While looking for pictures of Wilshire the other day, I stumbled upon this sad picture. Does anyone know the background to this story?

Suicide victim, 26 February 1958. John J. Vandenburgh Junior -- 39 years (jumped from sixth floor of Prudential Building).; Caption slip reads: "Photographer: Paegel. Date: 1958-02-26. Reporter: Thackrey. Assignment: Leaper. These are the mortal remains of John J. Vandenburgh, Jr., 39, who was a statistical analyst for Wilton Becket & Assoc. From sixth floor of Prudential Buliding, 5657 Wilshire."

http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...ndenburgh1.jpg
USC Digital Library

For search purposes: Mullen Bluett and Coulters.

:previous:

This seemed familiar, so I dug a little--it was mentioned in this 2012 post, though the picture (which might be the same as yours, Hoss, is missing).

Welton Becket was at 5657 Wilshire, a building we've seen before. It's confusing because the caption to the image says "from the sixth floor of the Prudential Building"--but this wasn't the familiar tall landmark Prudential Building we're all familiar with--it was up the street at 5757--but 5657 did have Prudential offices in it, according to the 56CD. Below is a pic of 5657 from your own post 33294 (2016). The LAPL picture below that is one from a 2011 post of mine.

It's really only 5 floors--I guess poor Vandenburgh jumped off the roof.


http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...1.jpg~original
http://jpg1.lapl.org/pics28/00033889.jpg

https://i.postimg.cc/3RnsjvBL/vandenburgh-bmp.jpg
LAT Feb 27, 1958

:previous:

Thanks, GW. I see the original post you linked to omitted the man's name, which explains why it didn't show up in my search. Here's another one:

Janitor found dead at University of California, Los Angeles (Poison) suicide, 22 April 1952. Sergeant John Layman; Lieutenant Nick Janice; Body of James Holub of 1133 4th Street, Santa Monica.; Caption slip reads: "Photographer: Sandusky. Date: 04-22. Assignment: Poison death at UCLA. D13/14: L/R: Sgt. John Layman, West LA Det.; Lt. Nick Janise, UCLA police. D15: Dep. Coroner and Sgt. John Layman, WLA dets.".

http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...amesHolub1.jpg
USC Digital Library

Los Angeles Times, via ProQuest, via CSULB Library.

https://i.postimg.cc/tg0JsG06/Farley1.jpg

https://i.postimg.cc/3Jdx9xYp/Farley2.jpg

IMDB page on victim Mr. Crittenden: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0188248/?ref_=fn_nm_nm_1

Mr. Farley was at length convicted of manslaughter.

:previous:

Most of the 1700 block of E 23rd Street is now industrial, but the 1905 house across the road from George Farley is still standing at 1740 E 23rd Street.

http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...40E23rdSt1.jpg
GSV

This is the 1921 bungalow court at 4428 Lockwood Street which Leon Romer managed with his wife (NB. Lockwood Street is now Lockwood Avenue). This image is from 2011, because the hedge is now much higher.

http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...ockwoodAv1.jpg
GSV

The current building at 11911 Gorham Avenue (former home of T Dwight Crittenden) was only built in 1965.

In re: Georgia Street Receiving Hospital.

https://i.postimg.cc/xCkQDY37/Georgi...hoto-Night.jpg
LAPL

https://i.postimg.cc/SRNWNTjw/Georgia-St-Rec-Photo2.jpg
LAPL

https://i.postimg.cc/Zn2CtVNP/Georgi...g-Hospital.jpg
Los Angeles Times via ProQuest via CSULB Library

Jane Russell's sagging breasts were giving Mr. Hughes a headache during production of the film. His solution was to have his aircraft engineers design a bra that would fix the problem.

The solution was a bra that contained steel wires and pieces of metal that would lift her breasts to the proper altitude. Upon inspection approval, Mr. Hughes declared that production could continue.

Here's a daytime shot of the receiving hospital at 1337 Georgia Street from 1956. The text across the top says "Georgia Street Police Station Division No 5". The site is now roughly under the middle of the Los Angeles Convention Center.

http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...gHospital1.jpg
USC Digital Library

The photoset also includes a picture of its replacement, the Central Receiving Hospital at 500 Loma Drive. We've seen this before in post #34915. In the picture below, Dr. Charles Sebastian, head of the hospital, is standing outside.

http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...gHospital1.jpg
USC Digital Library

The tower and chimneys on the left once belonged to the Mary Andrews Clark building which e_r reminded us of just a few days ago. The building survives, but the tower and chimneys are long gone.

Very much enjoying the posts of Harry's Place, he is a welcome addition to the thread.

Some months back this forum did a wonderful job in locating the Garry Winogrand sailor-in-the-mist walking over the bridge photo as Los Angeles, and not NYC as it is commonly misidentified...here's another Winogrand L.A. picture, dated Jan. 1960.


https://i1381.photobucket.com/albums...pshijybjgl.jpg

:previous:

Looks like the entrance to J J Newberry Co at 5th and Broadway. This is a slightly different angle from 1973, but I think the fire phone box on the left is the one being used by the police officer in the image above. The phone box is no longer there.

http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...hBroadway3.jpg
LAPL

"short for Bristol Cities, rhyming slang for ..."

Hoss,
One could certainly see how someone could make that assumption but I am pleading ignorance and innocence. Still, I wear the name proudly. I was born in Bristol, England and my name is Ian. My family then moved to Southern California when I was six so I did not get much exposure to rhyming slang other than my grandfather talking about going up the apples & pears. I can say that I am familiar with Bristol City, the more successful of Bristol's two professional soccer teams, although never a major player in English football (soccer).

I have learned so many interesting facts on NLA but I never expected anything like this!

Barrymore's looted totem pole
 

Good eye Flyingwedge! I don't believe I would have noticed the totem pole in the Sten-Frenka photograph.
_________________________________________________________



Your post reminded me of a story I recently read in NEW YORKER magazine.

YOU SEE.....John Barrymore liked to sail his 120 ft. yacht Infanta up to Alaska in the early 1930s.

https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/1...924/bhNXS8.jpg
vilda.alaska.edu


HERE'S A PIC of
John Barrymore and his wife, actress Dolores Costello, on one of their trips to Alaska. (Barrymore was also a hunter)

https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/1...922/292Wuf.jpg
Juneau Empire



On one of these trips (most likely 1932) Mr. Barrymore looted a nearly 40 ft. totem pole from a deserted Tlingit village.
He had members of his crew go ashore and saw the totem pole into three pieces until all that remained was a stump.
The three pieces were then loaded onto the Infanta and taken back to Los Angeles.

The totem pole stood on his estate until he died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1942.

https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/1...921/rEc7lH.jpg
NEW YORKER
John Barrymore, left, with an unknown person. photo by Bill Nelson

After Mr. Barrymore's death...the totem pole went missing for a number of years....until it turned up at Ralph Altman's antique shop on La Cienega Blvd.

The totem pole was eventually purchased by Vincent Price (actor and art collector) and placed on his estate in Benedict Canyon. (supposedly turning it into a fountain)
...or was it Barrymore that turned it into a kitschy fountain? :shrug: it's a bit confusing.

https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/1...924/O4eVxP.jpg
NEW YORKER
Vincent Price; his wife, Mary; and Edward R. Murrow, on the Prices’ patio, in 1958.

This article says the totem pole may have contained human ashes. HERE(which makes Barrymore's actions all the more atrocious)
________________________________________________________



In 2015, the totem pole was returned to the Tlinget people. Read about HERE

Aerial Mystery (to me)
 

I'm having trouble placing this view....are we looking West on Temple? Am I not recognizing the obvious when I don't recognize the building upper left? (Sisters Hospital?) Am I losing my mind? Did I ever really have possession? Is this a repost? So many questions......Any help appreciated!

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4866/...0e753083_h.jpg
CHS

:previous:

Ralphs Brothers Grocery was at the corner of Spring and Sixth in 1881-82.


https://i.imgur.com/yHGS1PT.jpg


https://i.imgur.com/F8l5sKp.jpg
rescarta.lapl.org

Is the imfamous "Chicken Boy" still there? Maybe replaced by Gus Fring's "Los Pollos Hermanos"?

[QUOTE=ethereal_reality;8443176]Good eye Flyingwedge! I don't believe I would have noticed the totem pole in the Sten-Frenka photograph.


HERE'S A PIC of
John Barrymore and his wife, actress Dolores Costello, on one of their trips to Alaska. (Barrymore was also a hunter)

https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/1...922/292Wuf.jpg
Juneau Empire

.
I recall in the film "W.C. Fields and Me" that Barrymore palled around with W.C. Fields and a few other movie stars who liked their booze. In the film (based on a book by Field's lady friend) after Barrymore died, Fields and the others took his corpse to give it a proper sendoff in a final drinking binge. Any press clippings about this event? A youthful Barrymore also had a brief affair with young "Gibson Girl" Evelyn Nesbitt before she got hooked up with playboy architect Sanford "Sanny" White. Nesbitt's nutty husband in 1906 murdered White in a jealous rage on the rooftop dining room of White-designed Madison Square Garden (which featured a rotating nude statue of the goddess Diana supposedly modeled by Nesbitt). The sensational trial was hugely covered in the press, the "O.J." case of its day. Nesbitt moved to L.A. in her later years and taught art. The Nesbitt-White-Thaw case was covered in the book/film "Ragtime" and the 1950s film "The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing" starring Joan Collins as Nesbitt and Ray Milland as White. Supposedly White pushed a nude Nesbitt on a red velvet swing that he kept in his mirrored love nest hideaway.

USC have a similar, but slightly earlier view titled "Panoramic view of Los Angeles, looking west along Sixth Street, from Main Street, ca.1882". In the top-right of both photos is the State Normal School.

http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...LA6thMain1.jpg
USC Digital Library

They also have this reverse view from the State Normal School. Their description is:

Photograph of a birdseye view of Pershing Square (formerly 6th Street park) looking southeast from Normal School (the present site of the Biltmore Hotel) showing St. Paul’s Cathedral and First Methodist Episcopal Church, ca.1883. The First Methodist Episcopal Church located at north-east corner of Hill and 6th Streets is visible just right of center in the foreground, shown from the rear. Beyond this, paved pathways and rows of trees can be seen in the rectangular bounds of the park just beyond a small ranch-style rooftop and a narrow road. Farther back, the St. Paul's Cathedral can be seen on Olive Street, between 5th and 6th Streets, as well as a three-story brick building that appears to be the Saint Vincent College to the right. More open terrain fills the rest of the distance, interspersed with homesteads.

http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...LA6thMain2.jpg
USC Digital Library

I think that means that the building ScottyB was trying identify is St Vincent's College at 6th and Fort (Broadway).

http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...tsCollege1.jpg
USC Digital Library

1936, Olivia de Havilland & Gooby o.O

https://i.imgur.com/pYYKGMp.png

:previous: Interesting story, e_r! It makes me wonder how Mr. Todd acquired the totem pole in Palisades Park that he gave to the City of Santa Monica.

_______________________________


Thanks for posting this image, ScottyB, and also to Noir_Noir and HossC for pinpointing the location. I think we can date the
photo as c. October 1883 to January 1884; for one thing, the sun appears to be out of the south and a little low in the sky.

Also, the building in the center foreground is the First Baptist Church on the NE corner of 6th and Fort (later Broadway), which
was completed in March 1884 (and which this USC photo description seems to misidentify):

http://i1165.photobucket.com/albums/...psqppjx2fa.jpg

Dec 14, 1884, Los Angeles Times @ ProQuest via LAPL


If you look closely at the CHS photo, the church still appears to be under construction; there doesn't seem to be a window
in the round opening in the church's east wall. So, regarding when the First Baptist Church got windows . . .

https://i1165.photobucket.com/albums...psetzmkqrq.jpg

November 11, 1883, Los Angeles Times @ ProQuest via LAPL


Furthermore, in the CHS photo we don't see the 1884-built Spring Street School just north of the First Baptist Church. You
can see how close the church and school were in this undated photo looking SE down Fort/Broadway toward 6th:

https://i1165.photobucket.com/albums...pse2hnzobx.jpg

00007837 at LAPL


This photo looks NE at the First Baptist Church, seemingly before the Spring Street School was built to its north:

https://i1165.photobucket.com/albums...pspcotcnth.jpg

00076399 at LAPL


And I'm reasonably certain that the Spring Street School north of 6th between Spring and Broadway was under construction by
the end of January 1884 (I don't believe this refers to the original Spring Street School on the NW corner of 2nd and Spring):

https://i1165.photobucket.com/albums...psdg0mlwea.jpg

February 1, 1884, Los Angeles Herald @ CDNC

Chicken Boy has a new home in Highland Park, on Figueroa.
https://goo.gl/maps/db4FDn9rpmC2