NW corner of 1st and Hill, November 18, 1908
 

The Neuner Company ("stationers, printers, and bookbinders" at 113-115 S. Broadway according to the
1908 LA City Directory) entered this float in the Prosperity Parade held in Los Angeles on Wednesday,
November 18, 1908. This enlarged view looks at the NW corner of 1st and Hill, with a little of the Highland
Villa and its sign visible in the background. The costumed printer's devils on the float are a clever touch:
http://i1165.photobucket.com/albums/...a.jpg~original
UCLA -- http://lit250v.library.ucla.edu/isla.../laviews%3A377

This is how the LA Times described the float the next day:
http://i1165.photobucket.com/albums/...r.jpg~original
LAPL

Here's a Los Angeles Herald article on the parade, which includes almost the exact same photo
of the Neuner float (The driver seems to be looking straight ahead in the Herald photo, vs. having
his head turned a bit in the UCLA photo): http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lc...19/ed-1/seq-3/

We've seen the Highland Villa several times, including:
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...postcount=8975
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...ostcount=19794
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...ostcount=26829

http://mirc.sc.edu/islandora/object/usc%3A24590

This is cool footage from an amazing collection. It's the opening ceremonies of Los Angeles City Hall.

Great find, Fred! That's some amazing footage.

Moving Image Research Collections
 

Thank you for the link to that site. It looks to be full of treasures.

Mostly rather thin people in those days. These fellows appear to be local military school boys.
Screen capture and the film is very interesting from 1929.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...psn6frf1ef.jpg
SCVideo archives

I can't post any of my photographs because imageshack is down for 24 to 78 hours! :(:(:(

Can anyone suggest an alternative photo-hosting site that's easy to use?

photobucket.com......very easy, free and you can post thousands of photos.

sounds good :)

:previous:

Photobucket will start charging when you exceed their free bandwidth limit (i.e. when lots of people are viewing your pictures), which happened to me not long after I joined NLA. As long as you don't mind paying a couple of bucks a month, it's pretty easy to use. Bear in mind that I've never used any other image hosts to compare it to!

Had enough of Long Beach? OK, today we're off to Huntington Park. This Bank of America was on the corner of Pacific Boulevard and Zoe Avenue. It's Julius Shulman's "Job 1029: Bank of America (Huntington Park, Calif.),1951".

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

This south-looking shot shows that the store on the far right of the picture above was F W Woolworth. Also on the right are Gibson's (ladies ready to wear), Harris and Frank (clothing), and Tates (men's, women's and boy's clothing) which shared their building with Timely Clothes. On the left, blade signs are visible for the California Theatre, the Eastern Columbia Camera Center, and the Warner Huntington Park.

http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...2.jpg~original

This shot must have been taken from roughly outside the Warner theater.

http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...3.jpg~original

All from Getty Research Institute

If the location looks familiar, it's because we visited it back in February. The pictures in e_r's screengrabs (post #26368 and post #26369) appear to date from soon after the Shulman photos, and while they're not as sharp, they do show the original bank and some of its neighbors in color. I identified the location in a couple of follow-up posts (post #26372 and post #26384), so the fact that the bank has been drastically butchered remodeled shouldn't be a surprise! It looks like I found a build date of 1930.

http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...4.jpg~original
GSV

At least there are many other buildings on the street that survive relatively unchanged, e.g. the Woolworths building and the California Theatre (now no longer a theater).

http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...5.jpg~original
GSV

The view looking north is also still recognizable.

http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...6.jpg~original
GSV

:previous:

I'm currently up to around 3,400 images posted on NLA, plus around 1,800 on another forum with much less traffic. Many of my NLA images are at least 1,000 pixels wide, and a couple have been several times wider. The images at the other site are generally smaller.

I've decided to wait it out with imageshack. ;)

The Andrés Pico Townhouse Adobe/Hellman Quon Building
 

I've seen this 1895 photo a number of times:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-D...5%252520PM.jpg
ucla/islandora depository/cc pierce

Many of the digital libraries seem to agree on the description, "Last Mexican Capital. S Side Plaza. Office of Gov. Pio Pico. The capital of the State of California"

(the Bella Union Hotel also claims this honor. See here too)


The building shown in the photo above is the building west of the 1884 Plaza fire station, with the brick wall of Pico House (1870) across Sanchez St and the Baker Block (1877-1942) in the distance. I think that is the north wall of the Garnier Building behind. Sostenes Sepulveda's building (now the Chinese American Museum) wasn't built until 1898.

Pio Pico was Mexican governor of Alta California (for the second time) in 1845-46. Was the adobe really that old?

Many of you know a lot more about the Plaza than I ever will, but I thought I'd gather some images of the building through time to try to pin down its age to see if the caption is justified.

About a decade earlier, ca. 1886, two years after the fire house went in. It is said that the adobe served as a boarding house during the 80s:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-r...5%252520PM.jpg
lapl

Here it is, even earlier, in ca. 1876, peeking out from behind Pico House:
This 1873 map identifies the buildings, but not necessarily the build dates. Andrés Pico, younger brother of Pio Pico, was in residence in the subject building by 1854. Pio Pico took over José Antonio Carrillo's 1825 townhouse in 1856 (the home predated Stearns' 1838 El Palacio by more than a decade. In its time it was the showplace of the city). Carrillo (1796–1862), alcalde of Los Angeles on three different occasions was married to Estefana Pico in 1823, and, after her death, Jacinta Pico in 1842, both sisters of Andrés and Pio. Carrillo retired to Santa Barbara and died there in 1862, aged 66.

Note that Sanchez Street does not exist yet (Ferguson Alley didn't exist then either):
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-I...4%252520AM.jpg
previously posted by MR(detail)/loc

The 1871 birdseye drawn by Augustus Koch shows the adobe and the Sepulveda home attached to another structure. Sanchez St is through to Arcadia. (One can see the big loading dock door on the east side of Pico House, which is not often on view):
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-9...8%252520AM.jpg
uscdl

In this wonderful ca. 1858-60 composite (which lemster put together out of LA's oldest photo and one of e_r's ebay finds) the roof of Andrés Pico's home may be clearly seen, with Ramoria Sepulveda's house behind it, just east of Pio Pico's house:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-t...1%252520PM.jpg
lemster2024

Detail:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-C...8%252520PM.jpg

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-N...0%252520PM.jpg
Next-door neighbors Andrés (1810-1876) and Pio Pico (1801-1894), two of a dozen siblings. The Picos had nine sisters (Conception, Tomasa, Margarita, Casimira, Estefana, Isadora, Josefa, Jacinta and Feliciana) and an older brother, José Antonio Bernardo Pico (1794-1871), called "Picolito" because he was much smaller than his younger brothers. He spent much of his life in San Diego.

Don Andrés was a ranch owner, commander of the Californio Lancers, hero of San Pasqual and signatory of the Treaty of Cahuenga, 1847 (the only known agreement in history dictated by the losers, thanks to the exceedingly wise Maria Bernarda Ruiz de Rodriguez, 1802-1886, with a very cooperative and gracious assist from John Frémont, 1813-1890. Before Senora Ruiz's involvement, Kearny and Stockton had planned on hunting down Don Andrés and hanging him). From 1851 Don Andrés was a State Assemblyperson, in 1858 a Brigadier General in the California Militia and elected a California State Senator in 1860 (famously author of the Pico Bill to divide California). Don Andrés had a family of adopted and his own natural children, but never married. He collapsed on a Los Angeles street from "brain fever" on February 13, 1876, dying the next day.

Don Andrés was Governor of the California Republic (1846-1850) in 1847. Don Pio took over this duty in 1848, his third time as governor, twice for Mexico and once under American rule.

Don Pio was also a rancher and a businessman, as well as a skillful politician. He married Maria Ignacia Alvarado in 1834 and together they adopted several children.

This map, drawn by odinthor, from his site here, is based on one by a Californio descendant in the Historical Society Quarterly. It includes info (as remembered) up until ca 1853.

This birdseye of the Plaza area was commissioned by the DWP in 1950. It was said to be based on the 1849 Ord survey and careful research. Although there are two buildings approximately where Andrés Pico's house stood, they look nothing like the later structure and neither appears to match the footprint of the later adobe:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-Q...5%252520AM.jpg
calisphere

The 1849 Ord Survey drawn by William Rich Hutton is not about to provide satisfaction, but Ord wasn't hired to survey the buildings, so fair enough. Hutton also made sketches of Los Angeles, unfortunately none of them of the south side of the Plaza are available to me as they are held rather closely by the Huntington:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-Q...9%252520AM.jpg
lapl

It's difficult to know but it doesn't look like the adobe in the first photo existed during Pio Pico's last term as Mexican Governor of Alta California in 1845-1846, although something was there. Also, the Picos seem to have had no recorded connection to any building on that site before 1854. I wish I knew if José Antonio Carrillo had any control over the smaller building(s) to the east of his 1825 home. Carrillo was not only the Picos' brother-in-law, but also a trusted aide to Andrés Pico. It was Carrillo who wrote out the Articles of the Treaty of Cahuenga in both English and Spanish, as dictated by Maria Bernarda Ruiz de Rodriguez, for Andrés Pico and John Frémont to sign.


Whatever was once there, in 1900 Bavarian Isaias W Hellman, almost 30 years after he founded the Farmers and Merchants Bank, bought Andrés Pico's old home, destroyed it and built a one-story brick business block. (The adobe was only one of two left facing the Plaza. The last, the Olvera adobe, fell in 1917.) Lithuanian Moses Srere bought the building in 1920 upon Hellman's death, selling it the next year to respected businessman Quon How Shing. Quon kept it until it was acquired by the State of California in 1954. It is now known as the Hellman Quon Building.

1918:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-g...1%252520PM.jpg
california state archive/el pueblo

1920s "Hydropura":
1920s "Coca Cola":
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-e...2%252520PM.jpg
lapl

1924:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-J...9%252520PM.jpg
MR (detail)

n.d. Looking NNE from Sanchez Street (named in 1861 for Sheriff Tomas Alvia Sanchez, a lieutenant of Commander Pico's in the 40s, who owned much of the land it was built on):
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-y...6%252520PM.jpg
lapl

1949 "Plaza Cafe":
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-g...4%252520PM.jpg
pinterest/lapl

ca 1950 "7-Up":
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-e...8%252520PM.jpg

hdl

1962:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-D...4%252520PM.jpg
hdl/palmer conner

2013:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-x...6%252520PM.jpg
oak tree construction

Now, 2015 (still with a tower peeking over the roof line):
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-O...3%252520PM.jpg
city project

And again, Then (1895):
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-D...5%252520PM.jpg
ucla/islandora depository/cc pierce

:previous: Excellent in-depth post tovanger2! Thanks so much.

__

Well imagehack is back online, but they're blocking me from logging in.
I'm curious, is anyone else who uses imageshack having this difficulty?
__

I've been patience.....until now. This sucks!

Sometimes one has to start a new Bookmark to login.

Thx MM for the beautiful shot of the Hollywood Western Building (& all the others). The new, deeper, more detailed paint job is very welcome:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-3...5%252520PM.jpg
flickr

880 W. Adams, 1895-1965
 

1/9/2018 NOTE: SORRY BUT THREE IMAGES IN THIS POST ARE MISSING DUE TO A PHOTOBUCKET ERROR

I could not find this home's architect, but it was built for Richard Perrot Blaisdell and his wife Margaret Gertrude Blaisdell
(née Gossage) at the SE corner of Adams and Portland, a couple blocks east of Hoover.

http://i1165.photobucket.com/albums/...i.jpg~original
April 27, 1895 Los Angeles Herald @ LOC -- http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lc...arRange&page=2

Here it is on the 1906 Sanborn Map:
http://i1165.photobucket.com/albums/...i.jpg~original
LAPL


And here it is in Los Angeles of Today Architecturally (1896):
http://i1165.photobucket.com/albums/...l.jpg~original
LAPL -- Flyingwedge photo

In 1901, Morris A. Newmark and his wife Harriet purchased the home:
http://i1165.photobucket.com/albums/...z.jpg~original
August 18, 1901, Los Angeles Times @ LAPL

The Newmarks had purchased the home as a result of the separation of Mr. and Mrs. Blaisdell. The Los Angeles Times
reported the dispute between the two as resulting from Mr. B purchasing property with Mrs. B's money and then
recording the property in his name (I'm almost positive that the 820 address in the article is a mistake and that
she had not moved to another house on the same block):
http://i1165.photobucket.com/albums/...d.jpg~original
http://i1165.photobucket.com/albums/...a.jpg~original
May 30, 1902, Los Angeles Times @ LAPL

But an article in the San Francisco Call simply painted Mr. B as a deadbeat. The Call article also differed
from the one in the Times by noting that the Blaisdells were no longer living together:
http://i1165.photobucket.com/albums/...a.jpg~original
http://i1165.photobucket.com/albums/...j.jpg~original
June 1, 1902 San Francisco Call @ LOC -- http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lc...1/ed-1/seq-24/

I'm not sure how the lawsuit between the Blaisdells turned out, but Margaret eventually moved back to Chicago with
their daughter, Sarah. After separating from his wife, Richard moved back in with his parents at 2622 S. Figueroa,
where he had lived before his 1894 marriage.

http://i1165.photobucket.com/albums/...7.jpg~original
Evergreen Cemetery / Find a Grave -- http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg...Rid=116146601&

The Call article seems to have been correct about the bad blood between the families. When Richard Blaisdell
died of Rheumatic Heart Disease at age 35, his obituary in the Times noted that, "A telegram was sent to his
daughter in Chicago." So his daughter, who was only 11, learned of her father's death from a telegram, rather
than from her mother? That's cold. The obit also said the Blaisdells had separated after five years of marriage,
which would have been 1899.

This photo of 880 W. Adams, to which the Newmarks added a top-floor bathroom in 1915, was taken c. 1925.
Harriet Newmark had died in the house on November 13, 1918. Morris was still residing there at the time of his
death on November 14, 1930, although he died in a hospital in Glendale:
http://i1165.photobucket.com/albums/...f.jpg~original
USCDL -- http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/cdm/re...oll170/id/4125

After Newmark's death, the home soon passed into the ownership of the Union Bank and Trust Company.
They repaired termite and dry rot damage in 1932 and an earthquake-destroyed chimney in 1933. The
Phi Gamma Delta fraternity's USC chapter started in 1948, and in that year 880 W. Adams became its first
frat house. Some minor fire damage was repaired in 1957, and there was a bathroom remodel in 1958. The
fraternity moved to another location in 1963. The building's demolition permit, dated March 29, 1965,
lists the owner as the Union Bank and Trust Company.

Here's the SE corner of Adams and Portland in March 2015:
http://i1165.photobucket.com/albums/...g.jpg~original
GSV