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Old Posted Mar 4, 2011, 2:18 AM
sopas ej's Avatar
sopas ej sopas ej is offline
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Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: South Pasadena, California
Posts: 6,846
Great pics, of those long-demolished buildings, Gaylord. And of the Bryson, too; that's always been one of my favorite LA buildings.

Quote:
Originally Posted by GaylordWilshire View Post
One for sopas: the South Pasadena branch, newly opened:
LAPL
824 Fair Oaks Blvd.--NE corner of Mission St.


And now (we may have seen this here before):
Google Street View
You know, I may have posted that corner here before, but I'm not 100% sure. Thanks for posting that old photo of the bank, I've never seen that earlier picture before, I have another old photo from about the same era of that building.

I'm glad to say that the building has been painstakingly restored and is now a Comerica Bank.

In November of 2009 they started stripping away the 1950s or 1960s remodel, revealing what was underneath. There was some damage to the original architectural elements. The bank was long gone, a furniture store having been there since at least the late 1990s (when I moved to South Pas).

Photo by me

They saved what they could and recreated other architectural details, and it looks pretty close to what the building first looked like when it was built in 1920. By June of 2010, the restoration was complete. From what I've read, Comerica Bank wanted to contribute something positive to the community and it invested in the restoration/recreation.

Photo by me

As a postscript, towards the end of last year, it was in the local newspaper that some people felt that the palm trees that were planted after the restoration didn't match the building. Then, about a month ago, someone uprooted two of the trees on the Mission Street side of the building; police believe they were knocked over on purpose by a car. No witnesses reported the incident, the trees were discovered uprooted and on their sides early one morning. To date, they haven't been replaced.

Silly people.
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