:previous: Thanks for the additional information BRR. I appreciate it!

I thought I had the answer for the "3" above the entrance.


The street number currently on the building is "301" Ord Street, so I thought the address was probably the same in the vintage pic.

http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/102...923/0PeW13.jpg
gsv



But when I looked at the vintage photo again it's quite clear the "01" is missing......but the "3" is there plain as day.

http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/102...924/BeTgh3.jpg
detail

Then I noticed there was a second address on the window between the two men, 701 New High Street.
-------


Is it possible, back in 1917, for a building to have two separate street addresses?

I think you're right CBD. Now that I look at it, it definitely looks more like a hose than a rope.

The Chi Alpha Delta Sorority in front of the Ambassador Hotel in 1928.

(Chi Alpha Delta was the first Japanese American and Asian American sorority at UCLA)

http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/102...923/xcQtwz.jpg
Courtesy of Aiko Mizue Sugita http://www.rafu.com/wp-content/uploa...pi-for-web.jpg

I've been trying to figure out where on the Ambassador property this billboard behind the lovely ladies was located.

At first I thought it might have been out by Wilshire Blvd., but if you look closely there appears to be an entrance (doors and a rather utilitarian-looking light fixture).
----

Also, what "business center" was located at the Ambassador Hotel?

Mystery building....
 

Hello..newbie here....just wanted to say how much i enjoy these tidbits of our towns history. I am often in awe of how much Los Angeles has changed and also saddened to see the beauty of it replaced with "blah" looking facades. The super detective work carried out here also leaves me awestruck. That being said, here is my"mystery" that needs to be solved. http://https://goo.gl/photos/wKBYXSJCx4fF4K1U9 I took this picture a while back...it is located at 3550 Gage Ave. in the city of Bell. Walking through this city there are many houses left over from the old days. The next image is from Google Street View as it looks now..https://goo.gl/photos/StDqXtW1xKHmvzi7A.....So my question is, what does FD ALO1 mean? I have seen the building online saying it was built in 1922 as it states on the building, but i cannot get further than that. There are two tiny letters on top of the "A"..."a" and "s".....In the 20's Gage Ave was called Baker Ave. I have contacted the city library, county library, the owners of the building, the fire department from this city...nothing. So i found this site, saw the great detective work and am now asking for you all to put on your Holmes cap and say "The games afoot". Or something similar. Hopefully i am posting everything right, if not please let me know. Thanks!

Early on (before the remodel) there was always an electric sign on the front of the Coconut Grove part of the hotel, facing Wilshire, although I cannot find an image where the sign is that low.

I think it may say "Complete Business Center" or some such, referring to the hotel itself and services it could provide to visiting business groups.

This? Your image didn't show on my browser:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/uo...=w1022-h229-no
gsv (detail)

We see the sign on the front of the club building. Does anyone need directions to the Grove....nice place for dinner and dancing.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...ps1u1pwlij.jpg

Yep.....thats the one. I have no idea why it isnt showing up....lets try this one, it is much clearer...https://flic.kr/p/fchVFv.....i am afraid i am without my camera or i would of gone to take more..sorry.

That's the one I remember too, but it's much higher up than the one in e_r's image

..........................................................................................



That's a dead link (?)

The above discussed photos of 520 N Rossmore have long since disappeared, but they were not forgotten.

1936
http://i357.photobucket.com/albums/o...t.jpg~original
http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/cdm/si...oll44/id/91496


In July 1960, then campaigning, Senator Kennedy, obviously may have stayed at the Mauretania. But as a residence, it seems it would have been temporary.



July 1960
http://www.gstatic.com/hostedimg/faa8ec39c11b5643_largehttp://www.gstatic.com/hostedimg/faa8ec39c11b5643_large


JFK, after dark. July 1960
http://www.gstatic.com/hostedimg/3be96113e8ac41f7_largehttp://www.gstatic.com/hostedimg/3be96113e8ac41f7_large


Hmmmmm. Is WigWag's idea about putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade, feasible? How does he know these things?:hmmm:


http://www.gstatic.com/hostedimg/8bb23fd4591d8c1b_largehttp://www.gstatic.com/hostedimg/8bb23fd4591d8c1b_large


http://i357.photobucket.com/albums/o...4.jpg~originalGoogleSVU


http://i357.photobucket.com/albums/o...q.jpg~originalGoogleSVU


http://i357.photobucket.com/albums/o...o.jpg~originalGoogleSVU

Hey newbie!

Perhaps your building was built by this guy:

http://i1165.photobucket.com/albums/...q.jpg~original

Ancestry.com

Let me try this one more time...not only is my camera gone, my phone is going bonkers....https://flic.kr/p/fchVFv........If this does not work i am very sorry, and very embarrassed...but i do appreciate the help. Thanks.

Wow....could be..could be......So who was this Frank "D" and why would he build a building with his initials on it? Hummm, more questions...uggg...You know, i looked up that address on Radaris and found his relatives still live thete. It put the family member at 91 years old and the family house being built in 1904...so maybe, just maybe....

Fox Studios, Sunset/Western (and a bench)
 

Fox's 21cf blog recently posted a good survey of the old Fox Studio at Sunset and Western. That got me interested in that location again.

William Fox (1879-1952) started the Fox Film Corporation in New York in 1915; the first studios were in Ft Lee, NJ. Moving west he leased the tiny (3/4 acre) Selig Studio in Edendale at Allesandro (now Glendale Blvd) and Clifford in 1916. Wm Selig (1864-1968) and director Francis Boggs (1870-1911) had established the studio in 1909, the very first permanent movie studio in Los Angeles (Francis Boggs was murdered there in 1911, LA's first incident of Hollywood noir):
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Se...w=w800-h471-no
lapl

The Edendale Studio is memorialized with a wall mural in front of a new apartment complex there


In 1917, needing more room, Fox took over the 1915 Dixon Studio (AKA The National Drama Corporation) at Sunset and Western and expanded his holdings there.

The studio was divided into two lots, on either side of Western, the East Lot and the West Lot. The East Lot, including space for Deluxe film labs, extended south to Fernwood Ave except for a small hold-out farm on the NW corner of Fernwood and Serrano and some low-rise commercial buildings. The West Lot only reached as far as DeLongpre. This aerial is from about 1918. Sunset runs east/west along the bottom of the image and Western stretches away to the south between the East and West lots:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/tR...Q=w900-h479-no
usc dl (detail)

A close-up of the West Lot:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/KA...w=w896-h460-no

That rather splendid-looking house in the image above was preexisting. The 1914 Baist map shows the site the year before novelist (he authored "The Clansman") Rev Thomas Dixon, Jr (1864-1946) established a "studio, lab and press" here and three years before William Fox came on the scene. The house belonged to William C Fry (1860-1941) and was addressed 1417 N Western Ave. Mr Fry sold up the year after his father, William C Fry, Sr (1826-1914) died:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Jf...g=w716-h397-no
baist 1914 plate 41 (detail)

The Fry home, before the movies came, stood in 32 acres of fruit orchards which Mr Fry had established there in 1887:

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Lp...A=w291-h332-no
lat july 1941 via find a grave

The Fry home's address became the address for the studio. There are many interesting building permits, going back to 1914 when Mr Fry had some plumbing work done. Many more cover the various studio buildings put up by, first Rev Dixon, then William Fox and later, 20th-Century Fox. The Fry home was demolished in 1925.

Until recently the site looked like this. The East Lot is soon to be redeveloped and the West Lot is the home of that Target which has been stalled for three years:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/jn...A=w743-h397-no
google maps

I'm sure we've seen this circa 1923 image before here, but I couldn't find it in a thread search. It shows the East Lot, between Sunset and Fernwood, looking across the NE corner of Western and Fernwood:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/k0...g=w799-h536-no

Some of the old studio buildings still stood here until 2014. They were occupied by Deluxe Film Processing ("Color by Deluxe"), a company that was founded in tandem with Fox in 1915 in New York and moved west with them (Deluxe expanded into the corner shops shown in the image above) :
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/84...g=w903-h342-no
google maps

Deluxe shut down its Hollywood lab in 2014 and, after 99 years, the last of the old studio buildings was cleared. Another company is in the modern building that's left. More info at the listing. The parcel is being offered for redevelopment, so the newer building will probably fall too, wiping out any connection this site had to Deluxe or the movies:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/YZ...w=w872-h495-no
google maps

The backdoor of the Administration Bldg let into the West Lot:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/iv...Q=w801-h633-no
lapl

Another photo of the West Lot, shows a group of bungalows:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/6K...Q=w806-h534-no

Some of these were eventually moved to the SW corner of the "new" West LA lot and they're still there:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Y8...g=w666-h599-no
google maps

The East Lot's main gate on Western, with a liveried attendant:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/ak...Q=w802-h530-no

The same gate in 1971:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/by...g=w793-h404-no
lapl/guy goodenow


The main entrance to the West Lot faced on Western, between Sunset and Delongpre. The gable end of the great mill building (shown in the second and third images above) looms above the Administration Bldg:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/0-...g=w793-h534-no

Another view with a familiar-looking bench:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/K2...=w1009-h599-no
thestudiotour

A slightly different shot with the bench in use. Notice the "Hollywoodland" sign on Mt Lee in the distance:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/ox...w=w796-h616-no
lapl

"Courtesy of Fox Film Corp":
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/PN...Q=w760-h500-no
usc dl (detail)

It's the same, or a similar bench, as the one Flyingwedge pointed out to us in front of Russell's Studio Cafe at Fox Hills Drive and Pico Blvd next to the Fox West LA lot:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/vE...Q=w525-h524-no
via Flyingwedge (detail)


In 1926 Fox bought the West LA site for a new studio. Although they moved in in 1928, the Sunset/Western lot continued to be used until the early 70s for B-movies and TV. Sol Wurtzel (1890-1958), who had worked for Fox since the New York days, was in charge of the Sunset-Western studio for many years. Deluxe also stayed behind, but, as noted above, is gone now too.

A 70s view from the derelict-looking East Lot across Western to the sadly diminished Administration Bldg:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/AS...A=w802-h534-no

The shot above must have been quite near the end. in the late 70s I remember an Alpha Beta grocery on the West Lot (IIRC) and a Zody's on the East Lot.

And now, the in-limbo Target awaits its fate on the West Lot:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/I5...=w1085-h531-no
gsv


These days Twentieth-Century Fox has big plans in West LA



• Video Link


(for a history of the logo intro, see here)



All historic pix from 21cf Blog, unless otherwise noted

This looking south-east down at the Hotel Bel-Air.

I know I've disappeared after my first few posts; I've not fallen off the face of the earth, I've just been catching up to y'all. I'm up to page 1650. I thought that you'd post less as time went on, but happily this seems to not be the case.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-i.../steinbook.jpg
from post 33725


Jean Stein jumped off her building here in NY yesterday--a sad way to be reminded of this book, which apparently just came out in paperback--worth reading, and done in the format of her great Edie: American Girl about Edie Sedgwick.

I think the photographer was standing just off the roadway when he took the beach shot (and maybe stepped up to the edge of the parked cars when he took the other 2 shots showing the neighborhood), but they do overlap slightly. If you look at 2 of the 3 palm trees to the far right of the beach shot (and the house behind them), they appear to be the same ones at the far left edge of the second photo showing the green house. I don't have any fancy photo editing software on this computer, but here's an attempt! http://i149.photobucket.com/albums/s...omposite_2.jpg

I have to say I love this forum (I just signed up today). After watching a music video that was filmed at Dockweiler State Beach (and looking it up in Google Maps to see where it was located), I noticed - and was immediately curious about - the abandoned Surfridge neighborhood between the beach and LAX and started down the rabbit hole, eventually finding these photos. I'm also a big fan of Julius Shulman (I'm an architect by training), so I'm really enjoying HossCs posts. I actually met Julius Shulman at an Orange County AIA event years ago, if I can find the photos I'll post them.

Apparently Ms Stein jumped from the 15th floor but never reached the ground, landing on an 8th floor balcony instead. I hope the tenants weren't home at the time.

Frank Dominic Aloi was Francisco Di Aloi, born in Lugo, Northern Italy on August 4, 1882. His wife was Nicolina (who later went by Lina) He came to the US in 1901. His wife came here in 1907. They were married in 1910 and had eight children. They were all born in California. Frank was a butcher by trade and owned his own shop.

There are lots of naturalization papers on Ancestry and one of them has a picture of him on it. Some of the other naturalization papers show that he was a short man, only 5'5", and stocky. He had dark hair and dark eyes.

It was fairly common in the 1920's to build something and put your name on it, even just a last name. It sort of gave the family permanence, especially fairly recent immigrants to this country. In this case, it was the family business as well. I did note in my research that there was another family member who was a blacksmith and who had a shop within the same block. Frank worked in the blacksmith shop shortly after coming to the US.

He is noted to be retired in the 1940 voter registration. He is living at the Bell address at that time.

The building address, which is now on Gage Avenue, when searched with the county assessor's office, shows a build date of 1922

He died in 1971 and is buried in Calvary Cemetery.