Originally Posted by ethereal_reality (Post 8749188)

Here is a truly phenomenal photograph of the Swanfeldt Tent & Awning Co. at 220 S. Main in downtown Los Angeles.....eBay

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

What's up with the string?....Who's dat upstairs? . . .the young Swanfeldt family?

Originally Posted by Beaudry (Post 8755676)

[...]

Anyway, let's take a look at that baby—or is it?

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...edc98aa7_o.png
________________________________________________________________

Originally Posted by LATIMES.COM

Old L.A. is rapidly disappearing. We have to honor our past and fight blandness

By Nita Lelyveld City Beat Columnist

Maybe it’s the shortening of the days, the way darkness now is falling so fast. But I find myself especially wistful lately as I watch old Los Angeles being torn down all around me.

I am grateful for every effort to preserve our better-known city treasures — historically significant architecture, landmarks like Angels Flight. But the quaint century-old homes, the homegrown, one-of-a-kind small storefronts, the low-slung vernacular architecture that to me so represents the city is getting disappeared fast by developers with barely a word in its defense.

In Hollywood, where I live, on some residential streets, it seems every other modest bungalow built in the early years of the last century now is tucked behind a green construction fence. Usually when I come upon one, a “Notice of Demolition” already is up.

When I pass by next, I think, I may just see a pit or a pile of dirt.

So what do I do when there is nothing left to do?

I stand still and soak up a gently pitched roof, decorative shingles that look like the scales on a fish, an old porch built to be friendly and inviting. I let each little detail soak in. And then, because this is the modern age and I am ever equipped, I pull out my iPhone and record an image or two of the condemned.

I am a Los Angeles memory keeper. I know I am far from alone. Since I first wrote about my fear that Los Angeles was losing too much of its texture, I have been hearing from others in the clan.

We who love the L.A. we are losing are especially enamored of its lack of uniformity, its many different styles rubbing shoulders — emphasis here on styles. We tend not to feel much affection for the new generic apartment boxes popping up everywhere as if all out of the same catalog. I wonder whether we can come together and make our feelings known in a way that matters before too much is erased.

I recently walked around Historic Filipinotown with photojournalist Lexis-Olivier Ray, who is documenting the demolitions and new building in his own fast-changing neighborhood. He and I stood staring at a large white, brown and beige apartment complex rising up. We looked at homes over a century old that people have made their own, surrounding them with jungles of tropical plants. We peered over a green construction fence at a large Craftsman-style dwelling about to come down. A couple of weeks later, he sent me a shot of the bulldozing.

Housing, housing, we need housing. I haven’t missed the message. I know we need a lot more affordable places for people to live. But I can’t help feeling that in the name of trying to stem a crisis they don’t really care about, too many developers are being given license to get away with whatever they please, regardless of what it does to our communities.

Right now, speculators are free to trample characterful neighborhoods in which they have no stake to try to cash in quickly on characterless buildings in which they’ve invested no care and no heart. They rarely are stopped from pushing out renters of lesser means to try to woo buyers of greater means. They build boxes and bait them with the latest in smart lighting and gleaming stainless steel not for the people who have roots in the surrounding streets but for the ones who will soon push them out.

It seems to me that we should fight the argument that any talk of preservation is anti-housing. Because it doesn’t have to be. We can be for affordable housing but against the kind of utter freedom to tear down and put up just about anything at all anywhere in the name of it that on the block just east of mine has produced the kind of development that makes neighborhood people cry.

Two nicely preserved Craftsman homes now find themselves stuck on either side of a taller, ugly fourplex that was built on spec and sits empty, for sale, where another fine Craftsman in a lovely row of them once stood.

Nathan Marsak, a local historian, has been so saddened by the speed and the thoughtless nature of the development of late that in September he started a blog he calls R.I.P. Los Angeles.

On the city’s planning website, he finds places that are being knocked down and then takes a moment to say a word in memoriam.

Recently, he showcased 933 S. Gramercy Place in Koreatown — a “7 room, 1,840sf Craftsman bungalow ... built in the spring of 1912.”

“There are precious few Craftsmans left in this part of the world; they’ve been nearly exterminated east of Wilton,” he wrote. “Look closely at the expressive use of brick on the chimney and porch.”

History is Marsak’s love. It isn’t what pays the bills. He says he only wishes he had time to do more than just mention a few of the many buildings on the way out. And he hopes he can find ways to get some attention while there still is a chance to save them. He also hopes he can at least jumpstart an important conversation.

“The fabric of our city is woven together by communities and neighborhoods who no longer have a say in their zoning or planning so it’s important to shine a light on these vanishing treasures, now, before the remarkable character of our city is wiped away like a stain from a countertop,” he wrote in an explanation of the blog’s purpose.

Photographer Ashley Noelle records Los Angeles for posterity with a large view camera — the old-fashioned-looking kind with the accordion pleats known as a bellows. She calls the camera Henry and takes it with her as she travels the city. In a minute or two, she can pop out of her Prius, put Henry on a tripod and capture a striking facade. She does it head on, from across the street, usually on cloudy days to eliminate shadow.

Like me, Noelle is an L.A. transplant who fell head over heels for this city. She grew up in a small town in Florida. She arrived here 26 years ago and says she felt instantly, completely at home.

“It was kind of like if you try on a coat at a thrift store and it’s been broken in by somebody else but it just fits perfect and you just feel it,” she told me.

She is drawn most especially to mom-and-pop storefronts. She loves the ones with the sweet, corny names you can just tell someone thought up in their living room. Where else, she says, do you find little apartment buildings built to look like castles? Or a garage specializing in Cadillacs with a pink Cadillac on the roof?

Like me, she often looks at a place and sees stories.

“Can you imagine all the generations that have gone through that door?” she’ll think to herself. Or, “Think of the guy who’s paying the light bill for that sign that’s been there forever.”

A lot of photos she has taken in recent years for what she calls her Los Angeles Series are of places that no longer stand. She thinks of herself as a photographer of “the underdog,” she told me.

For years now, on social media, I’ve been trying to make our big city feel smaller and cozier by creating a community around the hashtag #mydayinla on Twitter. I often use it to celebrate the underdog too and to share photographic evidence of subtle shifts in my neighborhood.

But the commemorative photos I take of the disappearing bungalows mostly aren’t for show. They’re a quieter, more private form of tribute akin to grief — a way of saying, yes, I see you. Families were raised in you. I thank you for your service. When you are gone and in your stead comes some bland, boxy building — perhaps with stripes or bright blocks of color as its only exterior embellishment — I will still look at the space where you stood and remember you and your more charming, more homey, more welcoming face.

And I will try to make a case for saving some of your neighbors.

Originally Posted by HossC (Post 8757132)

:previous:

It's still there (see link below image).

https://i809.photobucket.com/albums/...xcarHouse1.jpg
GSV

There are many pictures of the house at realtor.com. I also found the following text by Scott Stevens on flickr.com:

"In 1973 this freight car bridge was the only access to my home in Topanga Canyon. Foot access only. It was a rental which had the dubious distinction of having the worst flea infestation I've ever come across. Loved the house and location so fought the fleas and won. I took a trip to Calcutta and Nepal for about a month and left the house in the hands of a fellow we called Boston Bert who was helping a great band of our friends called Country. Michael Fondiler, Steve Fondiler, Ian Espinoza, Tom DeSimone and Tom Snow were creating awesome music together. When I returned from Nepal I found the living room floor moldings lined with empty Jack Daniels bottles, 2 deep in some places, as Bert always did enjoy a party. Good house, good friends and good times."

There are plenty of other photos online.

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality (Post 8757102)

Tragedy mystery.

I have been looking through some of my old files and happened upon this rppc showing a damaged, truncated bridge in Long Beach.

http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/128...923/i3VdXP.jpg

"Seaside Foot Bridge......Scene of fatal tradgedy [sic] March - 1938............................................................................................................................................Hoffman Photo Service, Long Beach, Calif. E"


There's no doubt that the damage was caused by the infamous flood of 1938.... Does anyone know what "fatal tragedy" happened on this bridge? :shrug:

.

Originally Posted by Lwize (Post 8757227)

https://www.latimes.com/california/s...honor-our-past

https://www.riplosangeles.com/

the LOS ANGELES series
a photographic love letter by artist ASHLEY NOELLE:


https://www.thelosangelesseries.com/

Originally Posted by Lwize (Post 8757227)

Old L.A. is rapidly disappearing. We have to honor our past and fight blandness

https://www.latimes.com/california/s...honor-our-past

https://www.riplosangeles.com/

the LOS ANGELES series
a photographic love letter by artist ASHLEY NOELLE:


https://www.thelosangelesseries.com/

Originally Posted by odinthor (Post 8757417)

Here it is, e_r:

https://i.postimg.cc/Vvx8gYK0/Footb...ridge3-3-38.jpg
LA Times 3/3/1938, via ProQuest, via CSULB Library

Originally Posted by Lwize (Post 8757227)

https://www.latimes.com/california/s...honor-our-past

https://www.riplosangeles.com/

the LOS ANGELES series
a photographic love letter by artist ASHLEY NOELLE:


https://www.thelosangelesseries.com/

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality (Post 8757753)

Thanks for solving the pedestrian bridge tragedy, odinthor. It's such a sad story. :(

While looking for additional information on the 10 victims (two women, a small boy, four sailors, four civilians)
I happened upon the "Lash of St. Francis" tropical storm that devastated the area the following year. (1939)

"The Lash of St. Francis (El Cordonazo de San Francisco) winds and rains came unexpectedly and suddenly, startling some Long Beachers
who had hit the strand that Monday during a searing summer heat wave that brought record-breaking temperatures of 103 degrees
just a few days earlier. As gales reached 65 mph, the Navy deployed four new destroyers attached to the Battle Fleet,
and the Coast Guard added a pair of cutters to rescue boaters in the Catalina Channel.

In all, 48 people were killed in California, including 24 aboard the vessel Spray (two passengers survived) as it was attempting to dock
near Point Magu and 15 aboard the Ventura fishing boat Lur."



The death toll of the Flood of 1938 was 96 people.

.

Originally Posted by odinthor (Post 8758054)

:previous:

Sixth and Pine, e_r?

From an article talking about Long Beach doings:

https://i.postimg.cc/vZk9M2Gv/LBSchool3-29-03.jpg
LA Times 3/29/1903, via ProQuest, vis CSULB Library

Originally Posted by odinthor (Post 8758054)

:previous:

Sixth and Pine, e_r?

From an article talking about Long Beach doings:

https://i.postimg.cc/vZk9M2Gv/LBSchool3-29-03.jpg
LA Times 3/29/1903, via ProQuest, vis CSULB Library

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality (Post 8757844)

Meanwhile; back in Long Beach. ;)


https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/1...922/SaF0UB.jpg
eBay

The building was initially a one school schoolhouse built in 1890; in 1907 another room was added; in 1915 the rooms were enlarged and remodeled to make the building pictured.

It was replaced by a new brick school in 1965.

Is that a bunch of firewood? If so, the school must have had a wood burning stove / furnace. ...(my old grade school had a coal burning furnace)

BACK OF THE POSTCARD...IT DOESN'T INCLUDE AN ADDRESS.
https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/8...922/ATZcVB.jpg

I am trying to figure out where this wooden school was located.

Originally Posted by CityBoyDoug (Post 8755663)

I suspect there has been some street restructuring and street name changes since that school was operational. That was over 100 years ago since it was built.

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality (Post 8758395)

Here is Lowell Elementary, damaged in the 1933 Earthquake.

Description:.. "Art Deco style schoolhouse showing severe damage to central tower and left roof line. Photo mis-identified as Jefferson Junior High."

.
________________________________________________________________

Originally Posted by Martin Pal (Post 8758504)

I think they also mis-identify this schoolhouse as "art deco."

Originally Posted by nadeau (Post 8754462)

I have a shot of this intersection prior to the tunnel being built. It has some of the same structures visible. Problem is, I don’t quite know how to make a good scan of it, and the print isn’t old, so there is no provenance. I found it in a closet in a warehouse that had been converted to a soundstage. It’s too big for my scanner, and I doubt a cell phone snap will do it justice. I’d love to share it. Please advise. Thanks for all of your contributions.

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality (Post 8754599)

.
I'd love to see the photograph as well, naudeu.

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality (Post 8758395)

Hmmm...so what did the grade school in Long Beach California look like? :shrug:

Here is Lowell Elementary, damaged in the 1933 Earthquake.

https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/1...924/pJMVX3.jpg
cdm

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality (Post 8758395)

I'm sure Lowell Elementary was one of several grade schools in Long Beach CA., right?

Originally Posted by nadeau (Post 8758595)

I have made a copy of the photo, and thought Google Photos would be able to host it if I just copied the link, but to no avail. How are folks posting images these days without subscribing to a hosting site?

Originally Posted by odinthor (Post 8758670)

You can use the no-charge Postimage.org (as I do):

https://postimages.org/

You can either do it without subscribing with a registered account, or you can have a (also free) registered account.

They're an "org" (not a "com") and their thing is to provide free image hosting, which they've been doing since 2004. I've been with them several years, and have had zero problems, zilch, nada. I'm completely satisfied with them.

When you upload a pic to them, you get an array of URLs or links or whatever they might be called; for NLA, you choose the one called "Direct Link," and voila!

Originally Posted by tovangar2 (Post 7222439)

I also noticed in that photo tetsu, the one-time home of J.W. Gillette (lower left, collanaded, east-facing porch, squared-off gable), builder of Angels Flight for Col Eddy. It has been engulfed by urbanization (Mount Lee and Mount Hollywood back the scene).



Thx for posting this Hoss.

A closer view (a bit earlier than the one above):
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-q...4%252520PM.jpg
uscdl (detail)

An even closer view of some of the shops:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-c...4%252520PM.jpg
uscdl (detail)

Back in 1878-1879 the Gillette home was in a very suburban setting. Hill St, coming down off Court Hill, is a lane at best. The Horticultural Pavilion (Ezra Kysor, 1879), on Fort Moore Hill, is at upper right, just nearing completion:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-5...2%252520PM.jpg
seaver center

In 1871 this area was truly rural, even though it was close to town. A little lane runs north from Temple to reach the ten-acre Protestant cemetery:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-B...2%252520AM.jpg
ucla dl augustus koch (detail)

The in-between stage, 1892. Temple street frontages have been graded and Hill Street is now a proper, if somewhat disjointed, street.
The Protestant cemetery has been reduced to a five-acre remnant:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-7...9%252520PM.jpg
uscdl (detail)

The Gillette home. A detail from the photo above:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-v...0%252520AM.jpg
uscdl (detail)

322 Temple was demolished and replaced with a garage in 1919/1920.

The two homes on the north side of Temple, just west of Hill St also appear in all three photos.



The Gillette home site is now within the footprint of the current Hall of Records.

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality (Post 8758907)

I just happened upon this excellent rppc photograph of a boarding house located at 126 W. 21st. Street, Los Angeles in March, 1915....


There are some very interesting looking boarders in this pic. I especially like the gentleman in the chair on the right.

The three ne'er-do-wells ;) on the top step look like they'd be fun to hang-out with at the local pool hall....(actually, they're sitting in CHAIRS too)

Is that a vent, or a trap door, to the left of the porch? :shrug: ...(perhaps a distant relative of the owner is chained up in the basement)


Note the Room & Board sign on the pillar.


The reverse.

Search terms:...MRS. JACOBY AND DAUGHTER (CIARA HACKENYOS)...J. J. LEONARD (?)...MEDICAL COLLEGE - UNIV. OF SO. CAL.

I wonder if the man in the chair is the person associated with the USC medical school student. (I wonder if he's a student or a professor)

.

Originally Posted by Beaudry (Post 8755676)

As you asked many a question in this and subsequent post, I thought I'd zoom in on a few interesting tidbits.

First of all, thought I'd float a theory. Why all the patriotic bunting? Well, here's a May 1901 ad for the Fiesta de las Flores, and it's Swanfeldt's for all your patriotic bunting needs, especially since we have an "honored guest":

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...16c5f08c_o.png

Thus maybe they were all turned out for the Presidential visit. I think that also answers the question of "what's with the string?" — though it was not string, but wire. Here is a snippet that talks about McKinley's parade cruising along Main Street, and about the wires that were erected to keep parade-watchers back:

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...2a86c988_o.png

Anyway, let's take a look at that baby—or is it?

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...edc98aa7_o.png

Guess we'll never know! Check out mysterious inviso-face guy:

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...e89c51f8_o.png

And this lady, who totally did it with Martin Van Buren when she was sixteen:

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...c44a3071_o.png

There's this incredible Odd Fellows lamp in the doorway—

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...f6bc1ed7_o.png

And this one above, of the "Friendship, Love & Truth" interlocking oval rings symbol of the order, done with incandescent bulbs—

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...74ef9c86_o.png

But mostly I love these two fellows, who apparently have fashioned sleeves for themselves out of awning material—

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...24e81b39_o.png

Guy on the right is like an even more badass version of Lee Marvin in the Wild One, which you wouldn't think possible, but there you are

https://cdn3.bigcommerce.com/s-3slfy...51.451.jpg?c=2

Originally Posted by nadeau (Post 8758779)

I wanted to add this to the above since they all are of the same intersection. https://i.postimg.cc/ry3Fvzg6/BC29-E...0-FF93-CD6.jpg

Origin Unknown

Originally Posted by BillinGlendaleCA (Post 8758718)

I use postimages as well, but use the "Hot link for Forums" option which also works.

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality (Post 8758907)

I just happened upon this excellent rppc photograph of a boarding house located at 126 W. 21st. Street, Los Angeles in March, 1915.... HERE

https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/1...923/NCNY3A.jpg

There are some very interesting looking boarders in this pic. I especially like the gentleman in the chair on the right.


Search terms:...MRS. JACOBY AND DAUGHTER (CIARA HACKENYOS)...J. J. LEONARD (?)...MEDICAL COLLEGE - UNIV. OF SO. CAL.

Originally Posted by nadeau (Post 8758771)

I found this modern print in a warehouse closet. I have no idea of provenance, and I haven’t seen it anywhere else. Maybe someone here will know:

https://i.postimg.cc/ry3Fvzg6/BC29-E...0-FF93-CD6.jpg

https://i.postimg.cc/ry3Fvzg6/BC29-E...0-FF93-CD6.jpg
Origin Unknown:shrug:

Thanks to all the contributors to this site and to ethereal_reality and odinthor for your patience. I’ve been lurking on this group for almost a decade and this is my first post.

Originally Posted by HossC (Post 8759248)

This appears to be the same scene from a little further back.

"View looking southwest of the residential area surrounding Broadway, Temple Street and Hill Street, ca.1880."

https://i809.photobucket.com/albums/...empleHill1.jpg
USC Digital Library

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality (Post 8757844)

Meanwhile; back in Long Beach. ;)



https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/1...922/SaF0UB.jpg
eBay

The building was initially a one school schoolhouse built in 1890; in 1907 another room was added; in 1915 the rooms were enlarged and remodeled to make the building pictured.

It was replaced by a new brick school in 1965.

Is that a bunch of firwood? If so, the school must have had a wood burning stove / furnace. ...(my old grade school had a coal burning furnace)


BACK OF THE POSTCARD...IT DOESN'T INCLUDE AN ADDRESS.
https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/8...922/ATZcVB.jpg

I am trying to figure out where this wooden school was located.


.

Originally Posted by nadeau (Post 8759463)

Thanks! That would likely mean the photographer is C. C. Pierce or that it came from his collection. I’ll keep searching the USC Archive for the closer angle.