Quote:
Originally Posted by Flyingwedge
It was the entrance to the elevator:
1906 Sanborn @ LAPL
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It was the handicap entrance! (and no doubt the loading dock too) I love it. I am such a fan of the courthouse's outdoor elevator. Much better than the Boneventure ones. Well done :-)
You all have sharp eyes, please help me with something that's been tugging at my sleeve. Do you remember the pair of sphinxes at the 1875 Los Angeles and Independence Station on the east side of San Pedro St at the T-junction with Winston?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Ang...dence_Railroad
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lo...pot_-_1875.png (detail)
They were on either side of the broad stairs on the north side of the station:
http://books.google.com/books?id=4w8...20tree&f=false
The station was decommissioned in about 1880. At some point the sphinxes were removed and the building remodeled for industrial use. By 1888 the California Door Company and the Los Angeles Storage, Commission and Lumber Company shared the building:
http://books.google.com/books?id=4w8...20tree&f=false
The 13-year-old building burned to the ground on 30 October 1888, the victim of a turpentine fire at the door company.
In 1880, Irishman Andrew McNally (of Rand-McNally fame) moved to Los Angeles from Chicago, living first in Pasadena and then in Altadena. In 1893 he bought 2,300 acres of the old Rancho Los Coyotes, subdividing 1,500 acres into the "La Mirada" development of 20-acre parcels and starting Windemere Ranch on the remainder, planting citrus and olives. McNally commissioned architect Frederick Roehrig to build him a handsome house and outbuildings at Windemere (McNally grandson Wallace Neff was born there in 1895). The home was reached via a pair of curious gateposts, topped with sphinxes. This view is circa 1895:
http://so-cal-arch-history.com/archives/1847
A later view, after the trees had matured. The sphinxes sport breast-plates, although one supposes these could have been added:
http://so-cal-arch-history.com/archives/1847
The breast-plates do not appear on the Windemere orange crate label:
http://so-cal-arch-history.com/archives/1847
Most of Windemere Ranch was sold for a 8,ooo-unit housing development in 1953. The McNally home and a couple of outbuildings still exist in Neff Park, San Cristobal & San Esteban Drives, La Mirada:
google maps
My, by now, painfully-obvious question (hoping I have not put you all to sleep) is, could the station sphinxes and the Windemere sphinxes be the same? Or were sphinxes common then, available at any garden center? Both were bronze or "bronze-colored" and just over life-sized. Where are they now?
Other info, both listing the Windmere sphinxes as missing:
http://pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NR...t/78000684.pdf
http://www.lincolnparkstatues.com/?attachment_id=1569