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I love this shot of Mrs. Mary Conner Rasche standing in front of the Melrose a year or so before its demise. Apparently, it was built by her father.
Her classic clubwoman chic (ok, perhaps not the right word for her outfit in the era of Audrey Hepburn...) reminds me of
ethereal's recent pic of the
Figueroa Street clubhouse of the Friday Morning Club:
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Although there was some overlapping membership, the FMC was a more exclusive version of the Ebell Club. Whatever her
actual name, its president was always referred to as "Madame Severance" in honor of the first (1891-94), the estimable
Caroline Severance (see
http://www.westadamsheritage.org/ind...d=79&Itemid=56). As time went on, the club's 1000-seat
Playhouse was given over to the Variety Arts and Times theaters, the ladies gradually retreating to a small top-floor room as
some of their number began to resist driving to increasingly declasse downtown for meetings. The FMC gave the building up in
the '80s for rooms in a Wilshire Boulevard high-rise. I can't tell whether it still exists in an era of Beverly Hills tv housewives--
although if the Woman's Christian Temperance Union could survive, so should these stout ladies have been able to:
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Below, the forebears of the ladies above lay the cornerstone of their Figueroa Street digs:
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