Here's today's installment of Julius Shulman's Bank of America pictures. This one is
"Job 1434: Bank of America (Los Angeles, Calif.),1953", with the bank located at 8946 South Sepulveda Boulevard.
A close-up shows the USS Portsmouth over the door. It also shows the address, which makes tracking down the location a little easier
.
This is the view looking north. On the left is the Bobby Thacher School of Dance, while there's all-night bowling across the street. The bowling alley was part of the Paradise Theatre complex which I'll cover below.
Sadly, little/nothing is left of these buildings just north of the bank. I like the "Mile High" ice cream sign on the right.
All from
Getty Research Institute
The application to erect the bank is dated 05/16/1949.
The new roof sign (pictured in the Shulman image, above) was added in 1952. Page 2 of the application (not shown here) gives its size as 21'6" x 9'0".
Both from
Online Building Records System
I believe that this is the original building, and it's still a Bank of America, although I couldn't find the building permit to remove all the visually appealing aspects of its design!
GSV
The left (west) side of Sepulveda has been completely redeveloped, but traces of the Paradise Theatre remain on the right.
GSV
Here's a better view of the Paradise Building at 9100 S Sepulveda Boulevard.
GSV
According to William Gabel at
cinematreasures.org:
The Paradise Theatre in Westchester was located a few blocks south of the Fox Loyola Theatre. It opened on August 23, 1950 and as well as the theatre, there was a bowling alley and cocktail lounge attached.
The streamline Moderne style facade has a curved expanse which also has a tower feature, that held the theatre name. Inside the lobby, there was a planted garden and a wall display featuring an illustrated ‘Wall of Fame’ of Academy Award winners since 1927. Inside the auditorium, seating was provided all on a single level. The plain decorative style was relieved by three bare brick recesses on the splay-walls on each side of the proscenium, which contained potted plants. The Paradise Theatre was operated as a second run movie theatre.
The last chain to operate the Paradise Theatre was Pacific Theatres, and it later ran as an independent for a short time before being gutted and turned into an office building.
The site also has some interior and exterior pictures of the Paradise Theatre - they can be found
here.
There are a couple more pictures of the Paradise Theatre in
post #13248 by
Flyingwedge. Thanks to
tovangar2 for the link.