Wilshire Bowl/Louisiana/Slapsy Maxie's/Van de Kamp's/store/pumpkin patch/Office Depot
 

"Illustration from a menu of the Wilshire Bowl, 5665 Wilshire Boulevard (at Masselin). The Wilshire Bowl opened in 1933 and was the first of several popular night clubs at this location":
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-Q...8%252520PM.jpg
miraclemileresidentialassoc

1934:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-t...2%252520PM.jpg
miraclemileresidentialassoc


An outstanding history of this corner (great pix!) may be found here



One more image of Wilshire & Masselin:
Robert Pacheco's (the photographer) caption reads, "The only vacant lot on the Miracle Mile is at the corner of Wilshire Blvd. and Masselin Ave. for sale since about 1992, and unused, except for the yearly sale of pumpkins and Christmas trees. Next to the vacant lot is the Metro Arts Building [AKA the Marfay Building, Werdeman & Becket, 1949, now horribly remodeled], William Pereira, architect of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, had his studio and offices in this building during the construction of LACMA in the early 1960s." (looking west from Masselin):
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-H...8%252520PM.jpg
lapl

(Actually Pereira's firm remained in this building until his death in 1985. Pereira originally took over Welton Becket and Associates space on the top floor and, eventually, the entire building)



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I think you're right about it being North La Brea, e_r. The City Directories for a few years either side of the 1938 list a restaurant run by Harry J Bosse at that address, but the name "Tin Can" never appears. I'm guessing that was just a trading name.


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Thanks to tovangar2 and e_r for the follow-ups on the Indian Room. From now on, I'll be looking for a clown on a unicycle every time I go to a bar :).


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Frequented by topless gentlemen?

ER,

If I remember correctly, Station 22 was built in 1932. Had the chance to visit and go inside in April-May '01. The ceiling in the apparatus bay still had the pressed tin from when it was constructed. And yes, there is only one engine assigned to the station.

Casey

The assessor's office only has one build date: 2005

That's what it says:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-I...0%252520PM.jpg
nicolastopless.com

(I was hoping the topless gents were on stage, but no such luck.)


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The LA Online Building Records system has eight pages of permits for 5665 Wilshire,
including some drawings for the 1950s Van de Kamp's remodel:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-T...9%252520PM.jpg
ellenbloom

Having grown familiar with East L.A. over the past few years, engine 22 is a familiar sight to me. They proudly call themselves "Double Deuce".

However, what I would not have guessed, is that there is only one engine at that station! I saw engine 22 so often, I assumed there were at least four trucks assigned to that station. Of course, I have never seen the actual station (or just ignored it due to its size), otherwise I might have realized my error. It's great that you got to visit in person.

1763 Cahuenga
 

I found these photos of the Greene and Greene-designed C. W. Hollister home in the October 1906 Architectural Record:

The front
http://i1165.photobucket.com/albums/...3.jpg~original
Hathitrust -- http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?i...ew=1up;seq=823

The courtyard (the house was shaped like a U)
http://i1165.photobucket.com/albums/...t.jpg~original
Hathitrust -- http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?i...ew=1up;seq=825

The article only said the house was in Hollywood, so I decided to figure out where.

The 1911 LA City Directory got me in the right neighborhood:
http://i1165.photobucket.com/albums/...y.jpg~original
fold3.com

But that address must have changed, because I found the house on the 1907 and 1913 Hollywood Sanborn
Maps just south of Yucca on Cahuenga. This is 1913; the addresses from the 1907 map are underneath
the 1913 addresses. If the Hollister home was at 243 N. Cahuenga, it should have been in the next block
north, but it wasn't:
http://i1165.photobucket.com/albums/...a.jpg~original
LAPL

Next, I discovered that ownership of the house had obviously changed by 1913. Perhaps the bedrooms and bath
were built across the back of the courtyard?:
http://i1165.photobucket.com/albums/...l.jpg~original
LADBS -- http://ladbsdoc.lacity.org/idispublic/

Here are the Storers in the 1914 LA City Directory. Andrea is the mom and Juan the father. Not listed is Victor,
a student at Hollywood High:
http://i1165.photobucket.com/albums/...j.jpg~original
fold3.com

Then I found this article about the family taking the house apart and shipping it to Edmonton, Alberta:
http://i1165.photobucket.com/albums/...f.jpg~original
August 21, 1917 LA Times @ LAPL

It was at this point further googling led me to discover that the story of the home and the Storers had been told
by Steve Vaught in the April 22, 2015, issue of Los Angeles Magazine: http://www.lamag.com/longform/mobile-home/

The article has other photos of the house, which the Storers moved again in Canada. One room of the house,
the original master bedroom, has survived.

This is not that room, but the Provincial Archives of Alberta has this c. 1960s color slide of one of the rooms
in the Storer home:
http://i1165.photobucket.com/albums/...w.jpg~original
https://hermis.alberta.ca/PAA/PhotoG...ObjectID=A4096

Dickie Moore from the Our Gang comedies has died at age 89.

http://i129.photobucket.com/albums/p...psd64te1gn.jpg
MGM, The Kid From Borneo 1933

What I didn't realize is that (years later) he also played the deaf and mute kid in the Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer noir classic "Out of the Past".

http://i129.photobucket.com/albums/p...pspiw12fr8.jpg
Out of the Past, RKO Pictures, 1947

Now, I'm not endorsing "The Kid from Borneo", so watch at your own risk:

https://myspace.com/fancydave/video/...1933/101839188

I only mention it because it contains the scene of Spanky running through a yard with a "57" on the hill behind him.

http://i129.photobucket.com/albums/p...psixicwzss.jpg
The Kid from Borneo, MGM, 1933

I know that this hill has been identified on Noirish L.A. a couple years ago. I don't remember the details, but maybe someone can help out.


Hi, ER Hope you are well.

:previous:

There was more than one "57" around the Los Angeles area, but this is the one at Baldwin Hills. The image below is from post #7135 by fhammon, which also includes a very similar screengrab of Spanky running through the yard.

I recognize the name and picture. :(

There must be only a handful of Little Rascals left. I wonder if there's a tontine?

Surviving "Rascals"
 

:previous:

Link:
'Little Rascals' star Dickie Moore dies at 89, leaving five surviving 'Our Gang' members

"Robert Blake, Sidney Kibrick, Jerry Tucker, Mildred Kornman and Leonard Landy are thought to be the last living members of the 'Gang."


You can look them up here


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Incredible post on the Hollywood Greene & Greene home Flyingwedge. Thank you.

Always fun to hear the Little Rascals Theme music. Click link below [1 minute]:

https://youtu.be/nkM0m-fB2Uw

Another Julius Shulman Bank of America photoset, another location we've visited before - more of that below. This is "Job 999: Bank of America (Los Angeles, Calif.),1951", and shows the bank on the corner of North Broadway and Daly Street in Lincoln Heights.

http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...1.jpg~original

Here's the view looking east.

http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...2.jpg~original

This close-up shows Ptomaine Tommy's at 2420 N Broadway. You can read more about Ptomaine Tommy's and 'Chili Size' in post #5904 by 3940dxer.

http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...3.jpg~original

There was a branch of National Dollar Stores opposite the bank. The jeweler on the left also claimed to be a horologist - now there's a description you don't see much nowadays.

http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...4.jpg~original

All from Getty Research Institute

Believe it or not, this is the bank building today. Most of the windows have been filled, but a lot of the details survive in the green and yellow paintwork.

http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...5.jpg~original
GSV

The building that housed Ptomaine Tommy's also survives - it's now a store called R Fashion Discount.

http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...6.jpg~original
GSV

Opposite Ptomaine Tommy's, you may have noticed a sidewalk clock in the second Shulman photo. There's still one there today - Chuckaluck posted about it in post #22595, and BifRayRock explained its different appearance/orientation in post #22625. The building behind the clock has also been discussed here before, but the vintage picture is another casualty of hotlinking to the California State Library. I think this may have been the original image.
NB. I've grayscaled and lightened this image.

http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...7.jpg~original
California State Library

Here's a recent picture of 2427 N Broadway, originally posted by me.

http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...7NBroadway.jpg
GSV

Sex Crimes in noir town....
 

Ernest E. Debs was Los Angeles City Councilman back in the 1950s. He was sure that if people would stop reading the kind of material he holds in his hands, sex crimes would be way down in LA. Do you believe that?

He was also an implacable foe of Rock n Roll music. He believed it ruined kids and led to crime.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...psczqnznkj.jpg
jpohnbrianking

A Debs quote from the era...."The book is filthy and shocking," said Debs, "an obvious attempt to pander to depraved tastes."

'll bet you could sell those comics he's holding for a small fortune now. Heh-heh.

Ernest E. Debs, Spoil Sport
 

Why the prurient interest in what the rest of us are doing? The guy's obviously a creep.



Debs started out all right:

"Debs was born in Toledo, Ohio, on February 7, 1904, and came to California in a box car when he was 20 to work in the motion picture industry as a dancer."

But then something went horribly wrong:

"During the counterculture era of the 1960s, centered on the county-administered Sunset Strip, Debs was an implacable foe of the youth movements of the time and had several rock-and-roll venues, such as Pandora's Box and coffeehouses shut down. Debs ordered the Sheriff's office to crack down on the counterculture-oriented nightlife [instituting a 10pm curfew], which led to the 1966 Sunset Strip riot. [at least we got a pretty good song out of that]

Debs ardently backed the construction of the Laurel Canyon Freeway and Beverly Hills Freeway and sought to turn the Sunset Strip into a new office district. With the cancellation of both freeway projects and competition from the nearby and newly built Century City as a premium office market, Debs' plans for the Strip were only partly realized."



Debs was at pains to distance himself from the more famous Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926):

"We're not even remotely related... Definitely I'm against radicals and Communists."



H. L. Mencken had Debs' number:

“Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”



I can't believe Debs got two parks named after him :shrug:

But I hope people are having fun in them.



(Quotes re Debs from wiki)

It wasn't just Debs, though few took it to the extremes that he did. The possibility that the comics of the day might harm the fragile eggshell minds of American youth was an issue that came up frequently at the time. Eventually, in 1954, the publishers established the Comics Code Authority as a self-policing body pretty much analogous to the MPAA in the film industry. I didn't realize it at the time, but the significantly cleaner and more all-American tone of the comics I bought as a kid in the 1960s was largely the result of that move.

I'm the proud owner of a tattered copy of the first Mad paperback, Bedside Mad, published in the mid 1950s. It's interesting to see how several of the stories allude to the horror-based content which the comics publishers had lately forsworn. The publishers of Mad had gotten it reclassified as a magazine, so it didn't have to abide by the code. But as it moved more towards satire and movie send-ups, the "Horrible Tales" type content faded out of its own accord.

Hey! I resembled that remark!

Cheers,

Earl

After a few easy ones, this Julius Shulman location took a little more tracking down. It's turns out that we're back on Ventura Boulevard, just across the street from the northern end of Vantage Avenue. On the right is Coast Hardware, offering Old Colony Paints. For reference, this is "Job 1344: Bank of America (Los Angeles, Calif.),1952".

http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...8.jpg~original

Just along from Coast Hardware is Florsheim Shoes and JJ Newberry. On the far side of the bank is the Asia Rug Co.

http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...9.jpg~original

Looking east, both Furnitureland and Glendale Federal Savings identify themselves as the "Valley Branch". I'd love to know what Taffy's was, but so far I've found nothing.

http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...0.jpg~original

All from Getty Research Institute

Very little survives from the Shulman pictures. At first I thought that the Gap building was the old JJ Newberry store, but the position of the traffic signals suggests that it's the old Coast Hardware store.

http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...1.jpg~original
GSV

Although not seen in the Shulman pictures, some of the stores on the other side of the street look like they might have been there in 1952.

http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...2.jpg~original
GSV

I'll finish with this advert for the Valley Branch of Glendale Federal Savings from the April 20, 1950 edition of The Van Nuys News.

http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...3.jpg~original
www.newspapers.com

Taffy's, Ventura Blvd, Studio City, CA
 

:previous:

Taffy's looks like it might have been an art gallery (?):

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-C...1%252520AM.jpg
detail of image previously posted by HC

Good Mid-Century Modern building with an interesting tri-color paint job. I'd love to see a color shot of Taffy's.




News footage taken at this corner last July is here


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