Quote:
Originally Posted by ethereal_reality
re: The International Mart/Washington Furniture Co/Mode O' Day building.
The large area where your circus was located is also the site of the great Los Angeles Auto Show fire of 1924.
ebay
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What an utter disaster. It looks like a war zone.
1924 was a bit of an iffy year for LA:
L.A. THEN AND NOW
It started with a dead rat in a poor neighborhood near downtown. Not two months later, 37 people had died from the plague.
March 05, 2006|Cecilia Rasmussen | Times Staff Writer
It was a warm, summery day in late September 1924 when a group of Mexican immigrants began to congregate outside a boardinghouse on Clara Street, north of what is now Cesar E. Chavez Avenue and west of Vignes Street. It was a small, bustling, mostly Latino community near downtown, where the Twin Towers jail complex now stands.
Folks were listening to Jesus Lajun's comical story about his detective work in tracking down an overpowering and nauseating odor beneath his house. He had found a decaying rat, he told them; he picked it up with one hand and threw it in the trash.
A week later, Clara Street was in mourning. Lajun's daughter, Francesca, 15, was dead, a victim of what the coroner called double pneumonia.
Then, a neighbor, Lucena Samarano, who was six months pregnant and had cared for Francesca while she was ill, miscarried and also died. A few days after her funeral, attended by a host of friends, Samarano's husband, Guadalupe, died. Within six weeks, the only survivor of the eight-member Samarano family was 14-month-old Raul.
The man who had found the rat, Lajun -- also spelled Loujon -- was nursing a bloody cough and a painful, egg-sized swollen gland in his groin. By the end of October, he too was dead.
An ambulance driver who transported the sick became ill and died. So did Father M. Brualla, who had administered last rites to several victims and said Mass at Lucena Samarano's funeral. Within days, a dozen more deaths occurred in the neighborhood and in the Belvedere district on the east side of the river, according to Dr. Robert S. Cleland, a former Los Angeles County Hospital pathologist who colorfully described the events in a 1971 article for Westways magazine.
Doctors suspected meningitis, influenza, pneumonia, even typhus. But the culprit was something more insidious that had inspired fear since before the Middle Ages...
The rest is at:
http://articles.latimes.com/2006/mar/05/local/me-then5
DO NOT miss these photos:
http://www.oac.cdlib.org/view?docId=...doc.view=items
A thankless task at the 1924 LA plague lab:
A current video of the plague lab
https://vimeo.com/170246948
Nora Sterry (1880-1941):
nora sterry elementary school
Ms Sterry, lauded in the article above, was the younger sister of famed show biz attorney Norman Sterry (1879-1971) who represented, amongst others, Lillian Gish (re slander), Mary Miles Minter (against her mother) and Barbara Hutton Grant (against an ex). Nora and Norman Sterry lived as young people with their parents and siblings at 2607 Wilshire Blvd, two blocks west of MacArthur Park
Marilyn Monroe attended Nora Sterry Elementary School (when it was still Sawtelle Blvd School) here in WLA when Ms Sterry was the principal there.
Sterry was a legendary educator and loved by all.
P.S. Excellent 1924 plague video. Great images:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2t7KTeNKjws
Macy Street School (mentioned in the article above) being torn down in 1937. It was inside the quarantine area.
reddawgcollectables/eBay
The Plague lab will set you back a million bucks now:
http://www.loopnet.com/Listing/17875...os-Angeles-CA/
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It was only $2.50? I prefer it over the other photo that went for $140.00
fire & plague
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