Quote:
Originally Posted by kznyc2k
Found it! Or at least I'm 99% sure I did. What we're looking at is approximately 825 South Alvarado, in between 8th Street and 9th/James M Wood Blvd.
That building is the former William Penn Hotel at 2208 West 8th:
1929, Dick Whittington, USC
1960, USC
Hermann Schultheis, LAPL |
Fantastic job,
kznyc2K. You've definitely got it. I kept looking for a peaked-roof apartment building, not knowing that not only was the William Penn's sign gone, but so was its entire roof:
you-are-here
The Victorian was 817 S Alvarado, lived in for many years by the family of Edward C Magauran; Daisy Nance was in residence in the '50s. When I first saw the newer building next door, I suspected that rather than being a residence, it might be doctors' offices. And indeed, three doctors had offices at 825...at least they did in the mid '50s.
Perhaps what is even more interesting--or would be, if I could find a picture of it--was the house just to the north of the Victorian, where there is a Standard station in the aerial above (left of center). The gas station took the place of the grand Charles A Canfield house at 803 S Alvarado, which took up three lots of the original subdivision. Canfield was Edward Doheny's partner, and his family provided the tabloids of the day with lots of scandal. In 1906 his wife was shot to death on the front porch of 803 by a disgruntled enployee; his son Orville had a nasty divorce in the 'teens, and
his son shot himself in a hunting accident in 1917. And then there was Charles A's daughter Daisy, who we've seen here before:
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...postcount=2349. (A fuller story on her is
here.) In 1920, the family gave the house to the University of California, along with an endowment, for it to be turned into a research laboratory.