Originally Posted by Jungmann (Post 7560535)

This picture brings back memories.

In 1964, I was working in the mail room at Universal Pictures. This parking lot--as Hoss's aerial shows--was around the middle of the lot. The Universal Studio Tour with its red and white striped trams had started around a year before I got there, so I'd say it's a 63-64 photo.

All those doorways and buildings you see had meaning for me. There were about eight of us in the mailroom. We had to deliver incoming mail, pick up outgoing mail, and distribute company stuff--call sheets, cast lists, scripts, budgets, interoffice mail--four times a day.

We divided up the lot into routes, circuits of certain offices and outlying buildings. The Black Tower was a route in itself, but there were maybe five other routes covering the lot, the Casting department, the Production department, Props, Lights, Construction, Vehicles, on and on.

Out weapons of choice were either those three wheel mailman carts for close in work--the mailroom was in the basement of the Black Tower--but for the outlying routes to distant departments, we used old-fashioned heavy cruiser bikes with a big wire basket mounted to the handlebars.

If I remember right, that road in the picture the tram is descending came from some of the old permanent sets further up on the hill, including the Psycho house, always a crowd favorite. But there were departments up there as well. If memory serves, one was the Staff Department--staff is a movie term for phony walls of brick or stucco or marble for sets, made, I think, from plaster and straw. Sweating the noontime delivery up that hill to Staff with the two-ton bike heavy with scripts and call-sheets in mid-August in the Valley was not considered a plum job.

The one story grey building on the right holds a row of was what was categorized as a "bungalow", meaning a single inner-outer office suite with a bathroom. Contract producers and contract actors--stars--got those. Some were much more lavish than what you see, decked out as charming little stand-alone houses. As I remember, that most-right hand black door was where I delivered mail to Alfred Hitchcock Productions, although it might have been an identical black door a few feet out of the frame to the right. The two story grey building behind it, if I remember right, housed Pennebaker Productions, Marlon Brando's company. We mail boys saw Hitchcock often, enough to say hello to him and get a nod back.

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality (Post 7561419)

Nuns await the arrival of Senator Robert F. Kennedy during a campaign stop in the Los Angeles area." [June 02-04 1968]

http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/128...923/xXN4FN.jpg
https://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Vie...-C021-003.aspx

Does anyone recognize the building being renovated in the background?

Originally Posted by Bristolian (Post 7560970)

The '64 Caddy takes center stage among the cars but that is a pretty sweet AMC Gremlin behind it.

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality (Post 7561488)

:previous: I thought maybe Pico House, but I decided the building looked too pristine. I see I was wrong.
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http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/800...921/nJd76d.jpg
detail / my apologies to Shulman


I noticed that Gremlin too Bristolian.


Just for fun here's a parked Gremlin in a scene from Remington Steele (Ep 3.02)

http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/102...922/eopDgj.jpg
http://www.imcdb.org/vehicle_485121-...mlin-1970.html

No street address was given, so I took the googlemobile out for a spin and found the street.

Looking west on E. 3rd Street.

http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/102...921/w0l7oP.jpg
gsv





The biggest clue were the circles with the cross in it. (I remembered seeing them in the early days of the thread)

http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/800...921/sQxZ0a.jpg
detail

At the time, I remember asking if this building had something to do with the Santa Fe Railroad because of the similarity to the train company's logo.

this one
http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/640...924/ttditN.jpg
old file

I can't remember the answer.
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Originally Posted by ethereal_reality (Post 7561488)

The biggest clue were the circles with the cross in it. (I remembered seeing them in the early days of the thread)

http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/800...921/sQxZ0a.jpg
detail

At the time, I remember asking if this building had something to do with the Santa Fe Railroad because of the similarity to the train company's logo.

I can't remember the answer.

Originally Posted by Flyingwedge (Post 7560574)

LA's first electric railway opened on January 2, 1887.

If your wonderful old photo shows opening day, e_r, this photo may have been taken at Pico and Main, where the tracks
appear to end, even though the sign on the car says "Maple Av":

Originally Posted by HossC (Post 7561669)

On the 1910 Baist map the building is labeled Braun Chemical Company. The 1912 CD lists the California Drug & Chemical Co as "successors to Braun Chemical Co", but at a different address. By the early-20s, 912 E 3rd Street was owned by the H G Chaffee Warehouse Co, whose name is still on it in the 1969 CD.

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

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality (Post 7554210)

:previous:

Here's that corner today. (southwest corner of Temple and Hope)

http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/102...921/qQXkep.png
google_aerial




There's a desert garden there now.

http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/102...921/HAd4g7.png
gsv






If you look closely there's a plaque in front of the rock. Does anyone know what it says?

http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/102...921/mWWlIa.png
detail/gsv
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Originally Posted by FredH (Post 7561940)

ER - Does it look to you like these cars on the left are just sitting in the dirt? Maybe they only had one set of tracks.