One thing leads to another, and back.... I'm out in the desert and have been trying to avoid LA altogether, both the city itself and on the computer. But just when I thought I was out, it pulls me back in.... I happened to look out of my window and noticed the name on the roof tiles. There have been mentions of the L.A. Pressed Brick Co. on the thread over the years--here's a great ad, one especially interesting as it shows the Hall of Justice, due to reopen this year, under construction 90 years ago.
LA Times, Aug 17, 1924
As for the roof tiles seen above... they're atop the Mead-Untermyer house, now a hotel called The Willows in Palm Springs. As I was reading a little of the hotel's history (check it out
here), the name "William Mead" rang a bell... so I dug back into NLA and came up with this:
Quote:
Originally Posted by GaylordWilshire
Los Angeles Times, April 6, 1913
Real estate developer William Mead is described in some bios as once having owned all the land north of Los Feliz Blvd from Western Avenue east to the river.
Mead seems to have hired only the top L.A. architects of the day to design houses for his tract. Mead himself may or may not have lived in either the Luckenbach
house or the one in the drawing above, which still stands at 4533 Cockerham Drive:
 GoogleSV
Some more shots of the house are here. (Prepare yourself for a major tackfest, at least indoors.)
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The Hay house described in the article above seems to be none other than our own Garden of Allah. We may well have written of the origins of the GoA on the thread before, but LACurbed commenter John Ponder has this description: "Originally named Hayvenhurst, it was built for $30,000 in 1913 by William H. Hay, developer of the Crescent Heights neighborhood, which was bounded by Sunset and Santa Monica blvds, to the north and south, Fairfax (then called Crescent Ave.) to the east and Havenhurst (originally spelled "Hayvenhurst") to the west. Hay and his second wife lived in Hayvenhurst briefly before building an even grander home down the street (where the Directors Guild building is now) and then finally retiring to a large house at 4400 Havenhurst Drive in Encino, another neighborhood Hay owned and developed. After the Hays moved out, Hayvenhurst stood empty for a few years before Alla Nazimova acquired it, including during World War I, when the Hays allowed the Red Cross to use it as its Westside headquarters. Nazimova ... leased Hayvenhurst in November 1917.... She purchased it outright for $65,000 in August 1918. "
Hay was listed in the 1915 city directory at 8258 Sunset. |