Quote:
Originally Posted by ethereal_reality
^^^That last photograph is a beauty sopas_ej.  |
Quote:
Originally Posted by Los Angeles Past
 I agree; very lovely. It's seeing scenes like this that make me deeply regret that I live 700 miles from L.A. I would LOVE to be able to spend a fine winter night walking around downtown like that. Hopefully I can visit the city again this coming summer. I'm feeling quite homesick for the place at the moment...
-Scott |
Thanks, guys. I thought it had somewhat of a noirish quality to it.
gsjansen, those are great photos of the Carthay Circle neighborhood, an area of LA I've always liked. For three years when I was a small child, my family lived in a house in the Miracle Mile district, so we would drive through the Carthay Circle area often. What I find fascinating about the old photos of it is the Pacific Electric rail line that went through there on San Vicente Blvd., which of course today the former right of way is a landscaped median.
The neighborhood is talked about in the book "Wilshire Boulevard" by Kevin Roderick and J. Eric Lynxwiler; apparently it was originally called Carthay Center, created by real estate entrepreneur J. Harvey McCarthy, "who hoped to develop an attractive shopping complex and hotel surrounded by an enclosed neighborhood of Spanish Colonial Revival and Mediterranean-style homes. McCarthy stressed aesthetics in order to set his project apart from all the other developments sprouting around Los Angeles. He had designers master-plan the 136 acres with pleasing, curved residential streets oriented toward the central shopping plaza. Access off Wilshire was via McCarthy Vista, a wide landscaped avenue that helped further distinguish Carthay Center (a deliberate play on the developer's name). The most unique feature was a California theme. McCarthy's father had been a 49-er, and the developer himself belonged to the Native Sons of the Golden West..."
A statue commemorating the forty-niners stood where McCarthy Vista crossed San Vicente Blvd. (back then called Eulalia Boulevard). Some years ago, the LA Times did a story on this statue; after having been there since the 1920s, it was stolen, presumably to melt it down for its metal. I haven't heard a follow-up to this story, I assume it's still missing? I haven't driven by that intersection in a while.
Here's a link to a 2008 L.A. Curbed article about it:
Carthay Circle Statue Stolen, Melting Feared
Pics from the article.
