[QUOTE=procab;6008357]"Incredible" is the word for it.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-P...454%2520AM.jpg

Thx again procab, but no thx.

I know it's on the wrong side of the street from the focus of your post, but I found the Ocean Spray cranberry sauce billboard quite interesting. The fact that it slides out of the can and stays can-shaped is apparently a feature worth touting!

Then I looked above to the hillside, which still says "HOLLYWOODLAND". :)

A lot going on in the pic. I focused on both points too.

The source dated the photo as '26 but also mentioned something about an image bearing a '24 mark. Seems inconsistent with the large talking pictures ad, or maybe the Uptown was ahead of its time? Most sources date the Jazz Singer as opening in '27.


http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/utils/...own&DMROTATE=0http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/utils/...own&DMROTATE=0USC Digital

One more note on the location of the old Bunker/Court/Fort Moore Hill tunnels:

http://img39.imageshack.us/img39/624...36civiclan.jpg
1936, LAPL

More cruising around downtown in LA Noire, starting at Hope and 5th:

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8353/8...7c9e9d0e_b.jpg

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8377/8...44e68ac7_b.jpg

Looking up Olive:

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8218/8...5af09524_b.jpg

The Biltmore's drive:

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8229/8...9220c206_b.jpg

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8353/8...2031637d_b.jpg

Rooftop shots down Broadway:

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8185/8...4e29e982_b.jpg

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8221/8...b6dc62a2_b.jpg

And a shot looking up Main Street towards 7th and the Cecil Hotel:

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8503/8...c56ab263_b.jpg

Could be that one of these goats donated its gonads to some rich, impotent L.A. duffer via Dr. Wheeler...


https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-u...2520PM.bmp.jpg
Catalina Islander, August 8, 1935


https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-1...2520PM.bmp.jpg
Catalina Islander, December 3, 1924

below: An aerial from the same year, showing the two southern portals of the Hill Street tunnels #1 and #2.

1936
http://imageshack.us/a/img856/333/aa...l1936plan2.jpg
LAPL

The photograph shows the proposed changes to the street grid by the Regional Planning Commission.
At first glance I thought the circle with the radiating streets was The Plaza, when in the fact The Plaza is further east.





I had some fun with the sepia photo.

I circled The Plaza in blue. I marked the two Hill St. tunnels in red. I am intrigued by the planning commission's dotted line (circled in yellow). Do you think the commission was contemplating straightening out the Hill Street tunnel? If the solid white lines are the proposed street grid...why the dotted line? (as everyone knows, dotted lines are usually used to denote tunnels)

http://imageshack.us/a/img853/2053/a...36plancopy.jpg
LAPL

above: I marked the Broadway Tunnel in green. I'm not sure how close this is to the actual location.





previously posted by kznyc2k
http://imageshack.us/a/img4/6093/aab...bykznyc2ks.jpg
google earth

Hill Street tunnels in red. Broadway tunnel in orange.


__

Central Park/Pershing Square, 1912
 

Glass negative from eBay. I don't think this particular image has been posted before.

North end of Central Park/Pershing Square, 1912, showing the Auditorium Building and John Parkinson's design for the park, particularly the corner balustrades:
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-B...213%2520PM.jpg

Interesting expressions:
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-4...650%2520PM.jpg

Busy people, all now long gone:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-8...426%2520PM.jpg
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-n...024%2520PM.jpg
wwwpcs/eBay

I imagine Madame Vera sold hats:
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-H...700%2520PM.jpg

The image is a reminder too, that back in the day, one wasn't supposed to walk into an urban park, but keep to the paths and benches while viewing it. People now expect to use parks and be provided with all sorts of recreational facilities.

A wonderful photograph showing the Halifax Apartment Hotel at the intersection of Cahuenga & Yucca Street.

http://imageshack.us/a/img109/3126/a...elithinkeb.jpg
ebay



Similar view today.

http://imageshack.us/a/img803/3779/aabhalifax1.jpg
google street view

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-Y...2520PM.bmp.jpgIMDB

Notice the neon sign at the top of this shot from Gangster Squad...it's all you need to know.

Well, it was a snowy afternoon and I thought, how bad could it be, especially for someone interested in noirish L.A.? Excruciating is not too strong a word. It's a cartoon that goes off the rails in every direction. (Even the femme fatale is made to look like Jessica Rabbit.) About 2/3 of the way through a Carmen Miranda character made an appearance--one cliché too many. Along with others in the theater I groaned, and I got up and left (not the first to do so). But after discovering that I'd left my hat--I considered just leaving it--I went back to get it and decided to stay...and then the movie's biggest blunder of all appeared on the screen. It was a dying movie's desperate footage of a shootout in--guess where? Chinatown. Which reminded me to go home and watch an actual movie masterpiece again, not an all-around schlock job. The Mickey Cohen we've come to know here is nowhere in this film--nor is an even slightly deep hint of period L.A. feel.

Dr. Wheeler's selection methods were probably as controversial and vast as his expertise in gynecology and endocrinology. It remains uncertain whether Louis Pasteur would have approved, let alone understood Dr. Wheeler's treatments. Without additional information, one has to guess at the non-surgical approach. Did it involve an easy-to-stomach elixir or tonic, as suggested elsewhere?

Hard to say whether Fred Waring knew about the practice before rolling up his sleeves in his blender endeavors. It should be noted that the blender carrying his name was allegedly used in Polio vaccine research. (?) http://inventors.about.com/library/i.../blblender.htm Rumor has it that modern researchers now avail themselves of the "magic bullet," but in ways probably not depicted in the infomercial.


http://jpg3.lapl.org/pics30/00064591.jpg


http://www.latimes.com/includes/proj..._recording.jpg

http://www.reminisce.com/wp-content/...10/slide-5.jpg

Egyptian Revival
 

Thanks for all the welcomes to the forum by the way. The pyramid planetarium in a recent post made me think of a couple of Egyptian Revival apartment buildings I came across in Hollywood one day on a side street.

When I first stumbled across this building at 5616 Lexington Ave. several years ago it had not been painted and it was so dirty it looked like it was an eroded temple in Karnak Egypt.

http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w.../lexington.png

from: Google Street View

There is a very similar building just one block to the north on La Mirada Ave. as well. I assume they were built around the same time by the same contractor. I know after the discovery of King Tut’s tomb in 1922 Egyptian Revival made another comeback in architecture. This building looks to be early 1920’s and I like to assume the discovery of Tut’s tomb influenced it’s design.

There is another building that has been talked about a lot on this forum that has Gothic Revival elements but also has a very Egyptian Revival feel to it...

http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w...rk_plaza-1.jpg

from: YOUAREHERE.COM
http://www.you-are-here.com/building/park_plaza.jpg

http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w...PLAZAEGYPT.png

from: Google Street View

Confession... Park Plaza Hotel/Elks Lodge #99 (opened in 1925) has always been my favorite building in Los Angeles ever since my family stayed there in 1986 when my parents enrolled my sister in Otis/Parsons art school, which happened to be right next door. I can remember thinking back then that I thought there was something Egyptian about the building.

First was the color. Even back in 1986 I remember it having a light sandy yellowish color which made me think of pyramids. Not to mention the large blocks of stone or concrete that make up the structure seemed pyramid size. And the guardian angel figures on the facade are surely like a gothic church but they remind me of these guardian figures of Egyptian temples.

http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w...iankarnack.jpg
from: www.filmapia.com
http://www.filmapia.com/sites/defaul...-of-Karnak.jpg

Of course hieroglyphicesque details like these help with the Egyptian Revival vibe.

http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w...TIANDETAIL.png

from: Google Street View

I really am in awe of Park Plaza. Every time I work on a film or tv production that uses it as a location I feel like I am king of the world or at least Pharaoh of the Valley of the Kings for that day.

Can't say I'm surprised in the least...I mean it's called Gangster Squad fer crying out loud. But thanks for sitting through it so I won't have to!

Cities
 

Not to get too heavy-duty about it, but every time I see one of these damn planning overlays I'm reminded of the Milgram Experiment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment. What are people thinking? The conclusion dawn from the experiment was, "Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process." Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, they continue under instruction from "authority".

If anyone here hasn't read Jane Jacobs Death and Life of Great American Cities (the fiftieth anniversary edition is out), relatively cheap, used copies may be had from Amazon.

Yet still the Robert Moses "solution" is turned to again and again because it makes the rich richer. More money was to be made tearing down LAHS rather than repairing the tower, the ghastly Staples Center/LA Live complex is supposed to be "fun". The freeway "system" (as opposed to the Red Cars, the "best public transit in the world") and Bunker Hill...well there's a gazillion examples. Our alleys and byways and lanes are gone. Depopulated, pedestrian-hostile, weird, abstract, anxiety-producing environments are in.

It's like we've lost the will to resist, ashamed to want human-scale, convenient, charming, decent streetscapes including Dragon Dens and Spotlights. Afraid to speak up.

Sounds like the next book I should read.
 

Thanks for posting about Jane Jacobs book. Sounds like something I need to read. And while I can see how Staples/LA Live has "helped" revitalize downtown in some way; I agree with your term ghastly for it. That is what I think every time I see that complex.

East side, west side, all around the town...
 

:previous:

This is an oversimplification, but it has to do with Spain requiring houses in its colonies to be set at a 45-degree angle to true north-south so they would get equal light on all sides....something like that. But it clashed with the Jeffersonian plan (I think it was his idea) to have the whole country gridded true north-south... The city from Hoover Street west was on the "American plan." Actually, I don't think downtown is actually 45 degrees but maybe 35.