I don't know about the rest of you guys but the truncated pics are pretty much useless to me.

How interesting--I didn't know about that book. I see that it was published in 1934, after he and La Bixby Smith divorced and she presumably took back the checkbook...perhaps rendering him impecunious but not bereft.. she ate steak tartar and died the next year of the trichinosis (from the pork remains left on the butcher's meat grinder) while he lived a full life all the way to 1971.



I had almost given up on the USC Digital Library as a resource, finding it clunky to fool with after the site was overhauled--difficult to find pictures rather than old issues of the USC Trojan. I still find it more trouble than it's worth for my purposes, but it looks like BifRayRock has figured the system out. The highly enlarged fragments are interesting as long as there is an accompanying shot of the complete, if small, pic.

Fascinating shots, BRR--this appears to be ca 1926/27, between the construction of the Wilshire Christian Church and the Gaylord and the installation of the Wilshire Specials when the boulevard is being widened and utilities were being moved underground. It shows a dramatic dip at the intersection we've seen good bit of here--the slough running down along Mariposa--though maybe it only appears exaggerated due to the construction and the temporary curve.



Btw-- The house just to the left of the church tower looks like the W.D. Longyear house at the northwest corner of Wilshire (3555) and Ardmore (3555 Wilshire: http://wilshireboulevardhouses.blogs...2_archive.html.


https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-U...reLongyear.jpgA Look Back at Vintage Los Angeles


https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-d...2520PM.bmp.jpgLAT

A snippet from W.D. Longyear's obituary from the Times of March 18, 1941

Sorry Biff, I was apparently too cryptic by half. I was saying seeing these truncated images on the thread is pretty much a wash for me. Not to sound high-handed but posting them is (in my eyes) a waste of bandwidth. I haven't encountered any problem with moving (whole) images from USC to my hosting site (Flickr) and thence to here. I'm not sure why they are suddenly breaking up for some people. Really kind of an idle observation, I know.

Yeah, I have his book 'The Road I Came: some recollections and reflections concerning changes in American life and manners since 1890' Caxton (1960). It's not bad (the ponderous title notwithstanding), he's a fairly polished writer although, knowing what I/we know about him, the narrative could have been vastly more interesting.

As to the USC redesign, I guess I don't know what's going on. The search function is clunky and seemingly incomplete but when I load an image in the 'print' window, I'm able to right-click copy and take the image directly into my Flickr photo stream. Am I missing something?

Amen, brother.

Not only that, but all of those images are hotlinked to the USC website, which means all USC has to do is change a single character in the format of their URLs, and the hotlinked pics will disappear from this thread. Again. Waste of bandwidth, indeed.

Hot linked? Hey, don't they know about hot linking? They can't continue to do that! We need to have a conversation about the integrity of the thread.

Didn't I read similar musings when the thread approached page 500?

I don't pretend to know much about electronic preservation, but a change on any hosting site affects the thread too. In effect, aren't all "hosted" images hot linked? Ever notice when LAPL's server/s is/are down this site slows down waiting for images to upload or pages post incompletely? USC's site occasionally crawls at a glacial pace too. Just because the majority rely on Flickr or PhotoBucket doesn't ensure that their posting/hosting policies will always remain the same.

The best insurance is probably acting as your own host.

http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/3338/...lshiredual.jpgGSV/LAT



Speaking of the 4000 block of Wilshire... it contains--or did as of the last Google camera pass--one of the last holdouts of the residential boulevard. I haven't yet discovered when it was built, but, judging by the style, it seems it can't have been all that old as of the 1922 auction (although it's always possible that, given its verticality, it was the remodeling of an older house moved to the lot from an eastern neighborhood; in any case, it was not on the lot in 1914).


The only other info I have in my notes, which apparently came from the same series of auction ads, is the come-on that "This property will double in value in ten years or less. The city planning commission has already mapped out improvements for Wilshire Boulevard that will make it the finest boulevard in the country." Not mentioned quite this early was that the trend was commercial, not residential. And yet, somehow, here is still is--at least as of 2011.


:previous:

As for hosting--I often use imageshack because they come out larger on the thread, but I do know that if you cull your images there, they will disappear here. This does not seem to be the case with images I upload to Picasa on my computer--if I delete those, they seem to stay here. (They're just noticeably smaller.)

Yes, of course, all of the images here are hotlinked. Contrary to what you may imagine, though, hosts like Photobucket and Flickr do not routinely change their link URLs. They know that to do so would discourage people from using their services. Sites like USC and LAPL, however, are NOT set up to be image hosts, and they do not want people hotlinking to their sites - main reason being that the increased traffic slows down their servers - a problem you yourself allude to.

Really, there's no excuse not to use dedicated image hosting sites. No excuse at all.

:previous:


Well, with all due respect, I can't say I agree 100%, Scott--I know that when I started posting to this thread I was pretty much clueless about how to get an image I found or had on my computer onto the thread--it probably took the same sort of patient explanations to newcomers that you still come across here just to figure out what the little image icon was at the top here. And, to tell you the truth, in the interest of time, I have linked directly from one of the libraries even fairly recently. This has always been an informal thread, and, while I would love it if it could be archived and protected, that would take a lot of time and dedication (a few, God bless 'em, with the computer skills and interest required have made the effort to do so). My point is that it can be time-consuming, and if it is complicated for newcomers, well, they won't come. And while it may seem as though this is all I do, it's only a little of what I get done at my desk everyday. I'm lucky that I can turn to this screen anytime I like to post something that strikes my fancy, and I'm practiced enough now to get a post up and running quickly.... I don't see how this thread can be turned into a formal research tool with strict guidelines for submissions. Randomness is definitely part of its beauty.

Just my 2¢--or $10.

No, I believe the musings as we approached and then went through 500 pages had to do with the anticipation that a skyscraper limit might exist on individual threads at about 500 pages. We thought there was a chance we might attempt to log on one day and get nothing. I get early pangs of withdrawal even typing those words! And yes, I suppose you could make the case that even 'hosted' images are ultimately hot-linked and therefore subject to the potential vagaries of the host site but these host sites are commercial enterprises and are governed to some degree by the terms of use under which they collect our yearly subscription money. So could it happen? Sure it's possible but not likely. What is for sure is that sites like the USC digital archives absolutely do periodically shut down for maintenance or for a redesign. And when that happens, the integrity of this thread is deeply wounded. Everyone who posts here should do so in a way that protects the thread. Besides 'hot linking' violates the conditions of use we all 'agree to' when entering those sites.

Hey buddy, wanna buy this house and perhaps spare it from demolition? Asking price is a cool $1.28 mil :)

http://imageshack.us/a/img405/999/sc...30312at123.png

Link to Curbed LA

Also, one of the commenters noted that the house made an appearance in L.A. Confidential in the scene where high-class pimp Pierce Patchett is attending the groundbreaking of the Santa Monica Freeway. So I pulled up the movie and sure enough there it is:

http://imageshack.us/a/img10/999/scr...30312at123.png

http://imageshack.us/a/img577/999/sc...30312at123.png

I'm Not Sure What To Make Of This
 

O.K. So here we have a very attractive woman holding a lit cigarette and a butt ugly (five legged) dog, looking up at a no smoking sign:

http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/3325/00039028.jpg
lapl

The library has this description with the photo:

"Mrs. Bialac and dog, Patsy, encounter one of the more than 3000 warning signs now posted by the fire department throughout the closed areas of the city. Photo dated: July 8, 1948."


I had no idea who Mrs. Bialac may have been, so I searched for that name and came up with this:

http://img689.imageshack.us/img689/646/00095338.jpg
lapl


"Pictured are Barbara Payton and then-boyfriend, Jerry Bialac at Hollywood's Mocambo nightclub. Photograph dated December 8, 1950."

BARBARA PAYTON! Yipes! Were these two Bialacs married? I have no idea. Does anyone know?