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Old Posted Mar 13, 2014, 1:06 PM
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GaylordWilshire GaylordWilshire is offline
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Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: NYC
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Quote:
Originally Posted by GaylordWilshire View Post
The Deco Van de Kamps is gone, but caddy-corner is this gem:

GSV

Anyone know what this started out as?
Quote:
Originally Posted by ProphetM View Post
I posted a pic of this place back on page 432, in July 2012:

http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...36#post5773436

I had driven by it the previous September.

It has a 1922 build date according to county records and I linked a couple of vintage pictures from the Glendale library, with businesses named Henry's Malt Shop (date unknown) and Brown Owl Ice Cream (late 1940s). Those Flickr links are dead but maybe the Glendale library has put them somewhere else.

I asked if anyone had any other information and was met with chirping crickets - 0 responses. I feel a strange kinship with the building as it seems we both toil in obscurity.

I will see if I can track down the vintage pictures again since the old links are dead.

Here's one:

Glendale Public Library






Re the Holiday Lodge on Alvarado: Hasn't advertising been aspirational from its earliest beginnings? Artificial if not fraudulent? (I notice that in a further attempt to burnish the Holiday Lodge's image, someone has tried to erase the power lines from the postcard picture.) The owners of the motel might also have been proud of their investment and have seen the Cadillacs as part of their own "arrival." Besides, how many people driving Chevys and Oldsmobiles were going to be paying with a Diners Club card back then? A semi-upscale motor lodge close to downtown--without parking hassles--would seem just right for the Los Angeles of the times. I also notice the "Congress" name above "Diners Club"--it appears to match the logo of the '50s-'60s chain called Congress Inns, which aimed a little higher than the average traveler, businessmen rather than the Joads.

And there are plenty of people who live in "déclassé" places who drive cars whose value is out of all proportion to value of their living arrangements, just as there are plenty of people in Pasadena and on Westside who drive the modern-day equivalents of Chevrolets and Oldsmobiles...Toyotas, Nissans...and Chevrolets.
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