noirish Los Angeles

[ProphetM]

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

and today....so where is this 5 foot wide walkway? -gone forever obviously.

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In the center of this photo, northern half, see that strip of concrete sidewalk running vertically through the middle of the much darker asphalt of the car lot? That's it.



The southern half of the walkway has been swallowed up by the apartment building.

[Joe Gillis]

Traditional Korean Pub? thats a first for me!

[GaylordWilshire]

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

ahhh...Mimeograph memories.
Canoga Park Prom circa 1944.

http://www.themuseumsfv.org/
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Originally Owensmouth High School, it became Canoga Park High School in 1931 when the town itself changed its name. The gymnasium, completed in April 1926, still stands...








The main building, opened in 1916, demolished in 1953



The pedimented building was added in 1930


1948


1968


The Sylmar earthquake condemned the classical Canoga Park High School; this building was demolished in 1975.




Remnants


Somehow the post-classical buildings fail to inspire...


All pics: http://canogaparkhs.org/index.jsp

[GaylordWilshire]

Originally Posted by FredH

At 3:55 a.m. on July 20, 1949, Mickey Cohen and several companions were shot outside Sherry’s Restaurant on Sunset Boulevard.
July 20, 1949: Men use brush under billboard during reenactment of ambush Mickey Cohen and others in front of Sherry's Restaurant on Sunset Blvd.

L.A. Times

Re Gangster Squad... Let's just say that in an echo of 65 years ago, the movie is the target and the The New York Times is shooting from beneath the billboard (review here).... Has anyone seen it? The trailers have been running for at least six months, and I can't say they've excited me that much...seems pretty trite and cartoonish. But I'll reserve further judgment until I see it... which may be later than sooner unless someone here has a different take on it....

[ethereal_reality]

Originally Posted by GaylordWilshire

Originally Owensmouth High School, it became Canoga Park High School in 1931.



All pics: http://canogaparkhs.org/index.jsp

Vry interesting post on Canoga Park High School GW. I was quite surprised by these elegant buildings.
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[austlar1]

[QUOTE=ethereal_reality;5968891]The overlooked Kipling Hotel at 4077 W. 3rd Street. (at Kingsley Drive)


google street view




I used to live on S. Ardmore ( a block away from the Kipling) between 2nd and 3rd back in the early to mid 1980s. At that time, the Kipling attracted a shabby genteel crowd of elders and was being operated as an independent living facility. I became friendly with a homeless woman named Ruby who lived (she really did live there) in the bus shelter in front of the 7-11 across the street from the Kipling. Ruby spent most nights talking to the advertising photos (frequently make up models for cosmetics) in the bus shelter. She would sometimes disappear for a week or two to go on a "rest cure" at a local psych hospital. I thought that Ruby was my special homeless person project and showered her with attention. I had a wake up call one Thanksgiving when I took Ruby a take out turkey dinner from Piper's on Western Ave. I arrived to find that Ruby already had been given at least a half a dozen other turkey dinners provided to her by various residents of the Kipling. I am guessing that these elders were a collective set of "eyes on the street", and maybe I should not have been quite as concerned about Ruby's well being. Ruby is long gone by now. The bus shelter survives as does the 7-11 where Ruby was allowed to store her belongings. I wonder what kind of residents the Kipling attracts today. Do many of them tie one on in the bar room on the ground floor? I don't think there was a bar there during my time in the neighborhood.

[tovangar2]

Originally Posted by GaylordWilshire

Brokaw Place ran from H'wood Blvd south a block to Carlton Way...

There was also a Beachwood Drive, five-foot-wide public right-of-way through the Toyota Dealership (the first Toyota sales facility in the US) at least into the 1970s. It too has been vacated.

The first two sentences in the clipping you posted below was of interest (to me anyway) as it ties in to what you told us before about Toberman's new house:

Originally Posted by GaylordWilshire

...1749 N Harvard, which was from about 1907--according to some sources when the house was built, and when Harvard in these precincts was Crown Avenue--to his death in 1924 the home of Ralph S. Toberman, son of Mayor James R. Toberman and cousin of Hollywood developer Charles E. Toberman who lived next door at 1761.. .

I don't know if "Maj Toberman" was Ralph or Charles.

[Silverlaker]

Somehow the post-classical buildings fail to inspire...

All pics: http://canogaparkhs.org/index.jsp[/QUOTE]

I agree GaylordWilshire! Quite a few public buildings, particularly high schools and colleges that were built or commissioned in the 1970's were done in this bunker-like style as a response to the student take-overs/protests of the late 60's. I think of it as the "City Terrified" movement. Officials and Administrators of the WWII generation were discombobulated by the 60's and became more concerned with control than function or environment and we ended up with a lot of bunkers (a different sort of "noir"...a dark "70's noir".) The Bonaventure Hotel downtown is a great example of this. It's wonderful on the inside but if you are a pedestrian on the outside walking in downtown, see how difficult it is to find a way into the place. Sharp edges, no street level windows, few doors, entrances that could be "defended" from the crime and disorder of the "scary" declining city outside. Glad times have changed and we have gone back to more natural human-friendly, as opposed to human-terrified architecture.

[GaylordWilshire]

Originally Posted by tovangar2

The first two sentences in the clipping you posted below was of interest (to me anyway) as it ties in to what you told us before about Toberman's new house:



I don't know if "Maj Toberman" was Ralph or Charles.

It was Ralph's father James R Toberman--mayor of Los Angeles for six one-years terms (from 1872 to '74 and 1878 to '82)--who was called "Major." I haven't seen anything yet that explains how he came to be called that. According to city directories, he was at 615 S Pearl/Figueroa from at least 1891 and until he moved to Crown Ave in 1906. There are newspaper references to him intending to build a house at Orange (Wilshire) and St. Paul in 1902, but he seems not to have done so, or he did it on spec. Perhaps the Hollywood residence mentioned in the article I posted was his place in the country at that time. At any rate, he would have been 70 in 1906 when he built the Crown Ave/Harvard Blvd house (post 11509). The Major died in 1911. Son Ralph (b 1868), seems always to have lived with his parents; he lived at 1749 N Harvard until he died in 1924.

[tovangar2]

Originally Posted by GaylordWilshire

The Major died in 1911. Son Ralph (b 1868), seems always to have lived with his parents; he lived at 1749 N Harvard until he died in 1924.

...and he dwells with them still:

findagrave

at Evergreen Cemetery in Boyle Heights.



P.S.

A bit more on 1749 Harvard:

http://la.curbed.com/tags/jr-toberman-house

http://articles.latimes.com/2005/apr/07/local/me-saved7

http://www.trulia.com/homes/Californ...geles-CA-90027

[ethereal_reality]

Last month Lwize reported on the closure of the King Eddy Saloon in the King Edward Hotel on Los Angeles Street.
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...ostcount=10903
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I recently found this business card.


ebay




with a map on the reverse.

ebay

note the recently discussed Arcade Depot at the bottom of the map. (as well as the Santa Fe depot & Salt Lake depot)








I was amazed when I came across this contemporary photograph of the King Edward Hotel lobby. I had no idea it was so beautiful.


http://www.ladowntownnews.com/



...and at the same site, http://www.ladowntownnews.com/, there was this enigmatic comment.


Tunnels!??...did he say tunnels?...and he says "It's still there!" -further investigation needed-
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Tonight I found another photo of the King Edward lobby.


http://www.insroland.org/taxonomy/term/283





Close up of the clock with the mysterious initials T. R..


http://www.insroland.org/taxonomy/term/283


Kim at http://www.insroland.org/contributors-page attempts to uncover the origins of these initials.
It's a must read. Enjoy!



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[ethereal_reality]

Google street view of the King Edward Hotel. This view is looking west on 5th Street. (the famous Hotel Rosslyn is in the distance)


gsv




Close up of the canopy over the 5th street entrance. I'm astonished that this has survived! It seems so fragile.


gsv
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[tovangar2]

Originally Posted by rcarlton

The King Edward, built in 1905. The proprietors of this hotel liked to tell people that they were near Main St.; they were actually on Los Angeles St.

The lobby:

http://www.csulb.edu/~odinthor/IntKEd.jpg

The original lobby furnishings were great, and not a little odd. Wonderful lighting fixtures, which seem to mimic the then-streetlamps outside (upside down of course).
When were the mezzanine stairs put in? They seem to be missing in this view as is the mezzanine.

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

Close up of the canopy over the 5th street entrance. I'm astonished that this has survived! It seems so fragile.


gsv
__

Thx for this shot e_r. There used to be so many of these (at the Alexandria, for instance, on the 5th St side), even within my memory. This must be one of the very few left, if not the only one.

P.S.
A nice collection of ghost signs, including the King Edward's:

[Flyingwedge]

Originally Posted by KevinW

I love Surfridge. I used to bike over the one open road they have that goes through there, sandpiper. It used to be open to cars but they closed it after 9/11


Lakata.org

Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA), which runs LAX, just got the OK from the California Coastal Commission to remove the northern remnants of Surfridge. So go take those last pictures now!

From LAWA:

The Dunes Improvement Project includes the removal of selected abandoned streets, curbs, gutters, sidewalks, retaining walls, foundations, and above-ground utilities, in an approximately four-acre area. It also proposes the repair of curb and gutter along Vista Del Mar, and a reduction of non-native invasive plants and the planting of approximately six acres of native coastal dune and coastal prairie vegetation spread out within a 48-acre area that was formerly a residential subdivision, and is generally bordered by Waterview Street, Rindge Avenue and Napoleon Street on the north, Pershing Drive on the east, Sandpiper Street on the south and Vista Del Mar on the west.

http://www.lawa.org/welcomeLAWA.aspx
More:
http://www.dailybreeze.com/ci_223508...own?source=pkg
http://www.dailybreeze.com/ci_223411...red?source=pkg

[Flyingwedge]

Here's the area taken by LAX in 1972 when most the houses were already gone. Sequence of pictures runs south-to-north.

The east-west streets here are (left to right) Haviland, Ipswich, Jacqueline, and Killgore. The north-south streets are Vista del Mar (first up from the beach), then Rindge and Trask Avenues. A pair of V-shaped walkways leads from Vista del Mar down to the beach (well, technically a beach parking lot access road) at the foot of Killgore Street:


Grand Pre Blvd. is the street with the wide median and circular eastern end. Haviland is the next street south:


Beaumont St. ends at Vista Del Mar at the left, then it's Chateau (one block long between Trask and Rindge), Deauville, Epinard, and Fontainbleau. Trouville Ave. runs between Beaumont and Deauville:


Argo is the short street at left, then Ocean Vista, Century Blvd. (ends behind the little park at Century Blvd. South), Avalonia, and Beaumont:


Left to right it's Sandpiper (shown as Moscow on 1943 and 1949 Renie Atlases), Ivalee, Ellen, Ney, Argo, Ocean Vista, and Century/Century South:


Palace is the street with houses only on its north side. Then to the south it's Sterry, Bolt, and Sandpiper, followed by the one-block streets (between Vista del Mar and Rindge) Ivalee, Ellen, and Ney:


North of Palace is Gillis Street (ends opposite the building down on the sand), then Napoleon, then Waterview (ends at Vista del Mar just off the left edge of the picture):


By 1979, LAX had extended its devastation zone to include everything south of the Waterview-Rindge-Napoleon line:


The last holdout homes were gone shortly thereafter. I remember the fire department kept using one -- maybe the big one on the south side of Gillis-- for practice until they finally burned it down. The streets remained open thru the late 1970s, but I can assure you that students from nearby Westchester High never went there at night to drink beer.

Photos from California Coastal Records Project: http://www.californiacoastline.org/c...en=0&oneimage=
(Copyright © 2002-2013 Kenneth & Gabrielle Adelman, California Coastal Records Project, www.californiacoastline.org)
Street names from 1961 Renie Atlas at Historic Map Works (http://www.historicmapworks.com/Map/...ty+++Page+068/)

[unihikid]

Thank you so much flying
this is the first time ive seen a house from surfridge,i wish the photos were clearer,most of the houses look like your standard ranch houses and look from the late 40s.anyways thanks again

Originally Posted by Flyingwedge

Here's the area taken by LAX in 1972 when most the houses were already gone. Sequence of pictures runs south-to-north.

The east-west streets here are (left to right) Haviland, Ipswich, Jacqueline, and Killgore. The north-south streets are Vista del Mar (first up from the beach), then Rindge and Trask Avenues. A pair of V-shaped walkways leads from Vista del Mar down to the beach (well, technically a beach parking lot access road) at the foot of Killgore Street:


Grand Pre Blvd. is the street with the wide median and circular eastern end:


Beaumont St. ends at Vista Del Mar at the left, then it's Chateau (one block long between Trask and Rindge), Deauville, Epinard, and Fontainbleau. Trouville Ave. runs between Beaumont and Deauville:


Argo is the short street at left, then Ocean Vista, Century (ends behind the little park at what may be another section of Trouville), and Avalonia:


Left to right it's Sandpiper (shown as Moscow on 1943 and 1949 Renie Atlases), Ivalee, Ellen, Ney, Argo, Ocean Vista, and Century:


Palace is the street with houses only on its north side. Then to the south it's Sterry, Bolt, and Sandpiper, followed by the one-block streets (between Vista del Mar and Rindge) Ivalee, Ellen, and Ney:


North of Palace is Gillis Street (ends opposite the building down on the sand), then Napoleon, then Waterview (ends at Vista del Mar just off the left edge of the picture):


By 1979, LAX had extended its devastation zone to include everything south of the Waterview-Rindge-Napoleon line:


The last holdout homes were gone shortly thereafter. I remember the fire department kept using one -- maybe the big one on the south side of Gillis-- for practice until they finally burned it down. The streets remained open thru the late 1970s, but I can assure you that students from nearby Westchester High never went there at night to drink beer.

Photos from California Coastal Records Project: http://www.californiacoastline.org/c...en=0&oneimage=
Street names from 1961 Renie Atlas at Historic Map Works (http://www.historicmapworks.com/Map/...ty+++Page+068/)

[GaylordWilshire]

KCET Departures


A very interesting story on the Hotel Californian and the Westlake neighborhood appeared on the KCET Departures site yesterday. It seems (per the search possibilities for the thread) that we haven't looked into the Californian before.... Full story here.



LAPL/KCET Departures



LAPL


Great tour of Surfridge, Flyingwedge, and of the King Edward, ER.

[ethereal_reality]

You beat to to it GW. I've been holding on to the story of the stored California for a while.

The article you linked at KCET is great. I would have missed. Thx for posting.

[ethereal_reality]

Speaking of signs, while driving the google-mobile down N. Madison Avenue I spotted this rooftop sign on Beverly Blvd.


gsv





pretty cool

gsv
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[tovangar2]

Originally Posted by Flyingwedge

Here's the area taken by LAX in 1972 when most the houses were already gone. Sequence of pictures runs south-to-north.

Thank you so much for documenting Surfridge's streets. Wonderful post.

Rindge Avenue was, of course, named for Frederick Hastings Rindge. He bought almost the entire town of Port Ballona and laid out Playa del Rey, only one of his many projects in turn-of-the-20th-century Los Angeles. He also owned Rancho Malibu and built himself a splendid house on Harvard Blvd, which has been well-documented in this thread (the home's use as a filming locale is detailed here).

After his untimely death in 1905, his widow, May, forced the Southern Pacific inland, thwarting their attempt to continue their famous coast route through her Malibu rancho, and coincidentally Los Angeles, a success we should all be grateful for.

Rindge's daughter, Rhoda Adamson, started Adohr Dairy (Rhoda spelt backwards) with her husband, Merritt Adamson. Both May and Rhoda employed Stiles O. Clements, first to design Adohr's corporate headquarters at La Cienega and 18th (closely related to Clements' Chouinard School of Art, built about the same time) and later to design a house for each in Malibu, 50-room Castle Malibu for May (it burned in 1970) and a beach house for Rhoda and family, now a museum.

May Rindge started Malibu Tile in 1926, employing Rufus Keeler, California's foremost ceramics engineer, to design and manage it. Keeler collaborated with Clements on the Mayan Theater, the Pellissier Building and the Richfield Building and with Claude Beelman on the Eastern Columbia and etc. through his own company Calco. Malibu Tile executed commissions for Austin, Martin & Parkinson's City Hall, Parkinson's Union Station, Bertram Grovenor Goodhue's Central Library, Clements' Westwood Playhouse, dozens of other buildings and hundreds of homes. Simon Rodia, a Malibu Tile worker, was supplied with broken scrap from both Malibu and Calco for his Towers in Watts. Malibu Tile closed in 1932, a victim of the Depression. Keeler's early death in 1934 (it is said from the cyanide used in his famous glazes) signaled the end of Los Angeles' era of great, glazed terracotta buildings.

May Rindge died in 1941, her daughter Rhoda in 1962.

I'm glad that Rindge Avenue will continue in Playa del Rey. It's a name that should be remembered.

The later Rindge/Adamson homes:

Malibu Beach (Stiles O Clements, 1930):
23200 Pacific Coast Highway
(used by the Rindge/Adamson family as a beach house from 1930-1936, it then became their full-time home until 1962)
Adamson House
LA Curbed
Yelp
wiki

Hancock Park (Elmer Grey, 1923)
355 S Murfield
(occupied by the Rindge/Adamson family from 1923-1936, when they moved to their beach house full time)
LA Curbed
Architectural Digest
Youtube
Redfin

Malibu Potteries
Showroom 1926-1932: 119 N Larchmont Blvd (HB Saunders, 1923)
Wiki
LA Places
Malibu Times
Redondo Historical Society
LAT

Colorful Malibu Tile installed at Adamson House:

laplaces

A Malibu Tile "carpet", also from Adamson House:

adamsonhouse/tile

City Hall:

davidpipertiles

Assembly-line artists at Malibu Tile:

davidpipertiles




P.S.
Thx e-r for the Ambassador vet sign. It is a good one. I used to take my dog there.