Here is a couple links with photos of The Pines back in the day, and currently
https://hollywoodphotographs.com/cat...nyonthe-pines/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/6071941...7626436710366/

Just HATE seeing places like this just get destroyed for no reason

For the most part I would agree you are "dreaming." What I suspect most who enjoy this forum are doing is "enjoying" a visitation with what was and even perhaps their younger days. Good reason for that as these times past were less stressful times filled with enthusiasm for the future.

Now about saving old structures. As you point out there are structures in Europe that are hundreds of years old. Some even more than a thousand years old. Unfortunately most of the structures built in this country in the 1800s and early 1900s were cheaply built in spite of their often stately appearance. We are experts in the field of slap it up as quickly as possible for as little as possible; whereas the buildings in Europe you refer to were constructed with heavy masonry walls both inside and out and often on solid rock foundations; often taking years and years to complete. The masonry veneer building even over a steel skeleton does not necessarily lend itself to long term survival and those with wood skeletons are even less likely to survive. Wood skeleton buildings, including individual homes, can easily deteriorate to the point it is economically foolhardy to even attempt to bring them up to current codes anywhere. In many cases it is totally impossible to remodel an old building to make it income productive and even if one does a bang up job of restoration it still takes tenants that desire the appearance and can themselves make money in a given location.

All across America since the 200 year celebration of the country people have been attempting to restore "main street" in every town. Most attempts are gross failures for one simple reason, parking. Today's consumer is mentally conditioned to parking within a short distance of where they are going to shop or eat. Without construction of parking facilities the main streets of America that died due to shopping centers and freeways can never be resurrected to provide the same use utility they once did.

We can always lament the loss of structures around LA torn down in the name of progress, but honestly so much of old LA was lost due to deterioration beyond restoration and plenty of powerful earthquakes throughout the 20th Century.

If DTLA were on the East coast, dozens of old buildings would still be standing where parking lots are now.

The old Southern California Edison facility - Eagle Rock Substation was built about 1914 as part of the new transmission line from the new Big Creek line from the hydro plants near Yosemite. The KCET site mentions that it was an old power plant. Actually it never was a generating plant but only a substation. I’ve been there several times during my 22 plus years with SCE, which I retired from on Dec. 1. The large open room contained a rotary condenser rather than a generator (although the two devises looked similar). Besides offices and control room the upper floors contained circuit breakers and relays and other gear. Later the outdated equipment was removed from some areas and the space used for storage of old records. A small dam and reservoir at the top of the canyon held water used by long gone cooling towers that the condenser required. The dam is still there and most of the time the water is green.
But the most intriguing is the basement. It is pitch black and accessed by ladder. A drain channel runs though the middle from the dam uphill from the building down towards the 134 freeway. It’s really a scary place to go and within our engineering group we always suggested to never go there alone. Although I never saw any I’m told the building is full of black widow spiders and there are rattle snakes in the surrounding hills. There used to be a row of 6 small cottages up near the dam for the operators to live in back in the old days when the local area was rural. Other than some concrete steps there is nothing left of any of them. Today the place in unmanned, operated and monitored by fiber optic lines and satellite
This is still an operating electric substation at 220,000 to 66,000 volts. When movie companies are shooting there it an extra burden on SCE personnel to be sure that the nothing is damaged or no one gets killed. All in all, it’s a creepy but fascinating place.

Other major factors were the automobile and the growth of the freeways. Huge swathes of buildings on the fringes of Bunker Hill and Downtown were lost this way. Let's also not forget Berkeley Square.

The exponential growth of the city in the first half of the twentieth century also rendered buildings obsolete in very short periods of time -the first two post offices barely lasted 20-30 years. The City Hall, Law Courts and other Administrative Buildings also had to be reprovided when the originals became too small.

It's easy to look at this from a half glass full perspective, but what is really amazing is the number of survivors out there (albeit often remodelled).

The real threat is from earthquakes -these have taken out so many good buildings just in the last 50 years or so. We have to hope on a wing and a prayer that L.A. escapes from having anything bad in the future.

Alester

The L.A.Times article posted by HenryHuntington is a reminder of the risk to older concrete structures from seismic activity.

Alester

Not quite, but close. it is just on the other side of Hope Street

Your instincts were right, e_r, about this somewhat noirish looking place. The Commodore (then signaged as New Hotel Commodore) featured in the 1947 Paramount film noir "Fear in the Night". It was the refuge of the character/ murderer Lewis Belknap. There is also a cliff hanger episode where the "hero", Vince Grayson, contemplates suicide and has to be dragged back from an upper floor window ledge. There are also various shots from The Commodore down West 7th Street.

If anyone is interested in seeing the film, it is on Youtube. Hotel facade/ 7th St. shown at 40:45.

Is there really gold buried in the Chauenga Pass?

http://waterandpower.org/Historical_...uenga_1882.jpg

http://waterandpower.org/Historical_...ss_1882(2).jpghttp://waterandpower.org/museum/Earl...0-1920%29.html

http://waterandpower.org/Historical_...rn_in_Pass.jpg


http://www.lamag.com/citythink/askch...he-cahuenga-p1

Maj Horace Bell excellently tells the story here in his 2nd book "Reminiscences of the Old West Coast" (full text)

http://www.familytreelegends.com/rec...c=read&page=88

The "gardens" on the grounds were apparently sufficiently lush enough in 1980 to be used in the re-shot ending of the film "The Earthling".

http://www.adherents.com/people/ph/William_Holden.html

Here is a website with a few images of "The Pines".
https://hollywoodphotographs.com/cat...nyonthe-pines/

The City of Beverly Hills Centennial
 

This is The City of Beverly Hills float that was in this year's Rose Parade, commemorating their centennial. The City of Beverly Hills will turn 100 on January 28, 2014!

City of Beverly Hills float:
http://cdn.cstatic.net/images/gridfs...oto%20(10).JPGKTLA

The float pictures some things the city is known for, like their iconic "shield" sign. On the side you can see the sign representing the park that was built even before Beverly Hills became a city.

A photo of Beverly Hills Park and Lily pond (taken 1916) at Santa Monica Blvd. & Canon Drive.
http://hollywoodhistoricphotos.ipowe...ond%201916.jpghollywoodhistoricphotos
Currently, the lily pond is undergoing a restoration and the park should be back open soon.

Also depicted on the float, the Beverly Hills City Hall which opened in 1932.

City Hall, 1932, the year it opened:
http://waterandpower.org/Historical%..._Hall_1932.jpgDWP

Here's the City Hall in 1946:
http://hollywoodhistoricphotos.ipowe...all%201946.jpghollywoodhistoricphotos

A smallish view of the neighboring post office with City Hall in the background:
http://www.beverlyhills.org/cbhfiles...PostOffice.png

Larger view of the Post Office:
http://static.squarespace.com/static...ion%20%235.jpgBeverly Hills Historical Society

In the 1950 noir film IN A LONELY PLACE, Humphrey Bogart mails a letter in the post office and then walks outside. The City Hall is prominently featured in the shot.

The Post Office was decommissioned by the postal service several years ago and was sitting vacant. It has been turned into the "Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts" which opened last fall. An adjacent building has been built next to the post office building which houses another part of the center.

Some posters on Noirish L.A. occasionally mention what it would be like to visit Los Angeles of the past. For the Beverly Hills Centennial celebration:

The city’s five leading hotels have teamed up in an unusual celebration of Beverly Hills' centennial called "Suite 100," creating suites themed to different decades from the past one hundred years. Each will begin accepting reservations in January, but you’ll only have till the end of the year before the period pieces will be removed and the suites returned to their present-day state.

Here's the 1940's suite:

http://www.cntraveler.com/daily-trav...ills-suite.jpg
Caption: The Montage Beverly Hills heads back to the 1940s, with a sultry suite designed by Nina Petronzio. If you find yourself suffering from writer’s block as you work on your noir screenplay at the vintage typewriter, take advantage of the “champagne” button to have a bottle delivered to your door (from $1,914 per night).

SEE THE OTHERS AT THIS LINK HERE:
C.N. TRAVELER

P.S.: I loved the vintage "personal" Rose Parade pictures, Moxie, thanks for posting them!

Yes like I admitted I know I am dreaming because developers etc will always win out it seems because they are spending large amounts of cash buying property, paying taxes, building permits etc which cities love. And we/I am just a sentimental lover of history and our past, but that isnt lining pockets is it.

Not sure I agree with your assessment that "built in this country in the 1800s and early 1900s were cheaply" . I am sure there were cheap construction of buildings then like now of course.Would buildings I can see being more of a problem because of termites,flooding, settling or sinking ground causing foundation failures etc.

But I see majority of the older buildings of brick,rock,etc being torn down for mini malls and financial gain not because of bad construction. Plenty have been left to the elements and homeless to tear them up, but have sound buildings that could be renovated. But developers seem to prefer mini malls of stucco and particle board to old fashion brick work or in my region granite block construction

Retired _in_Texas I am in no way trying to question your view or opinion just wishful for things of days gone by to be saved. But realize I am the minority opinion in a world preferring mini malls and condos

Happy New Years

The War in Korea is a factor here.....
 

Many car parts were in scarce supply during the Korean War era. Want those snazzy Cad fins or Dual Chrome tail pipes?:D:worship:

If one was a custom car enthusiast in 1951 you could accessorize it at:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...psabdc8bc9.jpg
H.A.M.B.

This is the old location...near downtown LA, that we see in the distance [left].

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...psbdd54fe6.jpg
GSV

The implication was that if your car was hot....you were hot.

Couldn't agree more. Vast numbers of those grand hotels, opera houses, stone and brick and marble mansions, Romanesque railway stations, libraries, office buildings etc. in large American cities in the late 1800's and early 1900's were NOT cheaply constructed. Who knows how many would have lasted centuries if well-maintained? Many were already being abandoned and demolished by the 1920's.


The epitome of cheap, tacky, impermanent construction - the dingbat apartment buildings of Los Angeles built by the thousands from the 1950's through the 1970's/80's - a cheap wood and sheetrock skeleton covered with tar paper, chicken wire and sprayed with stucco - are still standing strong and fully-occupied although many are 60 years old. The wonderful old Craftsman and Spanish etc. houses they replaced (admittedly not as sturdy as the big impressive buildings of the 1880's through early 1900's) were bulldozed en masse by developers after only 30 or 40 years.

In the end, though. it doesn't really matter. Most of those wonderfully imaginative and atmospheric old structures are gone, their likes never to be seen again. Thanks to sites like this we at least have photographs.

Heh, heh. I suspect there are just about as many opinions of what took place over the last 120 years in L.A. as there are participants in this forum. One could write quite a book on the subject. In general I would conclude that the automobile was both a boon and a bane and its existence the fuel that resulted in what L.A. has become. That may well be the true "Noirish" aspect of L.A.

I suspect you may have interpreted some of my comments incorrectly though. I'm a serious collector of vintage automobiles and road maps as well. I'm also one who appreciates great and sometimes not so great architecture from times past. Nothing makes me happier than jumping into a 1950s or 1960s car and taking to the two lane highways that wind through now long ago by-passed towns to look for surviving examples of Americana before it was laid waste to by what are labeled as Interstate Highways. Ironically those old two lane highways in the 1920s and 1930s were commonly called Interstate Highways.

Ah, Beverly Hills memories. I've mentioned before how BH, until about 1975 or 80 still retained some of the character of a small town, with ordinary drugstores, coffeeshop style restaurants, cafeterias, and even a J.J. Newberry's. It wasn't unlike some of the north side suburbs of Chicago--tending towards the upscale, but still decidedly middle class.

Another thing I've said before is that ponds and fountains in this region inevitably turn into planters. I remember the lilies and frogs I saw as a child in the mid to late 1960s--but the pond was drained and filled in many years ago, probably some time in the late 1970s. What used to be the large rectangular pond is now mostly just a raised grassy area, still bounded by that low, wide wall. It must be said, though, that it's still a very attractive park; the city gardeners of BH do a superb job.

Are they really going to bring back the pond?

I wonder what they did with all the koi, when they drained it all?

Beverly Gardens Park
 

From the article at this link:
http://beverlyhills.patch.com/groups/beverly-gardens-park

The city council approved funding $100,000 to restore the lily pond at Beverly Gardens Park in August. Construction is slated for a Jan. 20, 2014 completion.

Aside from restoring the lily pond, other notable restoration tasks and notes include:
Restoring the circular fountain
New plantings at the water features
Retaining the photo opportunity area
Bollard lighting on the pathways
Existing trees to remain in place
Protect the Moreton Bay Fig tree
Relocate the the Mediterranean fan palm to the Palm Garden
The Friends of Beverly Gardens Park spearheaded the efforts to restore
the 1.9-mile long park, which is located on the block between Beverly
Drive and Canon Drive, along Santa Monica Blvd.

http://o1.aolcdn.com/dims-shared/dim...2a67cd08a15725
(You can click on a large version of this map in the link provided.)

http://imageshack.us/a/img199/4059/70y4.JPGebay


detail
http://imageshack.us/a/img850/575/ruxw.jpg

I wish I had a date for this postcard view.

__