Hoss, thanks much! I knew there was an excellent post about its siting back there somewhere...
But back to garages. I wrote a bit about the Grand Central/Biltmore Garage at 5th and Grand; I sloppily thought the Stanton in Stanton, Reed & Hibbard was Jesse Earl Stanton, of Stanton & Stockwell fame; but it's Forest Q Stanton, and Lester Hudson
Hibbard was the star of that group. A fine write-up of Stanton, Reed & Hibbard can be found
here.
As there were all these garages within a stone's throw of each other, I thought I'd investigate each a bit.
Here's the three at Fourth and Olive, in a photo by Reagh, 1966:
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The parking lot of course is the former site of the Fremont Hotel.
At left, the Central Garage at 363 S Olive, designed by Lester H Hibbard (Stanton, Reed and Hibbard, contractors), erected in 1923, demolished 1989. Now, Central Garage was built in '23 by the Biltmore Corp. Looks like they built it but were eyeing the 1920,
also Stanton, Reed & Hibbard-designed Grand Central Garage which was
closer to the Biltmore. So they disposed of the one up on Fourth and Olive and took over the one at Fifth and Grand.
The Clark Hotel had built their garage at 350 S Olive/425 West 4th in 1919. That's the one renamed the Center Garage, AKA the one with the
elephants. The architect is Dodd & Richards, which is why it's so good. It is demolished in 1971.
The Savoy Garage is 400 South Olive/430 West Fourth, designed by Curlett & Beelman, erected in 1923, still standing, miraculously. Curlett & Beelman, titans of LA architecture, are also known for the 1926 May Company garage at 6th & Hill. And while
this article states the oldest remaining parking garage in LA is Norenberg & Johnson's 1925 Auto Center Garage at 746 S Hope, that is incorrect. The oldest extant garage built as a free-standing garage is Curlett & Beelman's Savoy on Bunker Hill, y'all.
As long as we're on the subject—while researching these characters I came across
this article on the Hotel Clark Garage. This may be more than you'd ever care to know about this garage, but hey, it's a lost Dodd & Richards. Also, insert obligatory scroll-warning here.
Here's the one that really grabbed me—I never thought I'd see an image taken atop the Clark Garage facing its rooftop carwash. There's the Fremont kittycorner across the street, the Rose Mansion behind it, the Zelda up at 4th & Grand, and across from the Zelda the little-photographed
355 S Grand, which in the early 1920s was the birthplace of the infamous
Blackburn Cult.
(Oh, and the garage nearby at 343 S Grand which replaced the Brunson mansion in 1917? That was by John J Frauenfelder, who was an important concrete architect on early public mausolea, among
other stuff.)