristol. It later became an SRO-hotel housing transients. There were recent plans to turn the Hotel Bristol into a boutique hotel before the recession hit; I believe there are plans to turn it into low-income housing, but currently the building sits vacant. The bar next door to it, the Golden Gopher, has been there since the early 20th Century as well. I took some pics of the Hotel Bristol and the Golden Gopher/Lindy Hotel last month:

http://img297.imageshack.us/img297/1176/p1120479.jpg
Photo by me

http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/5153/p1120484m.jpg
Photo by me

http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/8158/p1120477.jpg
Photo by me

I have to be sure to go into the Golden Gopher the next time I'm in the area.

I altered this image to make it look a little "noir." If only there were a '38 Mercury parked at the curb or something.
http://img687.imageshack.us/img687/5306/p1120479a.jpg
Photo by me

^^^Great photos sopas_ej!

The Hotel Bristol building looks in remarkable shape.
The Golden Gopher looks like it jumped off a page in a pulp novel.
I wonder what it looks like inside?

Look, there's the Hotel Lindy squeezed in there too.
Damn I love those old signs.





Below: You can see the Hotel Bristol building during it's Hotel Woodward days in this 1913 photograph.


http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/431...dhotel1913.jpg
usc digital archive

Here is the same view, extending northward (I think). 'The Woodward' is extreme right.


http://img64.imageshack.us/img64/698...ard2in1913.jpg
usc digital archive

Here is another photo showing the Hotel Woodward/Hotel Bristol building.
This is quite interesting.




http://img194.imageshack.us/img194/6...stlookingw.jpg
usc digital archive

:previous:

Very cool photos, ethereal! I particularly like the view of this:

http://img64.imageshack.us/img64/698...ard2in1913.jpg
usc digital archive

I'm amazed at the few single-family homes that still existed and that were were being encroached upon by commercial buildings at that point in time; at mid-left you can also see Pershing Square and the Philharmonic Auditorium before its 1930s Moderne remodel (and eventual demolition, of course), and the area where the Biltmore Hotel would be built.

Looking it up on Google Earth, the Hotel Bristol was dirty-looking until fairly recently; I assume it got cleaned up when it was being fixed up to become a boutique hotel before those plans fell through. I neglected to say that when I walked by it last month, it looked there were plans for a burger bar to go into one of the commercial spaces at street level, and I guess there were also remnants of the Club El Gaucho, too. Here's the pic from Google Earth:
http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/1...oogleearth.jpg

Also, I was kinda hoping the Golden Gopher would be a total dive, but apparently it's been turned into a hip-looking bar-- perfect for maybe one day an SSP noirish LA thread fan get-together? Hehe!

http://www.goldengopherbar.com/

Great shots, etheral & sopas. "The Golden Gopher" is a great name for a bar. I was hoping that inside it might resemble Edie's over on Figueroa, you know, the one run by Edie Phillips, who killed her twin, the very rich Mrs. de Lorca, years and years ago? Remember that case? Very juicy, late noir.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_HJrGkCIwYO...eadringer1.jpgWarner Bros.
End of the line for Mrs. High-and-Mighty de Lorca

P.S.
I just noticed that Paul Henreid directed Dead Ringer. "Oh, Jerry, don't let's ask for the moon. We have the stars." ...

Oh yes, I do remember Edie's, over on Figueroa and Temple, old de Lorca territory, apparently. ;) Hehe I love "Dead Ringer." And "Now, Voyager"!

Funny you should bring up "Dead Ringer," after all, it was filmed at the Doheny Mansion, brought up some posts back. It's been years since I've been to the grounds, which I believe are still open to the public, I think it's officially a City of Beverly Hills park. I wish the mansion were open for tours; instead, I just peeked through the windows...

http://jpg3.lapl.org/pics24/00061812.jpgLAPL

Being on a corner lot on a main drag, this pretty little house is long gone, of course. But the stone gatepost isn't:

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&q=...84.12,,1,-0.37

Last night when I was looking at this pic:

http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/5...igueroa195.jpg
usc digital archive

I realized that that is the same intersection (7th and Figueroa) as the one in this pic:

http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/7...n1949ssilb.jpg
ssliberman

I realized that the building on the right with the fire escape is what I call the "reclining men building," being that the facade of it at about the 3rd floor has huge statues of 2 reclining half-naked men. It's really called the Fine Arts Building, built in 1925. I've been in the lobby and it is BEAUTIFUL.

Here's a contemporary photo of it from photobucket/fawnskinpics:
http://i260.photobucket.com/albums/i...neArtsBldg.jpg

Here's a 1933 photo of it from travelinlocal.com
http://www.travelinlocal.com/wp-cont...10/tl10-22.jpg

Oh, apparently it housed the Signal Oil Company, and a Pig 'n Whistle restaurant!

Oh that's amazing, Gaylord! And I see it's in the area of the Angelus-Rosedale Cemetery, where Margaret and Edie met at Mr. de Lorca's funeral. Incidentally, that's a great cemetery, filled with the graves of old celebs and notable early LA pioneers/developers. Hattie McDaniel is buried there...

Golden Gopher? Must be run by a wayward Minnesota grad.

Thanks to Johnny Socko for the link to this thread. I've been perusing through for at least a week, now, and I signed up for an account just so I could contribute.

The history of Venice is very interesting, especially all the old canals that were filled and turned into streets. Jeffery Stanton came to one of my architecture classes and talked to us about Venice and talked about his book and showed us a number of great photographs. His book has a lot of great information that he's dug up.:
http://www.westland.net/venice/stanton.htm
http://www.westland.net/venicehistor...acificBook.htm

http://www.westland.net/venicehistor...nice25-map.gif
(Jeffery Stanton)

And this website about former airfields is also amazing. I am especially keen on the former Howard Hughes Airport (now "Playa Vista") because I used to live across the street for a couple years and subjected my wife many times to pointing out the "location where the Spruce Goose was built":
http://members.tripod.com/airfields_...ds_CA_LA_W.htm

http://members.tripod.com/airfields_...dg15Spruce.jpg
(USGS)

And what talk of LA wouldn't be complete without Campo de Cahuenga, the location of the signing of the Treaty of Cahuenga (wish i could find some old pictures of that adobe) :

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...a_pavement.jpg
(wikipedia)

I've been gone from LA for 2 years and haven't missed it at all until I started looking at all these pictures. This thread is incredible. I can't wait to see more great old photographs! :tup:

I've seen some photos from the 1960's that actually showed yellow smog thick enough to be rolling INTO some downtown office buildings through open windows. If anybody can find those photos, I'd love to see them, too.

Well, if life meant having to sleep with Karl Malden, I'd have tried for the brass ring of the de Lorca/Doheny house in B.H. too, just like Edie. Shute, even Chowchilla or death row at San Quentin (alongside Babs Graham) might have been preferable!

I understand that Hattie wanted to be buried in what is now Hollywood Forever cemetery, but they wouldn't have her. So she wound up in Rosedale...which is really closer to home anyway--2203 S. Harvard, then and now:

http://jpg1.lapl.org/pics04/00001880.jpgLAPL

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2331/...d6b658eb84.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2331/...d6b658eb84.jpg

Today is Rudolph Valentino's birthday, who was born May 6, 1895.

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-..._6722589_n.jpg
unknown

His house in the Whitley Heights area of Hollywood was torn down in the early 1950s for the Hollywood Freeway, but until very recently, his last home, Falcon Lair, off of Benedict Canyon (on Bella Drive), still existed. He had purchased it in 1925, the year before he died. In the late 1980s I drove up there myself and took a picture of it (back when Doris Duke still lived there, I believe); the print is somewhere in my bedroom at my parents' house. I recently looked it up online and I was saddened to learn that the house had been drastically stripped some years ago, though the outer gate and garage still exist, or something like that. Incidentally, this property is near the Cielo Drive property that Sharon Tate and company were slaughtered at by the Manson Family.

According to the rudolph-valentino.com website:

Falcon Lair has changed hands once again. The gentleman who purchased Falcon Lair from the Doris Duke Estate in 1998 and began reconstruction and restoration in 2003, put the house and the surrounding property up for sale in late 2005. Apparently, as of August, 2006, the Falcon Lair and surrounding acreage have been sold.

In the 80 years since Rudolph Valentino last drove his car through the gates of Falcon Lair, very little from his time survived him. The stained glass windows, the flag, the beams in the dining room, the gorgeous oaken doors. Almost everything else inside had been remodeled so as to be unrecognizable. The floor plan remained virtually the same, but the home was forever changed.

The future of Falcon Lair is uncertain, but it is likely to be razed completely. Even if the house were not razed, Falcon Lair as Valentino knew it, will exist no more.



http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_o4AsJVhvpn...alcon+lair.jpg
bongoshouse.blogspot.com

Falcon Lair in 1998:
http://www.rudolph-valentino.com/images/falcon/fl-3.jpg
rudolph-valentino.com

Falcon Lair in 2005
http://www.rudolph-valentino.com/ima...on/FL-2005.jpg
rudolph-valentino.com

Welcome, tykxboy! Thanks so much for posting that map; since about the time I posted those old pics of Venice on this thread, I've been trying to look for old maps of Venice to see where the original canals were and how much more extensive they were than they are now. Now I know! :)

Welcome to the thread tykxboy!

The illustration you posted showing the layout of the canals in Venice was very helpful.
I've always been a bit confused about their size and configuration.


Very interesting post about Rudolph Valentino, sopas_ej.

I ventured up to Falcon Lair when I first moved to L.A. back in the 1980s.
It was already in disrepair even then. I have a piece of wrought-iron from the gate.

Flooding around Sister Aimee's Angelus Temple.


http://img248.imageshack.us/img248/5...4pooraimee.jpg
usc digital archive







Below: A deluge in 1952.


http://img249.imageshack.us/img249/8...eealaterfl.jpg
usc digital archive

Another 'act of God'.




http://img696.imageshack.us/img696/7...snowrepeat.jpg
postcard/ebay

Drunk man arrested in woman's dress, 1948.


http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/7067/sclothes1948.jpg
usc digital archive