Here's a shot of the Stratford that was
on eBay recently.
Wish I had won it; I dig this era of amateur snaps. Hope I'm not doing its new owner too much of a disservice by disseminating it here. (Heaven knows a hefty portion of my collection has ended up on the internet via screengrabs.)
And I couldn't help tinkering with it a little—
Anyway, the Stratford was designed by Frank F. Rasche in 1925. In the early '20s he was producing commercial and residential—
books.google.com and you can learn more about Rasche
here.
Here is the interior, in a
postcard sold by Cardcow.
One of us really needs to go into the Stratford today and see how it compares.
We've seen the Stratford before, like
here, which had another eBay-grabbed vintage shot, this one from 1942:
I'll tell you something else that's interesting, the permit for the rooftop sign dates to March of 1926. That's
really early for a neon sign. Could win the "oldest extant sign in LA" contest. (Someone was telling me recently that the Theosophy Hall rooftop neon on 33rd might be the oldest, but this predates that by years.)
gsv