Appreciate the info!

A slightly wider shot of Viola Tantum's Fig Emporium
http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/utils/...ire&DMROTATE=0http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/utils/...ire&DMROTATE=0http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/utils/...ire&DMROTATE=0http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/utils/...ire&DMROTATE=0USC Digital



1914 Chaplin does Shatto
http://linder.com/pix/Between-Showers-1.jpghttp://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...68&postcount=1

"Between Showers - 1914" watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rb7ELS75NkI

The Langham Apartments
 

I stumbled across this thread about two weeks ago and since then most of my free time has been spent reading the 600+ pages of it. I thought I was an architectural photo sleuth but I tip my hats to all of you. This thread is amazing! I don’t think I read anything about The Langham Apartments at 715 S. Normandie in this thread so I thought I would make it my first contribution.

The Langham is a Beaux-Arts apartment building built in 1926. It has 7 floors of apartments, a penthouse and a roof top pool. Supposedly the first high rise roof top pool in Los Angeles. Also on the roof top is a giant green neon sign that bares the building’s name. The lobby has a very tudor vibe and it’s best aspect is the hand painted ceilings.

People have told me notable residents of the past are Ronald Reagan and Clark Gable. But I do know that when Billy Graham lived there, he received a telephone call that would help propel his evangelical career into an almost over night success.

The noir part of the Langham? Of course is murder. Lenny Breau, considered to be one of the best Canadian guitarists of all time, was found dead floating in the roof top pool.

http://www.lillianbehrendt.com/TheLa...tments1936.jpg

USC Digital Photo Archives
http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/cdm/si...id/91331/rec/1

This scan is one I made from a magazine I purchased.

http://www.lillianbehrendt.com/stand...ctricrange.jpg

Scan by Mr.Swink from a magazine page I own.

So everyone knows this picture by now...

http://img507.imageshack.us/img507/8059/blackdahlia.jpg

Well here's a positive ID on the man:

http://img600.imageshack.us/img600/9200/dahlia.jpg

Welcome to the thread Mr. Swink. Glad to see you solved the postingpicturespuzzle. Can be daunting.

So this guy was on a date with Elizabeth Short, and none other than John Wayne just happened to notice her from his car...he pulls over and begins to flirt with this other man's date. Balderdash. Actually, I know "positively" that the man in the picture is my cousin Edgar. He stayed in Hollywood after the war to break into pictures after being encouraged to do so by Bette Davis, with whom he had danced at the Canteen. In his true story, it was Clifton Webb who slammed on his brakes in the middle of Hollywood Boulevard, leapt out of his car, and went right up to Elizabeth, threw her over his shoulder--at which point the white dahlia wrist corsage my uncle had given her fell off and was run over by a truck, blackening it (the little-known source of the term "Black Dahlia")--and carried her off to a wild party. The rest is history. My uncle Edgar, his manhood challenged, followed Clifton and Liz to the party (Clifton's mother Maybelle was in the back seat, acting as chaperone), a clothes-optional affair at Howard Hughes's house. Edgar always had a short fuse. In a jealous rage, he forced Miss Short to leave the party with the derringer he kept under his fedora, dispatched her in the back seat of the Isotta-Fraschini he'd borrowed for the evening from his sugar-mama, and pushed her body out of the car way down near Mays Crenshaw. I am now writing the defintive history of the Black Dahlia. Watch for it at your local bookstore.

http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/7718/00099012.jpgLAPL


I've puzzled over this Schultheis shot for a while now. It's labeled by the LAPL as "Alvarado Street in the Westlake area," which seems accurate. I would assume that it would have been shot more in the upper reaches of Alvarado, where high Victorians were built, rather than below MacArthur Park. I've even held a mirror up to what appears to be a sign on top of a steep-roofed building that might offer a clue, and can't read it. Perhaps someone more familiar with the area might have an idea of what that building might be. I wonder if what caught Schultheis's eye might have been the juxtaposition of the vertical Victorian with the horizontal lines of the low building, and the spikes of the lamps and the house. Also...the lamps themselves might offer a clue. They were used on Alvarado, but perhaps only on certain stretches.

:previous:

I stand by my story.

Interesting Story out Yesterday:


Black Dahlia Case Could Be Solved Almost 70 Years Later After Dog Finds Evidence In LA Home
http://www.ibtimes.com/black-dahlia-...a-home-1060640

Alvarado Homes
 

Could this pair have been down near the Terrace Park enclave? There's grand homes there plus some equally grand apartments such as 1415 Alvarado Terrace. The juxtaposition of the two homes is amazing, each representing the "typical" LA home of its time.

The Langham
 

Hi Mr Swink.

There's many interior photos of the Langham here:
http://www.apartments.com/California...-Langham/54274

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-3...956%2520AM.jpg

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-B...059%2520AM.jpg

track shadow
 

I somehow managed to miss this little track shadow until now. It's probably come up before but didn't make it all the way into what's left of my brain:
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-n...502%2520AM.jpg
google maps

http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/626...ertriptych.jpgA Certain Cinema



Dorothy Arzner is one of the most interesting women--one of the most interesting people--ever to have come out of Hollywood. Her story is
easily Googled; here I just want to post a clip from the Times from the occasion of her family's move to Shatto Place. (They had been living
at 1600 Wilshire Blvd, née Orange Street.) Dorothy was 17 at the time of the move.



http://img825.imageshack.us/img825/2...mplpicdate.jpgLAT




I suppose Arzner's life was more unconventional for its time rather than particularly noirish in the sense of crime, but years later her old house figured in a little minor noir:


http://img651.imageshack.us/img651/2...ompleteart.jpgLAT


I didn't find anything about the outcome of the case.

You sold me! ;)

For real, the John Wayne bit instantly voided that story. Oh well...nice try, guy!

North/Gould Triangle Shooting
 

The Judge dismissed the kidnapping-at-gunpoint charge? Unbelievable.

I was surprised too that the perp lived at the Hollywood Athletic Club

I have a theory on what's up with Diana Street.

I think the reason there's even a Diana Street in the first place has to do with 3rd Street (and maybe 4th Street) not originally crossing Bimini Slough/Sacatela Creek. Third Street comes in from the left of the map, just under the big circled 24, stops at Vermont, then jogs north. After 3rd Street was put straight across the creek, the old northern jog was renamed 2nd Street:
http://i1165.photobucket.com/albums/...ps66f03a4e.jpg
1921 Baist Map from Historic Mapworks (http://www.historicmapworks.com/Map/US/19422/Plate+016/)

I've marked Diana Street with a red line on this 1929 photo. Apparently, not everything on the Baist Map came into existence. Curvy 4th Street is at the bottom; keep in mind the straight road leading from the northern apex of the 4th Street curve, just above and to the left of the black plus sign. I'm not sure if 4th Street is being laid out or is being dug up for construction; if the latter, we might be looking at the undergrounding of Sacatela Creek in progress:
http://i1165.photobucket.com/albums/...ps62858b25.jpg
LAPL (http://jpg1.lapl.org/pics42/00040733.jpg)

Here's an undated shot of the Sacatela undergrounding, possibly between 3rd and 4th, looking southwest towards the Ambassador Hotel; I assume the streetcars are on Vermont. I wish I could confirm that this photo shows the same area as in BifRayRock's posts 12289 and 12291, but on my old computer those pics are broken up into so many pieces, it's hard for me to tell what I'm looking at. Sorry. :(
http://i1165.photobucket.com/albums/...psff1cfabf.jpg
USC Digital Library (http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/cdm/si...id/5569/rec/10)

Anyway, back to Diana Street. It's hard to see in the 1929 shot, but in this undated photo from I'm guessing the mid/late 1940s, there's clearly a house and grounds to the west of and behind the homes on the west side of Westmoreland:
http://i1165.photobucket.com/albums/...ps2ea9ccd1.jpg
LAPL (http://jpg3.lapl.org/pics33/00066409.jpg)
So here's my theory: I think that before Fourth Street was put through, Diana Street was the driveway to that house, or at least used as another entrance. Here there seems to be a tree-lined entrance of some sort, in the same place as the road in the 1929 photo, leading up from 4th Street to the house. Google Maps shows a phantom 3274 Diana Street; maybe that was that house's address? Diana Street isn't as overgrown in the 1929 photo -- which you'd be able to see if I hadn't put that red line there :uhh: -- as it appears in later pics.

Here's roughly the same shot; the house and grounds are now part of the park and it looks like some courts have been built on the home's footprint:
http://i1165.photobucket.com/albums/...ps2ba6b400.jpg
Google Earth

Looking closely at the west end of Diana Street on Google Earth, you can see parallel parking spaces painted on both sides of the street. I'm guessing it was parking for the Shatto Rec Center when it opened, but its relatively secluded location drew too much unwholesome activity for it to remain open.

Sacatela Creek/Bimini Slough
 

Thank you so much FW. You are awesome. I should have known I was looking at Bimini Slough, but I was so focused on 4th St, I was looking for something flowing east to west, not the southern terminus of what was left of Sacatela Crreek.

The Baist map was fascinating b/c the whole block was platted for house lots, that never seem to have been built. The empty land to the north was, at that time, I assume, thought to be unbuildable.

The photos of the erasure of Sacatela Creek are tragic. If much of the flowing water in LA had been left open, what a feature it would have made and a much pleasanter city. Eveytime there is a drought I think of the water we've piped for dumping. It really doesn't make any sense (unless one follows the money).

P.S. I was lost before, not realizing I was so close to the old Bimini Baths (1905-1951):
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-q...110%2520PM.jpg
google maps

Thx again.

http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/811...ctdual1250.jpg
5350 South Victoria Drive


http://img826.imageshack.us/img826/4...ctdual1250.jpg
5465 South Victoria Drive


http://img221.imageshack.us/img221/1...iedual1250.jpg
943 South Normandie Avenue


http://img209.imageshack.us/img209/2...izdual1250.jpg
5057 Los Feliz Boulevard, originally the home of Isaac Pacht



A great-grandson of builder Carl G. Johnson has pictures of a number of his great-grandfather's projects in a photostream online; I've paired them with current shots. According to Josh Phillipson (the great-grandson), Mr. Johnson arrived from San Francisco in 1910 and built his first house at 943 South Normandie that year; apparently he would build a house and his family would move into it; then he built another and they would move into that one, and so on. (I feel as though we've seen 943 here before, but I can't find it now.)


Johnson built a wide range of houses, including one for Frederic March in 1931, seen under construction below at 1026 Ridgedale Drive in Beverly Hills. It was designed by Wallace Neff. According to Phillipson, it was later occupied by Brad Pitt and Jennifer Boring Aniston and is currently owned by Madonna, although her ownership isn't clear. I couldn't find a good shot of its current state--much obscured by $%#&* trees.


http://img28.imageshack.us/img28/560...complpart1.jpg
http://img833.imageshack.us/img833/3...complpart2.jpg


Josh Phillipson/GSV

Nothing says "I want to be left alone like Garbo" quite like massive hedges and gates!

http://imageshack.us/a/img18/5163/1026ridgedale1.jpg

View from above looks pretty similar to that 30's shot though, behind all the excessive foliage

http://imageshack.us/a/img819/8647/1026ridgedale2.jpg
GSV

http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f9...206_094009.jpg

I did a little walkabout in this area this morning. In the center of the latest pic is a road that is 10-20 feet above where the earlier pic shows the canal. Apparently the hillside slid on top of this this section. Note the eucalyptus tree to the left of the road, its base is very near the level of the canal. I wonder if it is related to the tree in the earlier pic.

South of the slide there is much evidence the canal still exists albeit under a foot or two of silt and debris from decades without maintenance.

I will post more pics as time permits.

PS: after viewing sections of this today I don't think the term zanja is correct for this water works. This is a fully concrete lined canal with some sophisticated engineering.