LAboomer52: I love that ad-- "Build Your Beautiful Home in LaFayette Square
And Live Forever".... gotta love the promise of immortality with your real estate....
LaFayette Square is interesting in that it's the last developmental gasp of West Adams--great houses, lovely streetscapes, and unlike alot of the old district, still intact. One thing about 1727 Buckingham Road--the house that some claim was used as the Cleaver's in
Leave It to Beaver--well, it wasn't. I've been to see the house--and Google Street View will confirm that--while it is very similar to the house on the Universal back lot actually used in the series (seen also in the 1955 movie
The Desperate Hours and in a number of later TV series), the bay window is on the opposite side of the front door, among other differences. I've wondered if the backlot house wasn't modeled on the one on Buckingham--perhaps a set designer lived there or nearby or had visited it. (See
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...postcount=1799) Anyway, there were alot of L.A. houses in that vein--including Fred MacMurray's house in Bel-Air:
LAPL
Back to Crenshaw.... Crenshaw--the man--lived just to the east:
LAPL
1419 S. Wilton (now replaced by a 4-story apartment building)--it became the Philanthropy and Civics Club in 1924...
One source has Crenshaw then living at 1675 Wellington, although he is listed in the 1923 LACD at 1945 Wellington
Road--south of Washington Street and LaFayette Square in a subdivision I've seen referred to as Wellington Square,
perhaps his own extension of LaFayette. Both 1675 and 1945 are still there, and quite similar--perhaps they're by
the same architect. ((Btw, the 2008 City of Los Angeles "LaFayette Square Preservation Plan" refers to Crenshaw as
living at both 1675 Wellington and 1675 Buckingham--I don't know if this is a mistake, or if Crenshaw, as developers
often do, actually did live in several different houses during his developing.)
Now for some
noir Crenshaw...(not wanting to forget
ethereal's original idea)...
USCDL
USCDL
In a single caption for the shots (no pun intended) above, the USCDL refers to both the 300 and the 3000 block of Crenshaw... just a little detective work brings us to the correct 3000 block, 3020 S. Crenshaw to be exact, to what was once the Crenshaw Theater and was, at the time of the 1958 murder above, something called the L.A. Jazz Concert Theater. (I take it that the area had developed into something of a jazz mecca.) But wait... while the wonderful '54 Buick has most likely retreated to a Pomona junkyard, and the body perhaps to Rosedale... the theater and the parking lot where the body once lay is still with us:
![](https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/_zXN_GwdMYMo/TX_q3ReXvyI/AAAAAAAADSc/qjgBok8fW7M/s720/Fullscreen%20capture%203152011%2063949%20PM.jpg)
Google Street View
Paul Laszlo designed the Crenshaw Theater...
![](https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/_zXN_GwdMYMo/TYALPx2EpaI/AAAAAAAADTQ/lXSjgpwwr3w/s640/Fullscreen%20capture%203152011%2085757%20PM.jpg)
Google Street View
Here's a photo by Julius Shulman back in the day:
arcspace.com