Originally Posted by ethereal_reality (Post 8720222)

This afternoon's mystery post is a rare original snapshot of a Van de Kamp's bakery that was located on Pasadena Ave.

https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/1...923/wsbPqb.jpg
Currently on eBay



2....The building next to the bakery, on the right, appears to be a real estate office (somewhat of a guess). And it looks like an Egyptian themed storefront
has been built in front of a two story house. Does anyone have information on a "Lee" real estate office in the area?

Originally Posted by Noir_Noir (Post 8720897)

The Van De Kamp's Bakery was at 5552 Pasadena Ave. (nowadays N. Figueroa Street).

Good guess on the real estate office - Vernon Lee at 5550.


https://i.imgur.com/IvljOr1.jpg
rescarta.lapl.org

Originally Posted by Noir_Noir (Post 8720897)

The Van De Kamp's Bakery was at 5552 Pasadena Ave. (nowadays N. Figueroa Street).

Good guess on the real estate office - Vernon Lee at 5550.

Originally Posted by BillinGlendaleCA (Post 8720925)

Just a quick look at GSV, the building on the left in ER's photo may be a survivor.
The real estate office is now a pet hospital and the Van De Kamp's location is a taco place.

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality (Post 8721993)

Thanks Noir Noir. :)


Here's the old snapshot again.

https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/1...921/jPeEe5.jpg
eBay



Bill, are these the three buildings you mentioned? ...If so, I agree. The only possible survivor is #1.

https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/1...921/6ApNbc.jpg
GSV

If you look closely, there appears to be something white at the top of that tree on the left.

Let's take a closer look.









It's Chicken Boy!

https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/8...923/Bn2juf.jpg
DETAIL

He's standing on top of building #1.

(the 'survivor' building in the 1920s snapshot)



.

Originally Posted by Noir_Noir (Post 8722099)

Building # 3 (Lee Real Estate) had gone by the time of the 1931 aerial - moved to Eagle Rock Blvd. in 1928.

https://i.imgur.com/4QH47Jn.jpg
ladbsdoc.lacity.org

Originally Posted by LATimes.com

Land of Noir - flawed heroes, dark angels and dashed dreams. This is LAs story too

https://misc.pagesuite.com/3630c326-...1_T161KCGS.jpg
(Warner Bros. / Kobal / Shutterstock) (Luis Sinco Los Angeles Times)

“THE BIG SLEEP”: The 1946 adaptation with Humphrey Bogart as Philip Marlowe is a near perfect union of book and film. LOS ANGELES is at once a stereotype and piercingly its own, a multicultural diary of splendor and hurt, and the stuff of noir fiction.

By Jeffrey Fleishman >>>

Los Angeles is a madman’s prayer wrapped inside a murderous dream.

It’s homeless on sidewalks and hustlers in the hills. It’s laborers and housekeepers, and billboards of lust, dystopia, apes, robots, Chewbaccas, Kim and Kanye, and Lady Gaga’s newest thing. It’s clear skies, no mosquitoes and laser-sculpted people with money, hedgerows and sins. A crime writer can make of it what he or she wants, like “Westworld” or a lover who gives you a kiss and a key, and one day changes the locks.

The city is the seething, sexy capital of noir. It is an illicit urge — a trick of possibility — slinking like a con-man’s ruse into a novelist’s imagination. Transgressions pile up and the skyline is newly pricked, rising above vintage bungalows that sell for a million plus and are gutted and remade for the conceits and dark angels of a new century.

Raymond Chandler knew Los Angeles was both lie and delusion. A bitter candy land, where paradise betrays and men talk tough and women know the score. The city is desire and the demons beneath, a metropolis where virtue is transactional and shifting facades, like so many Hollywood sets, mask cruelty and indifference. Not forever but long enough to make one wonder whether Michael Connelly’s reticent and resilient Det. Harry Bosch will in the end find peace in his creed: “Everybody counts or nobody counts.”
“Telling something new about this place is what defines a great L.A. crime novel,” said Connelly, whose new book, “The Night Fire,” which pairs Bosch with Det. Renee Ballard, will be published Tuesday. “Not imitating what has been done in the past but taking those influences and inspirations, putting it in a blender with your own experiences and ideas, mixing on puree and pouring out something unique about this unique place.”

Los Angeles is at once a stereotype and piercingly its own, a mountain lion caught in traffic, a cumbia gliding through a hymn. It is a surfer’s sunset, a Santa Ana gust, a wildfire, a canyon howl, a glittering mural, a whispered hate, a body in a street. Like the men and women in its crime novels, the city, a multicultural diary of splendor and hurt, is its own character: grisly, sinister, smooth, sly, urbane, verbose, sparse, fatalistic, celebratory, hopeful and occasionally as doomed as James Ellroy’s “Black Dahlia.”

“All books about Los Angeles have a little bit of noir in them. The city, after all, demands it,” said David L. Ulin, a former Times books editor, author and editor of “Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology.” “This is a place where many people come out of their aspiration — to get famous, to get rich, to get away. Noir is what happens when they don’t get what they’re looking for; noir is what happens in the aftermath ... when desperation sets in. That’s one of the central stories of Los Angeles.”

Writers and readers have many takes on what makes the definitive L.A. crime novel: “An L.A. noir book must unfold in the darkness of L.A,” said T. Jefferson Parker, whose latest book is “The Last Good Guy.” “It can be old or contemporary. It’s a mood, not a time.” Steph Cha, author of “Your House Will Pay,” a compelling new novel exploring the city’s racial tensions, is less particular: “I figure if it’s got crime in it, and it takes place in Los Angeles, it qualifies.”

The city’s noir is a puzzle of flawed heroes and devious interlopers: cops, private eyes, assassins, gamblers, schemers and femme fatales looking not so much for absolution as for a reckoning that will edge them through another day. Or not. From Philip Marlowe to Easy Rawlins, crime novel sleuths know that human nature, whether in Watts or Beverly Hills, is balanced between reward and tragedy, and that a soul — its tender wants, grievous yearnings and amoral fascinations — is a peculiar, hard-to-reconcile thing.

“I’ve always been drawn to the beautiful loser or the unwitting dupe,” said Tod Goldberg, author of “Gangster Nation.” “Characters like Roy Dillon in Jim Thompson’s ‘The Grifters’ or of course Tod Hackett in Nathanael West’s ‘The Day of the Locust,’ characters too smart by half to be wrapped up in the lives they’ve chosen. Issues of identity have always run through the best crime novels of our region, each of us ruled by who we think we are versus who reality has shown us to be, difficult circumstances in a world where seemingly half the people we encounter are employed in make-believe for their living.”

Chandler’s wry cynicism, tinged sadness and clever asides (“Such a lot of guns around town and so few brains”) infused his novels, including “The Big Sleep” and “The Long Goodbye”, with a hard-boiled sophistication that would influence crime writers and filmmakers for generations. The 1946 movie version of his Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart / “The Big Sleep”) was a near perfect union of book and film, one that showed how indivisible noir literature and cinema would become even as crime movies lost their suave double- entendres to expletives and gratuitous gunplay.

“I don’t think there’s any other genre that is so intertwined as the crime genre with film and novel,” said Don Winslow, author of “The Border” and “The Cartel.” “You can’t separate them. They have been informed by each other from the time they started rolling the camera. Noir particularly. Look, I never sat in my office as a PI where a trumpet started and a long-legged blond walked into the room. It was my wife, and I was home with a jazz record on, but that soundtrack of noir informs me when I sit down to write.”

In more recent decades, voices from diverse communities have articulated the texture and resonance of the city’s multi-ethnic landscape. What defines Los Angeles is being shot through different prisms. Hector Tobar’s “The Tattooed Soldier” brings the enmities of the Guatemalan civil war to the L.A. riots. Japanese American novelist Joe Ide has sketched a wonderfully clever thinking-man’s sleuth in his “IQ” series. Cha has delivered Juniper Song, an edgy and inventive Korean American private investigator. Walter Mosely’s proud and enduring Rawlins — a World War II vet with a taste for real estate and temptation — journeys into racism and social inequities faced by African Americans.

The Easy Rawlins books “present a side of L.A. so real that I have no doubt it exists,” said Bette Ross, a writer. “In my mind, I see streets of modest houses, some with rusted cars in the yard, some yards well-kept with flowers, hints about the people who live there. Personal expectations are built from different parameters ... Justice is tempered by implacable, sometimes vicious reality.”

“For so many decades,” said Daniel Olivas, author and editor of the anthology “Latinos in Lotusland,” “people of color in Los Angeles really were nothing more than props and ugly stereotypes in ‘classic’ noir fiction.” He praised Yxta Maya Murray’s novel “Locas” for capturing Chicanas “living in the gang-ravaged Los Angeles neighborhood of Echo Park.... But in this novel, women of color are at its center rather than being relegated to mere plot points, sexual conquests or incidental appearances.”

Reality here is a tease with a bullet, a come-on for a setup. In his 1981 novel, “A Savage Place,” Robert B. Parker called L.A. “the last hallucination, the dwindled fragment of — what had Fitzgerald called it? — ‘the last and greatest of all human dreams.’ It was where we’d run out of room, where the dream had run up against the ocean, and human voices woke us. Los Angeles was the butt end, where we’d spat it out with our mouths tasting of ashes, but a genial failure of a place for all that.”

It is the lonely heart beating inside the wreckage, where characters confront history and themselves, such as Jackie Ishida, a Japanese American in Nina Revoyr’s “Southland” who examines the life of her grandfather in a story that is an intimate and sweeping look at Los Angeles’ diversity and danger. Like a smart dame — a derringer in her sequined clutch — outwitting a patsy, the story of the city is a protagonist’s search for answers no matter how unseemly.

“For me,” said Ide, “L.A. noir is about a lone, determined character, trying to find a way through a perilous, capricious, multilayered city. Sometimes to seek justice, sometimes just to survive.”

Los Angeles is America through refracted light. A soft glow needled with glare. The country looks west and sees a future that inspires and frightens, a city of progressive politics and immigrants, of homeless tents and Marvel fantasies; of God, flesh, tattoos, Cartier and lowriders. It is reluctant to confront its ills and restless in its contradictions, a place for itinerant souls to barter and bid and, depending on one’s luck, find sustenance, wealth or a glimmer of providence. That’s when shadows shift and bodies fall.

“We’re drawn to the feral qualities of the grasping, amoral Angelenos who populate classic L.A. noir,” write Kim Cooper and Richard Schave, who run Esotouric Tours, which explores the city’s lurid underbelly. “Strangers in town, free agents, they don’t feel the eyes of village elders upon them — they can do anything they dream here and get away with it or kill or die trying.”

An imagined crime here can spring from a sudden glimpse. The other day, where the 110 veers to the 105, a leopard-print high-heeled shoe sat alone on the roadside. A purple scarf lay in nearby weeds. Traffic raced past. Planes bound for LAX skimmed the distance. It was hazy, hot. Another day on the outskirts. The mind wandered, the way it does when the radio plays like a whisper. One wondered whose foot that shoe belonged to; whose neck was draped in that scarf, which rippled in a wind that blew west toward the runways and the ocean.

Originally Posted by Noir_Noir (Post 8722099)

One Mack Sennett reference book suggests 5819 Pasadena Ave. could possibly be the Van De Kamp's that appears in a 1927 comedy Smith's Candy Shop.

It first shows up at the twelve minute mark.

https://i.imgur.com/5AjodiU.jpg
archive.org - Smith's Candy Shop
__________________________________________________________________________

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality (Post 8723044)

A 'mystery' car parked on a Los Angeles sidestreet. [1962 Kodachrome slide]


https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/1...922/p1i7ug.jpg
eBay

Does anyone recognize the make of this car? It's unfamiliar to me.







Here's an expanded view.

https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/1...921/8cMrAb.jpg

It's relatively small in comparison with the car behind it.


The street sign says Crown Ave. but I can't make out the other street.

.

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality (Post 8723044)

A 'mystery' car parked on a Los Angeles sidestreet. [1962 Kodachrome slide]


https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/1...922/p1i7ug.jpg
eBay

Does anyone recognize the make of this car? It's unfamiliar to me.

Originally Posted by Earl Boebert (Post 8723246)

Looks like something from Ghia in the 50's, but I'll be darned if I can figure out what.

Cheers,

Earl

Originally Posted by UphillDonkey (Post 8723272)

It looks like a Hudson Italia by Touring. I'll see if I can find a decent picture of it.

https://i.postimg.cc/85FwjX26/Hudson...a-Arrow-27.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/R0ZgzZGG/Hudson...a-Arrow-28.jpg

http://www.tresbohemes.com/2015/10/1954-hudson-italia/

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality (Post 8723011)

. . .revealing a 'mystery' drug store.

https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/8...923/JxaaW9.jpg



hmmm...possibly 3267....:shrug:

Do ya'll think we can figure out where this drug store was located. (or is located)

Originally Posted by UphillDonkey (Post 8723272)

It looks like a Hudson Italia by Touring.

Originally Posted by Earl Boebert (Post 8723306)

Congratulations, you nailed it. Carrozzeria Touring instead of Ghia. Only 26 built.

Originally Posted by BillinGlendaleCA (Post 8723158)

Noren St. It's Crown and Noren in La Canada/Flintridge.

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality (Post 8723497)

:previous: You're quite good at this sleuthing thing we have going on, Noir Noir. ;)


re: The mystery car.

Good job UphillDonkey!

Only 26 built. Wow!

What's it doing out in La Canada/Flintridge?

Hmmmm...
I believe there were Disney illustrators living in the area. Maybe it's one of their cars. (wild guess)


Click HERE to see the slide on eBay. ..(I'm going through the seller's other slides in search of clues)
.

Originally Posted by Earl Boebert (Post 8723306)

Congratulations, you nailed it. Carrozzeria Touring instead of Ghia. Only 26 built.

Hudson. Hooda Thunkit :)

Cheers,

Earl

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality (Post 8723044)

A 'mystery' car parked on a Los Angeles sidestreet. [1962 Kodachrome slide]


https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/1...922/p1i7ug.jpg

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality (Post 8723497)

:
Hmmmm...
I believe there were Disney illustrators living in the area. Maybe it's one of their cars. (wild guess)

Originally Posted by Noir Noir

Originally Posted by odinthor (Post 8723180)

Have we seen the interior of the Hollenbeck Hotel Cafe?

https://i.postimg.cc/SKvnrTSx/Hol-Ho-Cafe001.jpg
odinthor collection

Originally Posted by riichkay

https://i1381.photobucket.com/albums...psqren4px3.jpg

Attempt suicide in bar at 1100 West 7th Street, 21 March 1952. Lying on the floor of bar, where he shot himself is victim tentatively identified as Charles Anderson...
Standing over him are two Police Officers... 25 Caliber Automatic pistol in foreground of picture.

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality (Post 8725595)

Here's another 1950s slide.

It's from the same seller that listed the two Wilshire Blvd. slides I posted last night.

https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/1...922/mNknnF.jpg
https://www.ebay.com/itm/35mm-Slide-...IAAOSwZcxdrQzZ

I'm not sure if this one was taken from the Sheraton Town House...but, as you can see, the person taking the photograph was near the top of the building. (if I'm not mistaken the cornice is visible at upper right)

Originally Posted by Beaudry (Post 8725175)

Hey y'all, I'm looking for something and coming up empty so maybe the sleuths here can help me out. Hoping to find a vintage shot of this Bank of America (built in 1949 and designed by Raymond Raleigh Shaw). I figured I'd at least find one in a street scene since it's so near the Crenshaw plaza but I'm not having any luck. Nothing in the Shulmans that I could find either. Thanks in advance!

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...26948491_o.png

Originally Posted by Lorendoc (Post 8725833)

Here is another Ralph Morris photo of a less exotic car than the one recently discussed. All the caption says is "Late 1950's Cadillac 4-door sedan."

https://i.imgur.com/CkD8SQi.jpg
calisphere.org

I really like the feel of this image, and of course wondered where it was taken. There are some clues.

https://i.imgur.com/YzCcnyB.jpg

There looks to be a partial street number at the left, and there are business names as well in the store window. I looked for "Bert Appell" in the early 60's CDs and found one listed at 3182 W 8th street. This is a storefront in the Haddon Hall apartments, just across the street from the Ambassador Hotel.

Here is the "now" view, the tenants seem a bit more down-market:

https://i.imgur.com/aFd8RwH.jpg
GSV

I wondered what sort of business Bert Appell & Co would have been in. There are a couple of references to commercial real estate transactions in the LAT involving them, but nothing else. The photo shows a number of businesses at 3182 consisting of a personal name followed by "& Co." They're just a bit too blurry for me to read.

But, looking at the right side of the original photo gives the probable reason the picture was taken.

https://i.imgur.com/mfKc2zg.jpg

The early 60's CDs show "Morris-Associates" at 3186 W 8th, which was Ralph Morris's business name. Can anyone read the word below "Ralph Morris"? I wonder if that Caddy (what year?) was his car...

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality (Post 8725595)

Here's another 1950s slide.

https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/6...921/oXTB2V.jpg[/URL]

We never figured out where, on Wilshire, this station was located. :(

.

Originally Posted by HossC (Post 8725842)

I think that the Town House is a fair guess for the photographer's location. Here's a 1956 aerial with Wilshire at the bottom.
The intersection with the Richfield station is S Virgil and W 6th. The building to the left of the wrought iron is the Shriners Hospital for Children,
and the tall building in the background is the former American Storage Co tower at 3636 Beverly Boulevard.

https://i809.photobucket.com/albums/...HouseView1.jpg
mil.library.ucsb.edu

All of the small houses seem to have gone, but several of the larger buildings are still standing.

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality (Post 8726445)

Earlier today, I happened upon this unusual 35mm slide of a DC 8 flying over downtown Los Angeles.



https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/6...921/wkRlHy.jpg
eBay





Let's take a closer look.

https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/1...922/3Mxrs2.jpg

I believe we're looking towards downtown from the southeast...right? :shrug:.....So much has changed!


Also..how do you think this slide was taken? Is the jetliner superimposed over an image of downtown Los Angeles? .... I ask because the wings look almost transparent.


LINK

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality (Post 8725086)

https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/1...924/CfefrR.jpg
eBay

Pretty cool, huh. :)

.

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality (Post 8728299)

Out of curiosity I've been trying to read the sign in the distance. . .so I enlarged it

but it's like looking through Mr. Magoo's glasses. :no:

https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/6...921/RnEaYO.jpg
ENLARGED / DARKENED / HIGH CONTRAST

It looks like the first word might end in a 'Y'.

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality (Post 8728299)

[...]

https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/6...921/RnEaYO.jpg
ENLARGED / DARKENED / HIGH CONTRAST

[...]

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality (Post 8728299)

but it's like looking through Mr. Magoo's glasses. :no:

https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/6...921/RnEaYO.jpg
ENLARGED / DARKENED / HIGH CONTRAST

Ummm...

Originally Posted by FredH (Post 8662915)

Here is another place that is not around anymore.


https://i.postimg.cc/59vpKVZb/lion-country-3.jpg
My Photo




It lasted until about 1984 , when they realized that there was more profit in building expensive houses.

Originally Posted by Those Who Squirm! (Post 8729911)

For those of us here who have been participating in the various L.A. related Facebook groups, has anyone else been noticing that FB is taking down more and more of the images you share?

Recently I shared an early 20th-Century image of Republic Street west of Main, together with a Goole Earh screengrab of the same street. These images stayed up a couple of days, long enough for me to get far more reactions than I usually ever get. And then--my images were gone.

It's very frustrating; if we can't share vintage photos on FB then there's really no point to all those FB groups like Photos Of L.A. and Images and Memories of L.A.