Well, there is no better expert in these waters than Steve and his mentor, Nellie. Old friends.

I've searched the thread, and somehow we have missed the Radium Sulphur Springs.

http://imageshack.us/a/img17/4463/we8n.jpg
ebay

http://imageshack.us/a/img21/2503/y2k6.jpg
notice that it says 'Colegrove', that's pre-Hollywood



"Oh how it sparkles! Oh how it foams!
It chases a microbe wherever it roams!"


http://imageshack.us/a/img708/2755/rsiz.jpg
brochure/ebay


http://imageshack.us/a/img96/3774/j5ih.jpg
Southern California Practitioner, 1885 via lacreekfreak



Believe it or not, there is still a hot spring spa in operation that uses the same thermal aquifer as the long lost Radium Sulphur Springs.
And yes, the water still has radium.


The Beverly Hot Springs Spa is located at 308 N. Oxford Ave. just north of Beverly Boulevard.
http://imageshack.us/a/img826/2221/xq4c.jpg
GSV



Locations of the two spas.

The Radium Sulphur Springs site is upper left, and about a mile away is Beverly Hot Springs, lower right.
http://imageshack.us/a/img29/3996/pxx6.jpg
google_earth


-from their website:

Located just 10 minutes from Downtown and 15 min from Beverly Hills lies Los Angeles's only 100% Natural Hot Spring Spa. The spa is fed by a strong flow of 96 to 105 degree water from the artesian well Richard S. Grant found in 1910. Dug near the turn of the century by drillers looking for oil, the 2,200-foot well supplied water to early residents of the area near Western Avenue and Beverly Boulevard until city water mains were installed in 1915. Later the Water was sold as drinking water bottled as 'Wonder Water' under the Angelus Club label with the slogan "Nature's Own Formula".

Business lagged after World War II, and the stream of bacteria-free water was turned down to a feeble flow just strong enough to keep clear the one pipe coming from the well. The well was 'rediscovered' in 1984, and the Beverly Hot Springs Spa was opened soon after.

The water issuing from the hot spring is heated by geothermal heat, essentially heat from the Earth's interior. The hot springs contain various mineral and elements such as alkaline, silica, radium, iron, sulfur, sodium, alkaline sodium chloride, aluminum oxides and magnesium carbonate which have healing properties and health benefits.

(on the spa's current website radium is left off the list)

Beverly Hot Springs Spa
http://www.beverlyhotsprings.com/

__

The cure that kills...
 

ER got me rather curious about the "radium" treatment.

"He drank radium water and then his jaw dropped off"...from an early 1900s magazine article.
Evidently one could go to Dr. Burner's clinic at 2033 East Fourth St., Los Angeles and drink some of his radium water. He also had an office in the Pettebone Building, at 512 South Broadway, LA.

This is a worry. As for myself, I do believe I will forego the ''drinking radium water treatment'', at least for now.

Los Angeles Times ..1906
SAYS MILK PUNCH FAILED TO CURE
For the second time within the month, the marvelous “cures” by the milk and radium process, advertised by a certain Dr. H. Russell Burner at a “temple of health” institution, have been attacked in . . . a suit for $5,450 filed yesterday by Mrs. Rhoda E. Mitchell. . . .
Mrs. Mitchell alleges she was suffering with cancer of the breast and that she entered into contract with Burner whereby he agreed to cure her of the cancer within three months if she paid him $450.
Mrs. Mitchell alleges that . . . Dr. Burner was to furnish her with an osteopath for massage work and with radium to put into milk to drink.
Mrs. Mitchell alleges that no osteopath was supplied, that something else besides radium was supplied her and that her treatment was so careless that she is now in a worse condition than before.
Dr. Burner is well known to all the readers of the Sunday papers. He and himself are said to form one of the strongest mutual-admiration societies in Los Angeles, and he takes great delight in a large cut of himself . . . in frock coat with arm outstretched in beatific attitude, bringing “radium and milk” and other queer dope to all the world.
A few weeks ago, Burner had a long story in the daily newspapers to the effect that he had cornered the radium market, and all the radium in the world would be used in his peculiar “rest cures.”


See the Pettebone building at the right - sign on top side of building.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...psa10c708d.jpghttp://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...ps7e86f2b8.jpg
ULWAF archives

:previous: Good find CBD. -very interesting.
__

This is in the comments (emphasis added):

If that's to be believed, the origin of the story of Pick and Fair owning the building may have come from them renting a unit so their friends and co-workers could have a place to stay. From tiny acorns grow mighty oaks.

Ayn Rand lived there? Back in my college days, that would have given me a woody.

1440 N. Highland Ave. -revisited, yet again.
http://imageshack.us/a/img17/7815/o13g.jpg
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...ostcount=16910


I just found this on ebay, Betty Hutton advertising for KECA.
http://imageshack.us/a/img534/3397/ktmz.jpg
http://imageshack.us/a/img5/3486/z1n4.jpg
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Phot...-/290990432527




http://imageshack.us/a/img820/8638/5cka.jpg
detail/ebay
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The Thirty-Eights were a volunteer outfit organized in 1875 according to the Wikipedia entry. I can't find a cite offhand, but I've read elsewhere that there were 38 members at the time this was established, hence the name.

Having sufficiently many stations to require two-digit numbers would have been preposterous at that time.

:previous:

From www.lafire.com:

In April, 1874, many of the old members of No.1, with the addition of others, altogether numbering thirty-eight, reorganized the company under the name of "Thirty-Eights-No.1" with the following officers:

Foreman, Chas, E. Miles
First Asst. John Cashin
Secretary, Sidney Lacy
Treasurer, J. Kuhrts

http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...AEngineCo1.jpg
www.lafire.com

The caption for the picture above reads:

Photo: 26 Plaza Street
Circa 1884
Los Angeles Engine Co. No. 1
(The First Volunteer Company)
Organized November 1869, Effective September 1871
Disbanded in Spring of 1874
Re-Organized April 14, 1874 as
Thirty-Eights Engine Company No.1
(The First Permanent Volunteer Company)
also known as
Original 38's Engine
First station located at Spring St. near Franklin
In 1884 moved to 26 Plaza Street

Radium Radia
 

Supposedly manufactured in Los Angeles.


https://otters.net/img/lanoir/radiacolor1.jpg
eBay



I did a little searching around and the consensus appears to be that this product actually did NOT contain radium, but I'm not so sure about that. The residue on that box above looks suspiciously like raw radium to me...


Also, whatever the contents were, it sure mutated the hell out of that stopper/cork over the years.


https://otters.net/img/lanoir/radiacolor5.jpg
eBay



Anyway, radium or not, there's no way I'd use this stuff as a "medicine!" (I wouldn't even handle that bottle without gloves on!)


https://otters.net/img/lanoir/radiabw6.jpg
eBay

Heard a lecture some years ago by a physical chemist who collected radioactive quack stuff (after removing the emitting source) and other stuff that was used before people really understood ionizing radiation. For example, the orange glaze used by Fiesta ware in the 30's and 40's contained uranium, enough so you can take an x-ray of your hand using an orange dinner plate as a source.

Anyhow, in the 70's he'd go around to antique stores with a sensitive radiation counter looking for hot stuff. He said he parked in front of one place in Connecticut and turned on his counter while still in his car, and it pegged. He went inside and discovered a quack 5-gallon ceramic water jug with a substantial slab of radium in the bottom. The guy that owned the store was pretty upset when a crew in hazmat suits showed up with a lead bucket and long tongs. The chemist said that the Good Lord only knows how many people that jug had killed. Right up there with the xray machines in shoe stores that zapped kids' feet in the 50's (mine included).

Cheers,

Earl

In 1909 the director of the Radium Sulphur Springs was Gustave P Gehring. There's also a listing for a masseur named Otto Bames.

http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...Radium1909.jpg
rescarta.lapl.org

Gehring gets an entry in the 1915 directory, but there's no mention of the Radium Sulphur Springs by 1923. There are, however, a few companies using radium in their names.

http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...Radium1923.jpg
rescarta.lapl.org

By 1932 there's even a company taking out a larger advert for its radium based products.

http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...Radium1932.jpg
rescarta.lapl.org

In 1942 there's only one doctor still advertising radium therapy, although Montecito Heights acquired a street called Radium Drive somewhere along the way.

http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...Radium1942.jpg
rescarta.lapl.org

This decline seems to fit the growing understanding of the dangers of radium in the first half of the 20th century. Although not directly linked to LA, I found an interesting blog about the Radium Girls, the young workers who painted luminous watch faces during the 1920s:

The Radium Girls

Terrific story about the jug of radium Earl. -frightening stuff.

Believe it or not, there was even a Radium Apartments!
http://imageshack.us/a/img27/957/xcna.jpg
L.A. City Directory (I forgot to write down the year)
-but I know it's early because it has the Rex Arms on Orange (which of course, became Wilshire)

Radium Apts. site
http://imageshack.us/a/img199/8275/diu3.jpg
google_earth




-maybe that guy under the tree has a geiger counter in his satchel. ;)
http://imageshack.us/a/img534/7149/xg29.jpg
553 Stanford Av/GSV



I was hoping to find RADIUM carved in stone over the door.
http://imageshack.us/a/img200/4770/r3k5.jpg
detail/GSV
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I've just come across a color video of the Arroyo Seco Parkway taken in 1939. It's a 16mm Kodachrome movie which shows parts of the new road still under construction. I don't think it's been posted before.

Arroyo Seco Parkway: Dawn of the Freeway Age:

http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...AASPVideo1.jpg

http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...AASPVideo2.jpg
Both pictures are from the YouTube video 1939 Arroyo Seco.

The video was uploaded by Caltrans, and they have another video where they match up some of the film with present day footage to celebrate the road's 70th anniversary back in 2010:

Arroyo Seco Parkway Then and Now 2010

I'm guessing that the different colored parts of the road surface were supposed to indicate lanes, although the 1939 drivers don't seem to pay much attention to them.

Inner city nitty gritty....
 

HossC, Thanks much for that link to Arroyo Fwy. While I was watching I also found this from the 50's Los Angeles: http://youtu.be/n77NxU0CHPw

I'm not sure why the popular media (and CalTrans) perpetuate this myth that the Arroyo Seco Parkway was the first limited-access expressway in greater Los Angeles, because it's simply not true. Ramona Boulevard was constructed a whole half-decade earlier, and it was every bit as much a prototypical freeway as the expressway to Pasadena, yet this fact seems to be totally forgotten. Cahuenga Boulevard was also a limited-access expressway before Arroyo Seco Parkway was built. Not that the latter wasn't an important stage in the development of L.A.'s later freeway system, but it certainly was not the first interurban road of its kind.

malumot CBG-- it was never a great neighborhood. In fact, the more you read about Los Angeles in its supposed heyday, the more you realize that robbery and all kinds of noir goings-on were common even in the best neighborhoods.

As for 553 Stanford Avenue... here's a little possible insolvency, kidnapping, and suicide:


https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-V...2520AM.bmp.jpghttps://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-2...2520AM.bmp.jpghttps://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-g...ullsuicide.jpg

July 23, 1916; Jan 28, 1935; Oct 2, 1943


And, apparently Stanford Avenue was once Ruth Avenue--from May 25, 1913, and Feb 28, 1914:

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-M...hookscompl.jpghttps://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-u...nfordcompl.jpg


All latimes.com

Thanks, Alan. A 6-pack of Coke for 33 cents!

http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...ACoke6Pack.jpg
YouTube

While we're talking about YouTube films, back in post #5849, GW posted a link to an hour-long 1995 feature called Things That Aren't Here Anymore with Ralph Story. Sadly, by the time I reached that post, the video has been removed for copyright breach. However, when I watched the extract about Lucas Kiddie Land/Beverly Park that GW posted in post #1811, I found that someone else had uploaded the hour-long version again (see link below).

It covers so many of the places that have come up in this thread, many in moving pictures, interspersed with interviews. Here's my quick list: The CBS/KNX building; The Hollywoodland sign; Red cars; Clifton's Pacific Seas; Cawston's Ostrich Farm; Mount Lowe Railway; The Pike at Long Beach; Gay's Lion Farm; Marineland; Ocean Park Pier; Angel's Flight (still in storage at time of filming); The Honeymoon Elevator; Rifle and Pistol Shooting sign; Drive-in restarants; Shaped buildings; Central Avenue; Helms Bakery; Bullocks Wilshire; Gilmore Stadium; China City; The Spruce Goose; Schwab's; The Garden of Allah; The Cocoanut Grove; The NBC building.

http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...AArentHere.jpg
Things That Aren't Here Anymore with Ralph Story (KCET - PBS)

Engstrum Hotel / apts
 

The Engstrum was demolished in 1973 - it didn't make it into the 1980s

:previous:


Well... I couldn't find a definitive demolition date--though it did survive into the '80s; the US Bank Tower/Library Tower began construction in 1987. Here's an excerpt from a Times article from December 2, 1979:



https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-z...1/Engstrum.jpg


latimes.com