Sunset Blvd. house
 

Had not driven past the infamous vacant lot in some time but did this morning.
There are now two HUGE new houses there, both really egregious examples of the "more is SO much better!" school of architecture. I would guess each house at around 20,000 sq feet. The elaborate wrought iron fencing still surrounds the property, but no statues are visible. Sheik Al Fassi may have had no taste, but he really give the neighbors and passersby lots to talk & gawk about.

You can see the Security Pacific Building was just nearing completion
From Wikipedia: "It was completed in 1974 with the headquarters of Security Pacific National Bank, Capital Group Companies and Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton as its main tenants."

More LA Noire shots...these will probably be the last for a while on account of my having finished playing through the game for a third time.

http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5331/7...9c2b1c0e_b.jpg

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7103/7...dd25a3cf_b.jpg

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7217/7...87c1c8cb_b.jpg

^ the offices of California Fire & Life.....note it's a near-copy of the office from Double Indemnity

http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5444/7...9ce0cd0f_b.jpg

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7213/7...8439de7f_b.jpg

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http://img835.imageshack.us/img835/7...ctorcar900.jpg
Modern Mechanix, July 1937


How long did they expect two 6-volt batteries to keep this thing going?

'When the pipe opening shrinks to twenty-inch diameter...partially collapsed and pushed through the aperture ahead by the operator.'?? Okay I'm not normally claustrophobic but I have trouble even reading that. Can you imagine trying to explain to an OSHA inspector where you think your missing pipe inspector and his assistant painter might be?

:previous:

I'm also wondering how, if the steering wheel is used as a spare in case of a flat, the operator is suppose to change the tire in the pipe, and, how he is then supposed to steer the machine with no steering wheel. Of course, why does it need steering at all if it's running in a tube? I'm thinking this whole thing was not very well thought out.

Some Rare Lookout Mountain Photos
 

A couple of months ago I purchased an interesting old album filled with with interesting photos of Hollywood, Laurel Canyon, and Lookout Mountain (an area that fascinates me).

This album was owned by a collector who acquired the images from many different sources. It's interesting, and a bit of a puzzle. The prints themselves are obviously old, but often less old than the scenes they portray. I surmise that collector was given access to original negatives over the years, and made prints for himself.

Some are famous shots, classics if you will that we have seen on this thread, from the files of LAPL and such. (It really surprised me to open it up and see original versions of many images that I'd first seen right here.) But there are many others that I don't recall ever seeing before -- like this first group, which show Lookout Mountain in 1909.

Most of the photos have typewritten captions, on little slips of yellowed paper.

I was told by the seller that these Lookout Mountain photos came from a Hollywood or Laurel Canyon Realtor who is now deceased. Except for the last photo (which may have a different source) they don't really show any buildings or people. Sill, they are nice, clear images that show what this section of Laurel Canyon looked like before any development took place; before the Lookout Mountain Inn was even built.


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This first image is labeled "Wonderland Valley Looking North". I don't know exactly where this photo was taken, but I think the distant hills are Mt. Lee, the Hollywood Sign, and Griffith Park, though none of them really existed yet. I'd bet that these days this area is nearly unrecognizable, covered with roads, homes, walls, fences, and trees.


http://wwww.dkse.net/david/Album/190...North.1200.jpg


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This one is labeled "On the Boulevard to Lookout Mountain Park". The little sign to the left of the roadway reads "GRAND SCENIC DRIVE TO LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN"

http://wwww.dkse.net/david/Album/190...nPark.1200.jpg


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This photo has the same typewritten caption as the previous one. This might be the intersection of Grand View Drive and Cole Crest Drive. The sign reads "YOU R ON THE ROAD TO C FROM LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN".

http://wwww.dkse.net/david/Album/OnT...npark.1200.jpg


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This one was also captioned "On the Boulevard to Lookout Mountain Park". The sign reads "C OVER SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA FROM LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN". This might be the intersection of McLeod Drive and Blue Heights Drive, just below the summit of Lookout Mountain.

http://wwww.dkse.net/david/Album/OnT...Park2.1200.jpg


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This last one is captioned "Looking South East from Lookout Mountain". The view is towards Hollywood. (Can anyone can identify any of the buildings in the distance? What's the area that looks like a huge parking lot, over the hill?) If the camera were turned about 45 degrees to the right, we'd would looking almost straight down La Cienega, which "points to" Lookout Mountain from West Hollywood and mid-Wilshire.


http://wwww.dkse.net/david/Album/SEf...tMtn3.1200.jpg

All images from personal collection.

Ive read that the Alexandria Hotel had an 8 story 55 room annex built that was only served by stairs and lifts from the main hotel building. In 1934 the annex closed, in 1937 following a disagreement between the 2 owners the hallways between the two properties were bricked up sealing off the 55 rooms.

Apparently it stayed this way for almost 60 years!

Can anyone shed any light on this? I'm looking on Google to identify the annex but it must by now have been brought back into use, bet it looked fascinating as an untouched 60 year old relic of the past

Go here for a good article on the annex and its sale,

http://blogdowntown.com/2010/04/5244...ars-alexandria

http://img818.imageshack.us/img818/2...picdual900.jpgModern Mechanix

1931

(As sharp as I could get it.)

Fascinating stuff, thanks Michael. Looking at Google you can see the collapsed roof of the annex section

The female athletes were indeed housed at the Chapman Park Hotel on Wilshire during the '32 Games:
http://www.lapl.org/virgal/laoly_32/images/oly32_05.jpg
lapl

http://img607.imageshack.us/img607/6...nparkhotel.png
Xth Olympiad Los Angeles 1932 Official Report

Around 3 years ago I started a thread on the 1932 Los Angeles Summer Olympics: Los Angeles 1932 Summer Olympics

I also started a thread on the LA 1984 Summer Games but that's not so "Golden Age of Hollywood"-looking. :P

The Shelton
 

As a newspaper boy, I delivered the Herald Express and the Hollywood Citizen News to the Shelton. Many of the older apartment buildings, such as the Mayfair, the McAvoy and the Green Apartments (where Carol Burnett lived with her grandmother) on Wilcox allowed the delivery boys to drop off their papers upstairs at the front doors to the apartments. The Shelton and the Lido did not allow newspaper boys above the lobby. We had to drop off all the papers with the desk clerk. The Shelton was not seedy, but it was no longer the good address it had once been. The old elevators, many of which are still in use (such as the ones at the El Royale on Rossmore and the Chancellor on Cherokee and the La Leyenda on Whitley) had the heavy front door and a collapsible gate that had to be pulled aside to enter. Inside you punched a button to take you to the desired floor. The motor would start up and the elevator began to shake and groan into activity. Anyone who has been in those elevators will ever forget the experience.

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QUOTE=Joe Gillis;5705512]Thanks for the welcome, Vicuna it is!

Anyone here know of the Suicide Hotel in Central Hollywood?

Until 1987 at 1735 N Wilcox stood the Shelton Apartments

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b3...Untitled-2.png

Google Street View

It was in this original building that 2 faded stars took their own lives

First up it was Jenny Dolly of 'The Dolly Sisters'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolly_Sisters

http://www.lbi.org/web-exhibits/Gold...llysisters.jpg http://www.lbi.org/

She and her sister were two of the most beautiful women in the world, Jenny was said to be the only woman to break the bank at Monte Carlo!!

However in 1933 Jenny was disfigured in a car accident and sank into depression, she finally hung herself at The Shelton in 1941

21 Years later and the Shelton was the scene of another celebrity suicide, Clara Blandick, better known to most as Auntie Em from The Wizard of Oz

http://www.jgdb.com/oz19.jpg
http://www.jgdb.com/oz.htm

Clara dressed herself in an elegant gown, primped her hair, checked her make up, lay down, drew a blanket over herself and slipped a plastic bag over her head

Sad end two these 2 ladies lives and now the Shelton is long gone too

Heres a not very good shot of The Shelton

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b3...518_183518.jpg

The Lido Apts are visible in this and the modern shot[/QUOTE]

Great memories BDiH, this is exactly the reason I joined the forum, getting to hear so much about tiny snippets Ive only read about in a 20 year old book

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http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/5581/casa1959906.jpg
http://img802.imageshack.us/img802/7...cnowish906.jpg


I'm sure we've seen the wonderful Casa de Cadillac here before, but, as we know, the "search" feature here objects to small
words such as "Don" and "Lee" if not "casa." Anyway, what I did not know about the Cadillac dealership I first noticed in Tom
Petty's "Free Fallin'" video is that it started out as a branch of Don Lee's operations in 1949. It became the Casa sometime
in the '50s--some sources say within a year of opening. At top, '49 models appear in the Don Lee showroom, followed by '59s
in the second shot, and recent models in the third.


Something else I hadn't noticed was the larger "Casa de" theme at the corner of Ventura Blvd and Beverly Glen in Sherman Oaks:

http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/8...roldual906.jpg
http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/515...cascade906.jpg


And finally, I guess there never were anything so tacky as "used-car" departments at Cadillac dealers... looks like before they were
"previously owned," they were offered for "resale." Someone seems to have traded in a '57 Lincoln convertible...

http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/5...aresale906.jpg


The dealership itself is remarkably intact 63 years later, doubly remarkable in the age of factory-dictated dealership design. The Cascade
building and its waterfall remains recognizable. That the Casa threesome is as "together" as it is is nothing short of amazing:

http://img513.imageshack.us/img513/6...ture519201.jpg


Fuller story here.


First and third pics: Alden Jewell; all others except last, Palm Springs Automobilist; last, Google Street View

Downtown as seen from the DPW Building
 

I love all those 'then and now' pics, and I like some skyscrapers of downtown Los Angeles. So, let's play to the 'then and now' game with some particular pictures that were taken from the Water Courtyard of the DPW Building, located at 111 N. Hope Street. The next following photos maintain almost the same angle, so it's pretty much the same view

1.Redevelopment years.

http://img151.imageshack.us/img151/5408/83954252.jpg

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Just a question came to my mind when I first saw that pic: Did I miss something? And I didn't mean a few skyscrapers yet to built, neither a lost neighborhood. I was just that it looked to me an unrecognizable place...
Is there still someone out there who still remember when all Downtown skyscrapers were only the Union Plaza or the Bunker Hill (ugly) Towers as seen in the picture?


2. Plaza, plaza, plaza, and so on and on...


http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/8646/29458593.jpg

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

And in less of 15 years (from 1970 to 1985) we get this... Awesome? Ugly? They call it progress and redevelopment. The skyscraper seen in the middle, the former SPB tower, is pershaps the most controversial, due the fact that the tower stands diagonally in relation to the surrounding streets grid. Weird?


3. High-rise fever


http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/8612/85589890.jpg

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

The Library Tower still in construction in this 1988 picture, gives you the idea that the 'high-rise' fever won't stop... In S. Figueroa St, not seen in the picture, they're busy feeling that fever on that period (Figueroa at Wilshire, 777 Tower, etc) But on Grand, to the left of the image, I miss my all time favourite tower of L.A. soon to be built! Guess what is it?


4-Present time (2012)

http://img846.imageshack.us/img846/7652/80220122.jpg

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Beautiful panorama of DTLA. There're some new approved projects that will soon change that skyline. Ironically we have gone from the darkness (first pic) to the light (last pic)... It's not quite a noirish excercise but it's the same city.


Source:
1,2 pics from LALP (http://photos.lapl.org/carlweb/jsp/F...Number=4795835 and http://photos.lapl.org/carlweb/jsp/F...Number=4795834)
3,4 from L.A. Incredible photos of the city (http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showth...21270&page=182)

There is a color photograph of James Dean standing alongside his Porsche Spyder at the Casa de Petrol filling station in 1955. Dean had picked up his Spyder earlier in the day at Competition Motors on Vine Street (across from the Hollywood Ranch Market) and drove over the hill to the gas station that was near his log cabin home at 14611 Sutton Street in Sherman Oaks. Dean was killed in his car ("Little Bastard") later that day on his way to the Salinas road races.

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http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_XRrU8-3Nmi...Oaks+House.jpghttp://3.bp.blogspot.com/_XRrU8-3Nmi...s+Dean+Car.jpghttp://dearoldhollywood.blogspot.com...inal-ride.html

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http://www.slowtrav.com/blog/nancyho...%20Dean-24.jpg
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http://o3.aolcdn.com/dims-shared/dim...aa56bb2e1a3304http://encino.patch.com/articles/the...#photo-7153211