:fireworks:


Now, back to the City of Angeles...


http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/800...0/833/ezza.jpgebay

The cover of a 1956 brochure

http://www.hollywoodlocations.com/wp...Wilshire_2.jpg
http://hollywoodlocations.com/100-wi...nica-ca-90401/

http://www.hollywoodlocations.com/wp...Wilshire_1.jpg
http://hollywoodlocations.com/100-wi...nica-ca-90401/

Anyone want to take a guess on who had this 21 story Santa Monica building constructed that is often called the "Refrigerator" and resided in it for number of years?

End of an era............
 

This plant is totally closed. The market for US made cars died a slow death. I toured this plant in 1968.....it was really a frenzy of production. A friend of mine was a department manager at this plant in the 1960s. He used to call the company ''Generous Motors". The bonus and salaries were sky high. GM was rolling in cash. That era is finished...over....kaput.

c'est la vie :(

Brochure a la 1955
 

Here's a 1955 Buick brochure.... Century Riviera model 63.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...ps34315144.jpg

Who Lived There?
 

Hello Retired_in_Texas

Lawrence Welk???

P.S. You and Earl_B and GW and others provide amazingly useful expertise with the cars to the thread. In these Found photos of LA, cars are everywhere and dates are frequently nowhere. So keep at it, guys! :cheers:

It seems entirely possible; county records give a build date of 1924 for the structure at 3601 S. Western Avenue. However, in the 1928 photo it seems that most of the property is just a loggia-like open space with no actual building as such. Maybe they added in some lath and plaster between the original posts, but if they did that, it's rather odd that such an extensive remodel isn't listed on the record.

This is why i love this board! With the car auctions on TV yesterday and all the talk about Buicks, I wanted to see where my 66 Wildcat was built. I knew it was made in South Gate but finding pics of the plant has been hard, I did find out the plant produced BOP and Later Chevys and closed in the early 80s. So you can understand my surprise today when i checked the board and GW posted the flyer. Many thanks to all of you for knowing what i wanted when i wanted it....and here is my work in progress.

[IMG]http://i292.photobucket.com/albums/m...ps78374f1b.jpg[/IMG]

:previous:

USC has a series of assembly line pictures that it says were taken at the General Motors South Gate Plant in 1952. They give the address as 7700 Tweedy Boulevard, but this is obviously a typo as the GM plant was actually at 2700 Tweedy Boulevard (confirmed by the 1956 CD). Most of the pictures show Pontiacs, and I don't want to start another argument, but I believe the car at the front is a Dodge Coronet. It's picture eight in a series of ten, so could this Dodge really be in a GM plant, of has the picture been placed in the wrong set?

http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...1.jpg~original
USC Digital Library

Here's how the plant looked in 1952.

http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...GatePlant2.jpg
Historic Aerials

Not long to go - this aerial shows how the plant had grown slightly by 1980.

http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...GatePlant3.jpg
Historic Aerials

After the plant was demolished, the site was cleaned up before the South East High School opened in 2005. This is what the former assembly plant site looks like today.

http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...GatePlant4.jpg
Google Maps

Like your car, unihikid. I have always liked the '65 and '66 pillarless Chevrolet Impalas and Buick Wildcats. There's a timeless elegance about them. They look really good in the period metallic turquoise. Good to know that some were built at South Gate -is there an identifier on the Vehicle Identifiction Plate for the plant to look out for? Would be good to know if and when I ever get around to finding one. It would be great to have a Californian built one.

unihikid: There are a number of websites on which you can decode your car's data plate, which should be riveted to the left front door hinge pillar, and, if your engine is original to the car, matches the one stamped on it.

The first six digits of your serial number (VIN) should be 464396--followed by a letter, which, if built at South Gate, is "C"--followed by a six-digit production number.

EDIT: Sorry--now I realize you weren't even asking. You probably already know how to decode. Btw, if you're not already a member, you might want to consider joining the Buick Club of America--great support, home of the real Buick aficionado.


HossC: The labeling of that picture with the Dodge ('51 or '52) is in error--there is no chance that a GM plant would have built Chrysler products.

For perhaps the first fifty years after the second World War, cities didn't work in America because nobody in power really wanted them to work. While most of the country was becoming car-dependent and suburbanized, Robert Moses was trying to turn even NYC into L.A. as far as urban planning and transit (or the lack of it) went. Among other things, according to the Wiki article, he intentionally placed recreational facilities like swimming pools far from mass transit, so you had to have a car to go there--as many pointed out, a not-too-subtle way of favoring Anglos. We all remember now that, in the 1970s, NYC was the poster child for all of America's urban ills. More recently, in the early 1990s it was L.A., and far too many still think the entire city south of the 10 and east of the 405 is "the ghetto", if not an all-out war zone.

What's different today is that more people are attracted to the idea of urban living if it means not having to spend so much of your cash, time, and patience on your car, and not having to pony up $15 or $20 just to park at the museum or the football game--or for that matter, five days a week at the office. Even the process of driving, itself, becomes a burden when you are doing 15 mph on the 10, or when it takes you a half hour to crawl from Barrington Avenue to Sepulveda because the 405 on-ramp is backed up to Bundy. You just want to keep your windows up and the AC on so you can hear the radio or music player and frankly it's depressing. In such conditions, the original appeal of being able to drive everywhere loses a lot of its luster.

It's certainly not as if everyone wants to move back to living in city apartments, but then it's not necessary for everyone to do so to make it viable. It only needs enough people.

As for me, I'll gladly endure this:

http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5524/1...c7541cee_c.jpg
(Own work)

…and this

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7324/1...56e9fb6a_c.jpg
(Own work)


if it means I don't have to do this:

http://www.laweekly.com/binary/b29a/traffic.jam_prv.jpg
L.A. Weekly (http://www.laweekly.com/binary/b29a/traffic.jam_prv.jpg)

Granted there are times when using transit is isn’t practical, but without it being one of those times I’ll never drive myself into DTLA again.

No worries GW i found out all that info when i was trying to figure out the original color (silver with a black vinyl top),and thanks AL,i bought the car less than a mile from the old plant on alemeda and the place was about to crush it. Im not a memeber of BCOA yet,but one day soon. But like GW back to los angeles...although i do keep an eye out for 66 buicks in all of the post.

Thanks, GW. I couldn't think of a good reason for a Dodge to be in a GM factory. I assume the photo was probably taken at the Chrysler plant in Commerce which operated between 1932 and 1971. There's a good article about the Commerce site on allpar.com. Here's how that factory looked in 1953.

http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...slerPlant1.jpg
Historic Aerials

And how the site looks today.

http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...slerPlant2.jpg
Google Maps

This picture is another one from the USC set. It's far more plausible that this Pontiac was being built in the GM plant at South Gate.

http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...5.jpg~original
USC Digital Library

The new NOIR economy......
 

The photos Hoss posted are mute testimony as the the state of affairs as of today. In the era from 1950 to 1970 we had an average of 4 people applying for each available job in the Los Angeles area. Today its about one thousand people applying for each full-time job with benefits. This is the new NOIR....much sadness and despair.:(:cool:

Here is the now closed Chrysler plant in Commerce...circa 1940.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...ps24de6a42.jpg LAPL

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...ps6285e56b.jpg LAPL

Here's something a little more fun. It's Woofy the Walrus at Marineland of the Pacific in 1965.

http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...s.jpg~original
Ebay

Previous post about Marineland of the Pacific:

http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...postcount=4086

Yup it was Lawrence Welk. I've been attempting to stick a label on its architectural style/type, but haven't come to a conclusion other than latter half 20th Century Metro Gothic. It's seems a bit Modern Streamline in leanings and then looses it with those columns that I see as unnecessary clutter. A real oddity about that building is it has no parking garage or area. Go Figure!

About the auto identity bit, even "motorheads" like me can be wrong, as I recently proved. Personally I happen to be a somewhat serious collector of '50s, '60s, and '70s cars having some eleven of them of various makes and though having a rather extensive library of auto info going back to the 1920s I can still miss the mark on identity. Built my first hot rod in 1955 at the ripe age of 14.

CBG: I have to say, your anhedonic observations always manage to make this nearly 60-year-old cynic-by-nature feel young and optimistic. Thanks! Ain't life great?

One of the photos in your linkback to hollywoodlocations.com shows the top of a parking garage. It would appear that the building next door to the tower, bounded by Wilshire & 2nd, serves as the parking area for the tower. Though they are separated by an alley, maybe they're connected below ground level?

EDIT: yup, parking for the tower is primarily at 120 Wilshire, which is a 7-level garage, mostly below grade. There is also parking next door at 1221 Ocean Ave.
http://www.100wilshireblvd.info/main...es&pid=parking

Two towers coming down

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-U.../twotowers.jpg


Left, seen here before at http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...ostcount=11234 and right, well, also seen here before, but I'll make it a guessing game.