noirish Los Angeles

[Beaudry]

Originally Posted by sopas ej

OMG these are all such great pics!

And Beaudry, great name! VERY old LA, I like it. Makes me think of Beaudry Avenue in downtown LA; I assume that street is named for Prudent Beaudry, an early Los Angeles mayor who was originally from Quebec, I believe.

As an enthusiast for old Bunker Hill, it's apropos of his having spent the $517 in 1867 on that scrubby, annoying bunch of hillocks that nobody wanted to trudge up; by '75 he'd figured out getting water up to the hill and had laid out Bunker Hill Avenue (it being the 100th anniversary of the Battle, after all). I wonder what he thinks, looking down on that hill now...

[Beaudry]

Originally Posted by Los Angeles Past

Yep, that's them! Here's another view, from highway level, in this case Aliso Street:


unknown

Back when I was a kid, each of those ventilator fan things were painted a variety of bright pastel colors. They really stood out against the drab background of the gas storage tanks.

Anyway, your picture above is really fantastic. I guess that wasn't really freeway though there yet, though I'd think it would have been by 1952. There's evidently a traffic signal or stop sign there just beyond the Brew 102 building where cars are all stopped. And I love how Commercial Street is 6 lanes of one-way traffic in the foreground! Then 3 lanes veer sharply to the left and turn into Aliso/101. Great highway engineering there!

-Scott

Painted like this?

(from here )

[Beaudry]

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

Below: Looking east from the Crocker Mansion 1898.
I think this photograph is exceptional.

What is the huge building on the distant horizon?




usc ditial archive


I just noticed what might be a cyclorama on the right hand side.
I recognize City Hall, but a couple of the other prominent buildings are a mystery to me.

The big one on the right is the Bradbury, the prominent one center is the Stimson Block. At the corner of Spring and Third, The Stimson Block was the first six-story building in Los Angeles, the first steel frame building in Los Angeles, and the last major example of commercial Richardsonian Romanesque in Los Angeles when it was unceremoniously demolished for a parking lot in July of 1963 -- and it's still a parking lot.

[Beaudry]

Here's some random noir...nothing says noir like neon in the night...






(This was the Wayne McAllister-designed VDK at Fletcher and San Fernando. Demolished.)


Check out how this became this. Of course now it's a parking lot for an Office Depot (west side of Vine south of Fountain). The Art Linkletter Playhouse, aka the Filmarte, didn't fare so well either.


Further up Vine, at Al Levy's Tavern, this guy needs a drink.

[sopas ej]

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

^^^Here is a photograph showing the Brew 102 Building Sopas_ej. It was taken from the top of City Hall in 1952.



usc digital archive


I just noticed the Friedman Bag Company is there as well.
Are those the ventilation fans you were talking about Scott?

Great pic! I didn't realize that the Brew 102 building used to look like that. I remember it being more like a one-story brick warehouse. I assume that over the years the brewery ceased operations and the building was modified/reduced in height with all the brewery equipment being removed. And yeah, this looks like Aliso Street before the 101 freeway was built, I'm sure it was in the process of being built. I remember reading somewhere that when the current Aliso Street viaduct over the LA River was built in the 1940s, it was designed in anticipation of the freeway.

[sopas ej]

I found this on Youtube:

Downtown LA in 1898
• Video Link

[sopas ej]

I thought this was interesting as well:

• Video Link

[Los Angeles Past]

Originally Posted by Beaudry

Painted like this?

(from here )

You've made me very happy.

[Los Angeles Past]

(Neglected to archive this one. It was probably just conversational in nature.)

[Los Angeles Past]

Originally Posted by Beaudry

Painted like this?

(from here )

I guess those gas tanks were gone even then. This looks like 1973-74, when I was away at college, and they are clearly absent here. Funny how I wouldn't notice something so obvious for so long, but then again, when I lived in Covina, I almost always took the Pomona Freeway or later the Foothill Freeway to points west; almost never the 10 to the 101 through downtown.

I like this simple skyline, with the new United California Bank building standing tall and apart from the other skyscrapers. It really was a sight to behold when it first went up.

-Scott

[Los Angeles Past]

Originally Posted by Beaudry


usc digital archive

This is a great shot, which I'm sure was taken from the roof of the just-completed Fremont Hotel. That's the Hotel Antlers closest to the camera.

The Hotel Antlers?! At first I thought that might be a typo, so I checked out The Greatest Map Of Old L.A. Ever and discovered that there actually was such a place (lower center). Was Hotel Antlers maybe owned by The Elks? Their lodge was just up the hill, after all.


Library Of Congress

Oh, and there's "The Ems" again, up there on Olive within a stone's throw of Angels Flight. Might its name perhaps refer to the plural of the letter "M," rather than a misspelling of elm?

-Scott

[GaylordWilshire]

Originally Posted by sopas ej

I found this on Youtube:

Downtown LA in 1898
• Video Link

Audible Old L.A.: I've always loved the lost pronunciation of "Los Angeles" as "Los ANN-gliss", which you hear in old movies, and in one of these You-Tube videos--it's in "Los Angeles 1955" several times (at about 3:30, 4:00, 4:25, 4:40). I grew up in New Orleans, which has its own vanishing pronunciation--"New Aw-yins"--

[ethereal_reality]

Beaudry, thanks for answering my questions from several posts back.
I'm a bit embarrassed I didn't know the Bradbury Building in that photo.

Anyway....
I appreciate all this information from every one of you...Sopas_ej....Beaudry.. Los Angeles Past. My head is spinning!


That said.....the map Scott posted from the Library of Congress is killer.
Are there other areas featured in that map as well?
I'd love to see them.

(Scott, I just noticed you have a link to the map...but I can't download it for some reason...go figure)




Here are a few more photos I found.



usc digital archive


Above: My first question is.....are those oil wells in the foothills?

Also, I was able to place the following photo because of the handsome building in the lower left hand corner in the above photo. The usc archive didn't know exactly where to place this photograph....they were confused because the firemen in the parade are from San Francisco.




usc digital archive


In the first photograph I recognized Los Angeles' first High School as the white building with the cupola on the far left hand side of the pic.
But it didn't seem to be in the right location.



usc digital archive

Above: Los Angeles High School on Fort Moore Hill.




usc digital archive





usc digital archive









I was confused until I found the next two photographs.



usc digital archive






usc digital archive


They moved the damn thing!


Do any of you in Los Angeles know the story behind this?

[ethereal_reality]

Oh...and here's one more I just found in my file.



usc digital archive

I would certainly think twice before I posed beneath it.

[GaylordWilshire]

Amazing how they moved these buildings-- there were a number of big houses moved from the MacArthur Park area to around Hancock Park when that developed--which is why you see the odd Victorian in that area--but the school is really huge. I think the school building was on "Poundcake Hill" first and then moved to Ft Moore Hill-- not sure exactly where Poundcake is/was-- Ft Moore Hill was in the path of the freeway I think--not that that's why they moved the school, of course. Scott? Beaudry?

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

Oh...and here's one more I just found in my file.



usc digital archive

I would certainly think twice before I posed beneath it.

[ethereal_reality]

I think you're correct GaylordWilshire, several of the glass negatives
had 'Pound Cake Hill' as a location.

I thought perhaps 'Pound Cake Hill' was the same location as Fort Moore Hill,
just a different/earlier name. It could very well be an entirely different location.

One negative mentioned it being moved to Sand Street. ??

[Beaudry]

The school was originally at Broadway & Temple, built in 1870 (or 1873).

That was Pound Cake Hill and the school had to be moved because that's where they decided to drop the new courthouse, so it was raised on a rolling trestle and moved across Temple to the bluff of Ft. Moore Hill in 1887, pretty much just above Olive.

Then in 1891 they built that other brick HS with the square tower you always see. That one I believe burned in 1937. I'll take a page from the Scott playbook and give you some Worthington-Gates:

There's the 1891 HS rightish-center, and the 1870 HS is about an inch above the tunnel on the left...pretty much like in the first photograph.

Things got really nasty in 1949, I mean, they moved it up a giant hill in the 1870s for crying out loud...there was a plot of land just north of the proposed freeway, west of Grand, owned by the State, the California State Historical Association appealed to Governor Warren to move the school, there was a whole preservation movement...but there were also endless Letters To The Editor going on about the silly, vile movement that was preservation. I guess they thought it smacked of Communism, anything delaying for five seconds the demolition of the Old. Before 1950 the old HS was toast, and we've all driven over the site a hundred times on the Hollywood Fwy.

(Apparently the doorway of the HS went to the new HS at 4600 W Olympic, though I haven't been over to check it out...)

...I think I've got it pretty well covered but I'd welcome corrections or additions. Hey, it's one in the blessed AM.

[sopas ej]

Seeing those pics of the old LA High School being moved reminded me of a story I read some years ago about a moving company in LA that used to move houses, and in the 1920s, made headlines by moving a multistory building in downtown LA.

I didn't remember the name of the company or the building that was moved, but doing a search on the USC digital archive I came across two pics of the Alhambra Hotel being moved in 1924 by the Kress House Moving Company; this has to be what I read about a few years ago. The 1920s and 1930s was the golden age of house moving because back then it was actually cheaper to move a house than to build them, according to what I read. But moving the Alhambra Hotel was a big deal. I don't remember why it had to be moved.


USC archive


USC archive

OK, now I remember the story I read; it had to do with a building called the Commercial Exchange Building at 8th and Olive; this from the Larchmont Chronicle:

"In a 1925 newspaper story, Kress was said to have moved about 250 structures the previous year, earning his firm more than $1 million. The widening of Spring, Olive and Flower streets brought Kress plenty of work. He saved the 13-story Commercial Exchange Building at Eighth Street and Olive from demolition in 1935 by cutting a five-foot section from its middle and sliding the west half of the building toward the eastern half. The half he moved weighed 5,000 tons."

From the USC archive, the Commercial Exchange Building:

[Beaudry]

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

Here are a few more photos I found.



usc digital archive


Above: My first question is.....are those oil wells in the foothills?

Am I going to complain about needing to go to bed, or am I going to talk about oil wells? Well, duh.

Yep, those are derricks, a lot of people assume that LA oil production is Wilmington/Long Beach/Signal Hill, and those are important to be sure, but later in the grand scheme of things...

There was nothing but a little seepy brea until Doheny's first shaft, fall of '92, which was near where Beverly crosses Glendale; by '95 derricks lined First Street. By '97 the area bounded by Figueroa, First, Union and Temple held over 500 producing wells--one could climb between derricks without touching the ground. Three out of every five barrels produced in California came from that field, and California produced a quarter of the country's oil. The big strikes in Signal Hill, Huntington Beach et al were still twenty years away.
Check out this map, 1906:



...and this isn't even all of them (you'll notice there are none around the aforementioned Fig/Temple area, this is just a map of a certain sand, that is, a particular stratigraphic substructure).

[Beaudry]

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

I think you're correct GaylordWilshire, several of the glass negatives
had 'Pound Cake Hill' as a location.

I thought perhaps 'Pound Cake Hill' was the same location as Fort Moore Hill,
just a different/earlier name. It could very well be an entirely different location.

One negative mentioned it being moved to Sands Street. ??

California St ran right underneath Fort Moore, but when the high school was perched there atop, it was called Sand Street...



(from here)