HomeDiagramsDatabaseMapsForum About
     

Go Back   SkyscraperPage Forum > Photography Forums > Found City Photos

Reply

 
Thread Tools Display Modes
     
     
  #1041  
Old Posted Apr 16, 2010, 1:14 PM
ethereal_reality's Avatar
ethereal_reality ethereal_reality is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: Lafayette/West Lafayette IN, Purdue U.
Posts: 16,307
^^^Those are fantastic sopas_ej!! I enjoyed them immensely.
Your Venice before/after photos are the best I've seen.



Interesting 'noir' tale in the L.A. Times.
It includes many of the shady characters we have recently discussed.


http://www.latimesmagazine.com/2010/...ow-caster.html
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #1042  
Old Posted Apr 16, 2010, 2:32 PM
GaylordWilshire's Avatar
GaylordWilshire GaylordWilshire is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: NYC
Posts: 3,700
More Reflections on Noir

farm4
"Straight down the line...."


I've mentioned John Buntin's suggestion in his book L.A. Noir that the origins of noir might be in the smog attacks starting in 1943. Gsjansen posted images here of the wartime dimouts, which made me wonder if they contributed to the noir effect in films. I remembered that Richard Rayner had something to say about noir in A Bright and Guilty Place, which I went back and found:

"... the expressionless blue of the sky and the unchanging rhythm of perfect days that followed each other one after the other added to the melancholy. 'Outside the bright gardens had a haunted look, as though wild eyes were watching me from behind the bushes, as though the sunshine itself had a mysterious something in the light,' wrote Raymond Chandler.

"Cities have characters...states of mind that run through daily life.... Chandler's 'mysterious something' was a mood of disenchantment, an intense spiritual malaise that identified itself with Los Angeles at a particular time, what we call noir. On the one hand noir is a narrow film genre, born in Hollywood in the late 1930s when a European visual style, the twisted perspectives and stark chiaroscuros of German Expressionism [at a time of a vast influx of German filmmakers fleeing Europe and settling in Los Angeles], met an American literary idiom [Chandler, Cain etc].

"...L.A. is city of big dreams and cruelly inevitable disappointments...it's a counter-tradition, the dark lens through which the booster myths can be viewed, a disillusion that shadows even the best of times.... Noir...was born when the Roaring Twenties blew themselves out and hard times rushed in; it crystallized real-life events and the writhing collapse of the national economy before finding its interpreters in writers like Raymond Chandler."

L.A. Times
Act of Violence, 1948

Filmforno

John Coulthart
Can you identify this?
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #1043  
Old Posted Apr 16, 2010, 4:19 PM
sopas ej's Avatar
sopas ej sopas ej is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: South Pasadena, California
Posts: 6,846


The Bradbury Building?

BTW I have the book "A Bright and Guilty Place." I got it last year, put it aside, and actually forgot I had it. I do indeed want to read it though.
__________________
"I guess the only time people think about injustice is when it happens to them."

~ Charles Bukowski
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #1044  
Old Posted Apr 16, 2010, 4:22 PM
sopas ej's Avatar
sopas ej sopas ej is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: South Pasadena, California
Posts: 6,846
Quote:
Originally Posted by ethereal_reality View Post
^^^Those are fantastic sopas_ej!! I enjoyed them immensely.
Your Venice before/after photos are the best I've seen.
Thanks! Going through those archives of old photos, I have so many ideas for before and after shots I want to do that could keep me busy for a very long time.
__________________
"I guess the only time people think about injustice is when it happens to them."

~ Charles Bukowski
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #1045  
Old Posted Apr 17, 2010, 1:23 AM
GaylordWilshire's Avatar
GaylordWilshire GaylordWilshire is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: NYC
Posts: 3,700
Bradbury Building, Broadway & 3rd

John Coulthart

Quote:
Originally Posted by sopas ej View Post


The Bradbury Building?
That's right, sopas--I'd never seen a shot straight up toward
the ceiling before. At first glance this picture looked to me
sort of like a cell block in a futuristic prison or a set from
an old science-fiction movie.

The Bradbury Building was the first thing I wanted to see
on my first trip to L.A. ca. 1970--in those days you could
just wander right in, which I did, walking all over the
building, going up and down in the elevators, practically in
a trance.

USC

vpeipics

Soon after its 1893 completion--no hint as to what's inside

USC

During a fire, May 3, 1947/California State Library
UCLA
Taken from Spring and 3rd toward Broadway
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #1046  
Old Posted Apr 17, 2010, 2:30 AM
ethereal_reality's Avatar
ethereal_reality ethereal_reality is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: Lafayette/West Lafayette IN, Purdue U.
Posts: 16,307
Is this the Bradbury Building mid-block on the right hand side?



usc digital archive



View north on Broadway from 4th Street in 1898.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #1047  
Old Posted Apr 17, 2010, 2:34 AM
ethereal_reality's Avatar
ethereal_reality ethereal_reality is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: Lafayette/West Lafayette IN, Purdue U.
Posts: 16,307
Douglas Sirk's SHOCKPROOF 1949



unknown


Interior: Bradbury Building
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #1048  
Old Posted Apr 17, 2010, 1:14 PM
GaylordWilshire's Avatar
GaylordWilshire GaylordWilshire is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: NYC
Posts: 3,700
Quote:
Originally Posted by ethereal_reality View Post
Is this the Bradbury Building mid-block on the right hand side?
Yes, that's the Bradbury Building--interesting that the roof appears to be solid, not glass.
Apparently alot of buildings painted over their skylights during WWII (the Tiffany-
glass lights of the Alexandria's Palm Court, for example), but your shot is, of course, way before
that, only five or six years after the Bradbury was built. Here are couple of other shots up
Broadway, the old City Hall tower also at right:






And a shot south:


Couldn't help but notice Coulter Dry Goods on the west side of
the street--which reminded me that it was the rare store that
gave up a downtown presence entirely and moved to the Miracle
Mile in 1938:
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #1049  
Old Posted Apr 17, 2010, 3:10 PM
ethereal_reality's Avatar
ethereal_reality ethereal_reality is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: Lafayette/West Lafayette IN, Purdue U.
Posts: 16,307
Thanks for the photos and info GaylordWilshire.
I was pretty sure it was the Bradbury Building, but like you said,
the roof of the atrium appears to be solid.
It appears as opaque as the roof on the old City Hall tower.




Boy, wasn't Coulter's a beautiful example of streamline moderne.
Here are a few photos I have of the store.


usc digital archive

Above: At this point it was no longer Coulter's.



Below: A close up of it's wonderful lines.



usc digital archive


This elegant building survived until 1980.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #1050  
Old Posted Apr 17, 2010, 9:52 PM
GaylordWilshire's Avatar
GaylordWilshire GaylordWilshire is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: NYC
Posts: 3,700
More shots of Coulters on Wilshire, this time toward the east. The first is from the roof of the Prudential building (now called Museum Square). I think the street-level color shot is great--a reminder that while we tend to think of noir as being strictly black and white, we shouldn't.


USC


ellenbloom
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #1051  
Old Posted Apr 18, 2010, 7:48 PM
ethereal_reality's Avatar
ethereal_reality ethereal_reality is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: Lafayette/West Lafayette IN, Purdue U.
Posts: 16,307
General view of 4th Street & Grand Ave, August 17, 1954.



usc digital archive





Below: A closer view.


usc digital archive

Last edited by ethereal_reality; Apr 18, 2010 at 8:31 PM.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #1052  
Old Posted Apr 18, 2010, 7:57 PM
ethereal_reality's Avatar
ethereal_reality ethereal_reality is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: Lafayette/West Lafayette IN, Purdue U.
Posts: 16,307
Looking east from 1st Street Bridge near Mission Road, 1954.




usc digital archive

Last edited by ethereal_reality; Apr 18, 2010 at 8:10 PM.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #1053  
Old Posted Apr 18, 2010, 8:19 PM
ethereal_reality's Avatar
ethereal_reality ethereal_reality is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: Lafayette/West Lafayette IN, Purdue U.
Posts: 16,307
Washington Blvd. looking east from fwy overpass, 1954.


usc digital archive
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #1054  
Old Posted Apr 18, 2010, 8:46 PM
ethereal_reality's Avatar
ethereal_reality ethereal_reality is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: Lafayette/West Lafayette IN, Purdue U.
Posts: 16,307
Looking west from Union Station, 1954. The Plaza area can be seen on the left.



usc digital archive






Below: Another view with a slightly different angle (and more smog).


usc digital archive
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #1055  
Old Posted Apr 19, 2010, 6:06 PM
gsjansen's Avatar
gsjansen gsjansen is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Apr 2010
Posts: 684
Norish Philharmonic

Leonard Bernstein Conducts the New York Philharmonic Orchestra at the Hollywood Bowl 1963


LAPL
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #1056  
Old Posted Apr 19, 2010, 6:53 PM
GaylordWilshire's Avatar
GaylordWilshire GaylordWilshire is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: NYC
Posts: 3,700
Quote:
Originally Posted by gsjansen View Post
Leonard Bernstein Conducts the New York Philharmonic Orchestra at the Hollywood Bowl 1963


LAPL
Reminds me of:






All photos LAPL
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #1057  
Old Posted Apr 19, 2010, 8:20 PM
GaylordWilshire's Avatar
GaylordWilshire GaylordWilshire is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: NYC
Posts: 3,700
More Curves

SW corner of Wilshire Blvd and S Elm Dr, Beverly Hills, 1942. With no new cars to sell--pushing coffee pots.






All LAPL
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #1058  
Old Posted Apr 19, 2010, 11:13 PM
ethereal_reality's Avatar
ethereal_reality ethereal_reality is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: Lafayette/West Lafayette IN, Purdue U.
Posts: 16,307
The caption on this photo was: Interior of a Los Angeles supermarket, 1942.
I was amazed at how well stocked it was, especially during the war.
I guess food rationing was still to come.



usc digital archive
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #1059  
Old Posted Apr 19, 2010, 11:45 PM
GaylordWilshire's Avatar
GaylordWilshire GaylordWilshire is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: NYC
Posts: 3,700

Kitty Packard

Last edited by GaylordWilshire; Apr 19, 2010 at 11:58 PM.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #1060  
Old Posted Apr 20, 2010, 12:15 AM
GaylordWilshire's Avatar
GaylordWilshire GaylordWilshire is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: NYC
Posts: 3,700
I'm reminded of another great L.A. read: The Drive-In,
the Supermarket, and the Transformation of Commercial
Space in Los Angeles, 1914-1941
by Richard Longstreth.
Sounds dry, but it's not at all. Neither is Longstreth's City
Center to Regional Mall: Architecture, the Automobile,
and Retailing in Los Angeles, 1920-1950











All LAPL

Last edited by GaylordWilshire; Apr 20, 2010 at 12:45 AM.
Reply With Quote
     
     
This discussion thread continues

Use the page links to the lower-right to go to the next page for additional posts

Reply

Go Back   SkyscraperPage Forum > Photography Forums > Found City Photos
Forum Jump


Thread Tools
Display Modes

Forum Jump


All times are GMT. The time now is 4:36 AM.

     
SkyscraperPage.com - Archive - Privacy Statement - Top

Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.