Originally Posted by BifRayRock (Post 6008635)

1933 - Unknown address (Free consultation with Dr. Wheeler for anyone who correctly guesses the address)
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-w...2520PM.bmp.jpgUSC Digital

(Could you please give me directions to Dr. Wheeler's office?)
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-m...2520PM.bmp.jpg

Originally Posted by malumot (Post 6008327)

Is all that worthy of a paragraph or two? Sure. Two-thirds of the entire story? A bit much.

Originally Posted by DouglasUrantia (Post 6008715)

Originally Posted by GaylordWilshire (Post 6008791)

The guy in the blazer and Vogue-equivalent shoes does not appear to me to need Wheeler's goat glands....

Originally Posted by kznyc2k (Post 6008393)

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

Originally Posted by ProphetM (Post 6008926)

Great little map. I have half a mind to do an overlay on a modern aerial.

Originally Posted by GaylordWilshire (Post 6008791)

Vogue tires: http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...ostcount=10205

The guy in the blazer and Vogue-equivalent shoes does not appear to me to need Wheeler's goat glands....

Originally Posted by tovangar2 (Post 6008951)

I'd love to see that. I don't know how to do them.

Originally Posted by GaylordWilshire (Post 6008768)

: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.

Originally Posted by tovangar2 (Post 6008840)

I dunno what was required by Spain, but according to the map below the old and new Plazas were not identically orientated:
http://www.lanopalera.net/LAHistory/OldPueblo.gif
nopalera

The location of the original Pueblo 1781-1815, before it was moved in circa 1815-1835. The original site remains unmemorialized.

P.S. Why did Marchesseault (the mayor) turn into Marchessault (the street)?

Originally Posted by latimes.com

A dirty job at L.A. County's Hall of Justice
Eighty-eight years of grime will soon be blasted away from the downtown beaux-arts building, reviving the beauty of its once-gleaming Sierra white granite facade.

By Bob Pool, Los Angeles Times

February 9, 2013, 5:35 p.m.

Cops and prosecutors are returning to the scene of the grime.

But things will be brighter when the former occupants of the Hall of Justice move their offices back into the downtown Los Angeles landmark.

Work crews making seismic repairs to the building next month will begin blasting away 88 years' worth of soot, dirt and smog that have turned its exterior a dull, dirty gray color.

When they finish this fall, project managers say the 14-story beaux-arts building will glisten as brightly as the slightly newer Los Angeles City Hall, which is diagonally across the street.

And why shouldn't it? City Hall was built in 1928 from the same Sierra white granite from a quarry north of Fresno that was used in 1925 for construction of the Hall of Justice.

Often used as a backdrop in crime movies and old television series, the hall was home to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and the district attorney's office.

It also housed the county coroner's office, where the autopsy of actress Marilyn Monroe in 1962 concluded that she had committed suicide and the examination of presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy showed he died of bullet wounds after being shot at the Ambassador Hotel the night of the California primary in 1968.

The trial of Kennedy's killer, Sirhan Sirhan, was conducted in one of the hall's 17 courtrooms. So was the trial of serial killer Charles Manson, who was held in one of the hall's 750 tiny cells until he was convicted in 1971 and sent to state prison.

Manson later characterized the hall's lockup as "stone age." The office of his chief prosecutor, Vincent Bugliosi, was a few floors beneath Manson's cell. In his book "Helter Skelter," Bugliosi described its decor as "1930s Chicago."

"The courtrooms in that building looked like old-time courtrooms," recalls Encino criminal defense lawyer Donald Calabria, who worked in the hall as a public defender starting in 1969. "They had real substantial wood walls, not the cheap-looking ones" found across the street in the newer Criminal Courts building.

Construction crews have removed asbestos, lead and other hazardous materials from the hall as part of the $234-million seismic renovation stemming from the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

Most of the jail cells were ripped out and sold to a recycler for $450,000, according to James Kearns, assistant deputy director of the county's Department of Public Works, which is overseeing the repair project.

But Manson's old cellblock was preserved and will be part of an interpretive display that will tell the history of the hall and the project to save it, said Kearns, who stepped into Manson's cell to demonstrate how the lockup's barred doors still slam shut with a rumble and a chilling clank.

The old building has plenty of history, according to Sandi Gibbons, public information officer for the district attorney's office who first went to work there in late 1965 as a courts reporter for City News Service. "I'll tell you what they should put in there: the drinking fountain that a TV cameraman knocked off the hallway wall when they were bringing [Manson family member] Susan Atkins into the grand jury room. There was water everywhere. They put a steel band around it when they bolted it back on the wall," Gibbons said.

Kearns said one of the hall's courtrooms has been preserved as a Sheriff's Department conference room, and a wood-paneled law library will also be turned into a meeting room. The sheriff will share the hall's 400,000 square feet of space with the district attorney when the two departments move back inside after repairs are completed Dec. 31, 2014, Kearns said.

The building's makeover — about 30% completed — includes construction of a parking structure next to the 101 Freeway that will have five levels underground and four above.

The hall's three entrances will lead to a multistory loggia that retains its original marble flooring and staircases, along with a bank of ornate, wood-paneled elevators. They will be re-engineered and automated; in the past, elevator operators were required. In 1990, one of the operators was crushed to death when she was caught between a descending elevator and the 10th floor.

The refurbished building will be air conditioned for the first time. As originally designed by Allied Architects, the hall featured twin 14-story light wells that allowed every office to have an operable window for fresh air. In its new configuration, the bottom of one of the wells will be landscaped and will serve as an eating area for a new cafeteria being built on the ground floor, Kearns said.

But it will be the strikingly bright new granite facade that will be most visible for those working in the downtown area or passing by on the freeway. Diesel soot, dust and automobile exhaust have contributed to the darkening of the Sierra white granite over the decades.

Workers experimented on sections of the hall's Broadway side with chemical dirt removers, high-pressure water cleaning and several micro-abrasive systems before settling on a bead-blasting technique, which relies on a combination of crushed recycled glass and tiny stones and is more gentle to granite, said Jeff Caldwell, an exterior forensics expert with the consulting firm of Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates.

Because recent rains have washed dust and dirt from the upper levels down to the white test areas, those clean sections are already getting dirtier and darker, Caldwell said. That's why cleaning crews on scaffolding will start at the top and work their way down, he said. There is terra cotta in addition to the granite on upper levels of the hall.

Greg Zinberg, project executive for Clark Construction, the main contractor for the county, said the Hall of Justice will shine bright — but it better last a while.

"This one might not be cleaned for another 50 years," he said.

bob.pool@latimes.com

Originally Posted by kznyc2k (Post 6009055)

Some ruins of the fabled Court Circle still exist.

http://img825.imageshack.us/img825/6...ircle20124.jpg

Has this been covered before? Has anyone actually snuck a look around? How about photos?? This is a roadbed in the middle of the city that hasn't been touched in 60+ years!

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality (Post 6009322)

I had no idea those steps and the roadway still exists! Great detective work kznyc2k
__

Originally Posted by DouglasUrantia (Post 6008715)

Originally Posted by kznyc2k (Post 6009055)

The fabled Court Circle has been covered plenty of times before on these pages, but I don't remember an instance where anyone pointed out some ruins that still exist of it.
http://img825.imageshack.us/img825/6...ircle20124.jpg

Has this been covered before? Has anyone actually snuck a look around? How about photos?? This is a roadbed in the middle of the city that hasn't been touched in 60+ years!