The wooden structure on the rt was the block long Martz Flats - a favorite with lux retail - razed to be replaced by current Macys/Sheraton mall --

Mountain View Ave. just north of Miramar St. - that looks suspiciously like a tan-colored pumpjack next to the tanks in the center of this pic from Google Maps:

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-e...714%2520PM.jpg

Here's another angle via Bing Maps, with the object in question circled:

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-B...341%2520PM.jpg

A gate blocks visibility on Google Street View, but the little bit sticking up above the gate sure looks like the top of a pumpjack:

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-z...820%2520PM.jpg

Just corrected - location of Martz Flats on left side of image--- Whew!

Martz Flats
 

Thanks so much, I knew it was something familiar based on the pretty foliate banding detail under the eaves, but failed to put two and two together. And like I said, the 19th century has all but been erased from DTLA.

Los Angeles City Oil Field: the Last Well.
 

Thx :-) I saw the tanks, but missed the pump jack. Mystery solved.

Another field come and (almost) gone.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...ieldDetail.jpg
wiki

Years ago a pumper/tank trunk used to regularly empty a pool of accumulated oil though a manhole on the Miracle Mile, the remains of the old Salt Lake Field, the one that caused the Fairfax Ross to explode in '85. Is that still going on?

Sacatela Creek & John Marshall High
 

Blimey e_r, I wouldn't live in the Sacatela Creek bed no matter how much they paid me. I don't care how many old Red Cars were dumped in it.

It's fun to see JMHS pre-landscaping. It became a favorite filming location after the lushness grew in.

The homes shown in this shot are still there:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_2sYXHRFeJN...igh+School.jpg
2719hyperion

Yes I do remember that fire.
 

@tovangar:

I used to own a little apartment building back in '85. My five tenets put their rent checks in a mailbox in that gas fire area. I didn't get any of that mail for two or three months. Oh well....that was then.

One of those ubiquitous Chop Suey signs shadowing Angels Flight in the 1950s.

http://imageshack.us/a/img69/5187/aabchopa1a.jpg
slide/ebay






Yet another Chop Suey sign in 'After Midnight with Boston Blackie'. (unknown Los Angeles street)

http://imageshack.us/a/img541/5185/a...idnightbos.jpg
http://ladailymirror.com/2012/05/01/...ery-photo-125/
__

Ah, the Shakespeare Bridge. I drove over that today, after I went here:
http://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphoto...69064254_n.jpg
LAPL

---and started taking pictures...
http://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphoto...55310093_n.jpg
Photo by me

View down the stairs, called "Radio Walk."
http://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphoto...96777383_n.jpg
Photo by me

View of the Prospect Studios...
http://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphoto...36135677_n.jpg
Photo by me

Northeast corner of Franklin Ave. and Radio St., 1938. This house was built in 1936.
http://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphoto...77681934_n.jpg
LAPL

The same house today. While I was taking pictures around this intersection with my back to this house, I heard a voice loudly say "You know, you could get the same pictures from Google." I turned around and saw a guy standing on the upper deck, and I told him "yeah, but they wouldn't be as clear." I thought, 'What an asshole.' I took a few more pictures and noticed out of the corner of my eye that he was still standing on the deck. He didn't go back inside the house until he saw me get into my car. Anyway, the address of this house is 3863 Franklin Avenue. It looks nicer in the older photo.
http://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphoto...43378782_n.jpg
Photo by me

I figured it was only about 3 or 4 miles away from the intersection of Radio and Franklin, so I drove to the house used in "Double Indemnity."
http://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphoto...49466788_n.jpg
From "Double Indemnity"

The house today.
http://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphoto...37358089_n.jpg
Photo by me

Another still from "Double Indemnity."
http://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphoto...24989328_n.jpg

An approximate view from today:
http://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphoto...93406727_n.jpg
Photo by me

Yet another "Double Indemnity" still:
http://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphoto...74741044_n.jpg

The view is now obscured.
http://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphoto...35370657_n.jpg
Photo by me

Oil Field/Coulter's/Howards Flowerland/Radio Walk/Shakespeare Bridge
 

http://www.stanford.edu/~meehan/la/fire4.gif

Then and now. Some things in LA really are eternal. Building & Safety is a lot more vigilant these days though, according to wiki, thousands of LA buildings now have subsurface barriers, ventilation systems, methane detectors, and alarms.

I believe it was. The exterior, with its glass-block banding, was massively satisfying (pun intended), but I never really liked the interior. It was just a little too cool, restrained and cramped somehow. I was always much fonder of the main-floor volumes of the Miracle Mile May Co.

Main/rear entrance:
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/i...WrsI325TKJTZtE
bibliop/flickr

http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...ostcount=10736

Are Radio Walk and the Prospect Steps two different places? I'm getting confused again.

I do dislike the "security" fencing around so many homes. I don't even lock my door.

The Shakespeare Bridge showed well in Dead Again (1991)

Wonderful post sopas_ej! Thank you so much for sharing your photographs.
__




I was especially impressed by the before and after photographs of 3863 Franklin Avenue.

http://imageshack.us/a/img191/3381/aabpr1.jpg

photo by sopas_ej
http://imageshack.us/a/img716/7413/aabpr1a.jpg


You were on a public street sopas_ej....no need to worry about the jerk on the balcony.
__

Chop Suey
 

"During his travels in the United States, Liang Qichao, a Guangdong (Canton) native, wrote in 1903 that there existed in the United States a food item called chop suey which was popularly served by Chinese restaurateurs, but which local Chinese people did not eat.'
- quoted from wiki

There was an actual Chinese dish made of entrails with a similar name, but it is popularly assumed that the Chop Suey ("assorted pieces") we know was invented by Chinese immigrants in the US to appeal to American tastes (this is what I was always told anyway). Chinese restaurants therefore touted "Chop Suey" in their signage to attract Caucasian customers. This is apparently debatable. If one really wants to get into it, wiki has more.

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8319/8...29bdfc4a_z.jpg
grouppool/flickr

What picture of Uni? I can't make out what I'm looking at here, and now I'm all curious. Could you please fix your tags or hyperlinks as needed?

TWS Class of '75

AW Ross, the Miracle Mile and Spot Zoning
 

Has it come up before how the Miracle Mile got where it is and looks like it does/did? I can't find it. I'll try to keep this brief.

As everyone knows, AW Ross wanted to develop an upscale shopping street, with plenty of parking, to cater to automobile drivers, as opposed to the downtown pedestrian shopping experience. In 1921 Ross picked a spot on Wilshire that was within four miles of the city's wealthiest neighborhoods and bought land. The site was outside city limits, but Ross figured it would be annexed eventually and zoned for business.

However, Ross didn't realize the hysterical and angry reaction he'd get from the downtown merchants who felt threatened by his plan. When annexation came, the jealous merchants waged a ferocious and expensive propaganda campaign, supported enthusiastically by the LA Times (dependent on the downtown retailers for ad revenue), against commercial zoning for Ross' land, scaring residents with visions of gas stations, dance halls, dye works, dive bars, hot dog stands, shady characters and norish doings. When the zoning question was put to the vote, Ross lost. He lost his appeal to the courts too.

Level-headed people could see that the situation had become impossible. Wilshire already had too much noisy traffic for homes and, if the land wasn't rezoned for businesses, it was worthless and blighted. Ross decided to take his case to the city one parcel at a time for "spot-zoning". Each building, and the business it housed, had to be dignified enough, grand and luxurious enough, to justify a zoning variance (a decent architect practically guaranteed a variance). In this way Ross actually got a much more upscale, better, more architecturally-rich shopping district than he had envisioned, all built on land zoned R1. The downtown merchants, not wanting to be left out, got on board by opening branch stores, but, of course, the icing on the cake was Coulter's (LA's oldest retailer) total abandonment of downtown in favor of the Miracle Mile.

Desmonds (GS Underwood, 1929)
https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/i...N7TA9kgkv_yC5w
dbstavels/flickr,

May Co (AC Martin, 1940)
http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m9...atdo1_1280.jpg
dick wittington

Of course the Miracle Mile lost out in the end to suburban malls, but that's another story.

(Info from Fabulous Boulevard Hancock, Ralph -Funk & Wagnalls, 1949)



P.S. Here's one I really miss on the far east end of the Miracle Mile district
It capped the streetscape off beautifully.
I loved the six palms pinned in place on the west side of the building and it
certainly handled signage much better than the poor E. Clem Wilson Building
(Myer & Holler, 1930) with its awkwardly added hat.
https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/i...pJZt3sAG7Bw5aA
anoxlou/flickr

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rvcVfelHCS...ng-General.jpg
shootthepianoplayer