noirish Los Angeles

[ethereal_reality]

This rppc is currently listed on eBay.


http://www.ebay.com/itm/LOS-ANGELES-...gAAOSwnbZYI--7



"Sunderlands in Los Angeles, CA"


reverse



'Sunderland' in the 1910 directory.


lapl

If the 1811 S. Flower address is correct, the house would have been behind Patriot Hall.
(but all the houses in that area are long gone)

[ethereal_reality]

This one is a bit more enigmatic.


http://www.ebay.com/itm/1942-CALIFOR...3D371803123402



reverse

So is this an advertisement made to look like a personal postcard?

[Lorendoc]

[QUOTE=Tourmaline;7486750] posted this a ways back:

Undated shot of the Hall of Records from a series dealing with some sort of criminal proceedings in the Fed Court.


http://images.google.com/hosted/life...b63d59414.html Haven't seen them before on NLA.

John Maddox Roberts wrote in response:

The man in the light-colored suit is Warren Dorn, County Supervisor and former mayor of Pasadena. I knew him back in the '50s. His brothers Frank and Bob Dorn had homes in the Linda Vista neighborhood of Pasadena where I spent my summers back then. Their kids were my playmates. The LA County Board of Supervisors in those days were known as "the five little kings,"as they wielded almost unchallenged authority.

This photo was taken in 1959. The guy in the white suit was Supervisor Dorn. The guy in the black suit was an important person of another stripe: Frank "One Eye" DeSimone, LA Mafia boss and successor to Jack Dragna. He was being arraigned, 2 years later, for participating in the famous Apalachin mob conference in upstate New York. (I guess he was actually being arraigned for contempt because he refused to testify before a federal grand jury.) I'd be interested in learning why he was being escorted by Supervisor Dorn.

[tovangar2]

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

I believe he eventually built one of the 'Case Study' houses.

__

Yes, #20, for designer Saul Bass.

The three partners in Straub's firm, Buff, Straub and Hensman, were the architects


..............................................................................................................................

Has anyone seen "La La Land"? Rotten Tomatoes gives it a positive 94% critics & 90% audience rating.

The filmmakers made an effort to hit some of our landmarks (although that ploy didn't save Gangster Squad), including my beloved Lighthouse Cafe,
a seeming beacon of dangerous glamour in my 50s, Hermosa Beach childhood:


black label films / youtube


Filmed in Cinemascope & Technicolor



The trailer is here if you want to play a quick game of Spot the Location.

LA Curbed has a map showing some of the locations if you get stuck.

[HossC]

Originally Posted by Lorendoc

BiffRayRock posted this view of Santa Monica Blvd from 1933 a while ago:


USC


USC

Compare these with Edna's (1950?) slide:

http://www.ednasantiqueshop.com/holl...olley_line.htm

Originally Posted by Lorendoc

So the question stands: what was the difference discernible between the 1933 and 1950 pictures? Hint: The point I was hoping people might notice has to do with the cars

Is it that the 1933 pictures show two-way traffic on both sides of the streetcar tracks?

[CaliNative]

[QUOTE=Lorendoc;7649698]

Originally Posted by Tourmaline

posted this a ways back:

Undated shot of the Hall of Records from a series dealing with some sort of criminal proceedings in the Fed Court.


http://images.google.com/hosted/life...b63d59414.html Haven't seen them before on NLA.

John Maddox Roberts wrote in response:

The man in the light-colored suit is Warren Dorn, County Supervisor and former mayor of Pasadena. I knew him back in the '50s. His brothers Frank and Bob Dorn had homes in the Linda Vista neighborhood of Pasadena where I spent my summers back then. Their kids were my playmates. The LA County Board of Supervisors in those days were known as "the five little kings,"as they wielded almost unchallenged authority.

This photo was taken in 1959. The guy in the white suit was Supervisor Dorn. The guy in the black suit was an important person of another stripe: Frank "One Eye" DeSimone, LA Mafia boss and successor to Jack Dragna. He was being arraigned, 2 years later, for participating in the famous Apalachin mob conference in upstate New York. (I guess he was actually being arraigned for contempt because he refused to testify before a federal grand jury.) I'd be interested in learning why he was being escorted by Supervisor Dorn.

"why was (the mobster) being escorted by Sup. Dorn?". The corruption in L.A. in the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s into the '50s was quite stunning (no evidence that Dorn was corrupt). Films "Chinatown", "L.A. Confidential", "Bugsy", "Gangster Squad" etc. are based on fact. Anybody interested in noir era should seek out the film "Double Indemnity". The period also gave us some great noir buildings. Demolishing the old Richfield tower was a travesty. I loved that old building of my youth. Had great character, and an impressive spire that rose to 380' when the height limit was only 150'. Someone probably got paid off to allow the higher height, but it looked great.

[CaliNative]

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

It appears my computer 'glitches' have subsided.



Did you all happen to notice the cable car being towed in the 1950 Shriners Parade slide-

Well here's a better look........as it travels past the J.J. Newberry Co. Store.


http://www.cable-car-guy.com/images/524la1950.jpg

-note the speaker perched on top.... (I just looked at the color slide again...yep, the speaker is visible there too)






J. J. Newberry
Located at 5th and Broadway, Los Angeles, California.
"World's largest variety store, with over 1 mile of counter space."


Jericl Cat at https://www.flickr.com/photos/79761301@N00/4644698353

would be cool if L.A. had cable cars--has some real hills. Angels Flight doesn't cut it. Some L.A. hills make Frisco's look puny.

[BifRayRock]

Eastern Outfitters?
Referenced in connection with hardware. (855 S. Main Street.) http://skyscraperpage.com/forum/show...ostcount=13297 Did it morph into a department store or separate entity?



6604 Pacific Blvd. Huntington Park, 1937

http://hdl.huntington.org/cdm/single...coll2/id/30756












Eastern? What Eastern? (Too bad the impossible-to-miss sign is gone. Bet the Pidgeons miss it too.)


Contemporary
GoogleStreetView

[BifRayRock]

Garval Super Service. Intersection of "GARvey" Ave. and "VALley" Blvd.? The number "1101" seems to belie this. Could it have been missing a digit or was it renumbered? (11934 Garvey Ave. is Five Points Shopping Center near Gar and Val.) Could it have become a Mobil station - for a while?

1935
http://hdl.huntington.org/cdm/single...coll2/id/29890

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

Unknown intersection in El Monte CA. (Los Angeles County)


eBay

Originally Posted by HossC

Knowing that Pep Boys is still in business, I Googled them to see if they were still in El Monte. I got an address of 11937 E Valley Boulevard, El Monte, which is near the insection with Garvey Avenue. Although things have changed a little, I'd say we have a match.


GSV

Here's a 1980 aerial view of the intersection. I'm guessing that e_r's picture is earlier than that, but this is considerably clearer than the '60s and '70s images, and the buildings don't change much.


Historic Aerials

[Lorendoc]

Originally Posted by HossC

Is it that the 1933 pictures show two-way traffic on both sides of the streetcar tracks?

2 dry martinis and a rare Porterhouse for HossC

I drive that stretch of SMB every day. I can't imagine the chaos that two-way traffic on each roadway would cause if in effect now. I wonder if the switch was covered by the newspapers. It certainly would today - a few years ago the mayor and one of the county supervisors proposed to make Olympic one-way westbound and Pico one way eastbound from downtown to the Westside, and it was in the papers for days, and not in a good way.

[oldstuff]

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

We've visited the Inglewood Santa Fe Station on NLA, but I don't believe we've seen these two slides dated 1966 and 1969.


First, 1966.


http://www.ebay.com/itm/2-Original-S...UAAOSwLpdW8wlH

What would have been stored in that orange wooden box?




And in 1969. (obviously the lighting is quite different)


http://www.ebay.com/itm/2-Original-S...UAAOSwLpdW8wlH



Here's the station with a bright red train engine next to it.
http://skyscraperpage.com/forum/show...ostcount=29324


4 black and white negs.
http://www.snowcrest.net/photobob/sfm20.html

I think the orange thing is a dumpster. The station looks like it was designed by the same person who did the railroad station in Santa Paula ( Ventura County) The horizontal boards running along the walls are located on the bottom part of the walls here and at the top in Santa Paula but the design in very much the same.

[ethereal_reality]

Originally Posted by Lorendoc

This photo was taken in 1959. The guy in the white suit was Supervisor Dorn. The guy in the black suit was an important person of another stripe: Frank "One Eye" DeSimone, LA Mafia boss and successor to Jack Dragna. He was being arraigned, 2 years later, for participating in the famous Apalachin mob conference in upstate New York. (I guess he was actually being arraigned for contempt because he refused to testify before a federal grand jury.) I'd be interested in learning why he was being escorted by Supervisor Dorn.

Here is Supervisor Dorn opening the first section of the Antelope Valley Freeway on August 23, 1963. (in the background is the Sand Canyon overpass)


http://www.scvhistory.com/wp-content...301a_large.jpg

This first section of the Antelope Valley Freeway stretched from (east of) Solemint Junction in Canyon Country to Red Rover Mine Road in Acton.




In this 2nd photo, a couple of sour-faced "hosts" stand on the right.


http://www.scvhistory.com/wp-content...301b_large.jpg

Miss Antelope XIX is wishing she were elsewhere.
___



side-note:

That 'cross' you see on the hill is actually a utility pole (as seen in this un-cropped detail)


detail

Earn your sleuth credentials:

By using that thumbprint, tell me who developed the film.



'noirisher' working on challenge

_

[ethereal_reality]

Originally Posted by tovangar2

My beloved Lighthouse Cafe, a seeming beacon of dangerous glamour in my 50s, Hermosa Beach childhood.

https://federicodecalifornia.files.w...01/lighth1.jpg

Is this the right place T2? It looks like an intriguing place.

(it also looks vaguely familiar.
__

update:
It's mentioned with an especially 'noirish' photo in this excellent post on Hermosa Beach. (by none other than T2 back in 2012)
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...ostcount=10675

[jg6544]

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

It appears my computer 'glitches' have subsided.



Did you all happen to notice the cable car being towed in the 1950 Shriners Parade slide-

Well here's a better look........as it travels past the J.J. Newberry Co. Store.


http://www.cable-car-guy.com/images/524la1950.jpg

-note the speaker perched on top.... (I just looked at the color slide again...yep, the speaker is visible there too)






J. J. Newberry
Located at 5th and Broadway, Los Angeles, California.
"World's largest variety store, with over 1 mile of counter space."


Jericl Cat at https://www.flickr.com/photos/79761301@N00/4644698353

I noticed that it's from the old Washington-Jackson line that used to run all the way out to Pacific Heights and was taken out (sadly) in the 1950s. There are still traces of the tracks around.

[tovangar2]

That Newberry's was still open in the 70s. A then-friend told me she got her first job, decades before, in the basement Pet Dept.


........................................................................................................................


Yes e_r, that's the Lighthouse

The current film uses the back (parking lot side). There's no parking in the front anymore. That block of Pier Ave is now a pedestrian mall.

[ethereal_reality]

Originally Posted by tovangar2

The current film uses the back (parking lot side). There's no parking in the front anymore. That block of Pier Ave is now a pedestrian mall.

Oh, now I get it. Thanks for the explanation.



To be honest I didn't know the Lighthouse Cafe was still standing, let alone in business!


https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaura...alifornia.html

I see the larger building next to it is now a hostel. Do you remember the name of it back in the day when it was a hotel? (shown below, next door to the 'Lighthouse')


trippingthroughthegenepool.blogspot

I believe the name is about the curved marquee, but it's impossible to read.

[HossC]

Thanks for looking for the "Crippled Children School", e_r, and to tovangar2 for the follow-up on the Straub Case Study house. I don't think the Getty Library has any Julius Shulman photographs of that house.

We're staying in Pasadena for today's Julius Shulman post. It's "Job 291: Matcham and Heitschmidt, Wetherby Kayser Shoe Store (Pasadena, Calif.),1948". Let's hope that the Pasadena dentist upstairs led a happier life than the one in Beaudry's noirish tale from yesterday!



The name of the building is on the front, but doesn't appear in either exterior shot. Note the number "480" over the door in the shot above. I've left a bit of the border on the photo below to show more of the Florsheim blade sign.



They must've been busy - look at all of those chairs. The number "476" is above the door on the left at the back (front?).



The last photo shows the hosiery bar. Does every one of those boxes contain a pair of shoes?



All from Getty Research Institute

I found a 1956 newspaper which listed Wetherby-Kayser Shoes at 476 E Colorado Street (which ties in with the first interior shot). Did the streets get renumbered when the name changed, because the store couldn't have been at 476 E Colorado Boulevard? Does anyone remember this shoe store?

[Martin Pal]

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

Mike Lyman's 'Flight Deck' is no stranger to NLA; here are three slides we haven't seen.
#2

eBay
__

Do we have any idea what year(s) these slides may have been taken? THe cars in the above photo a clue, perhaps?

[ethereal_reality]

Ever wonder what you'd see out of your window if you were staying in a south facing room of the Statler Hilton in 1962?


http://www.ebay.com/itm/Original-196...8AAOSw5cNYSf8~

Anyone who follows NLA knows that I have a soft-spot for rooftop signs....so imagine my delight when I found this slide a couple nights ago on eBay.




The next slide shows the old overall factory (the 1920 Brownstein-Louis Building) on Potter Park Avenue!


http://www.ebay.com/itm/Original-196...4AAOSw2xRYSf7c


And in the distance, take a look at that massive 'New Pool' sign on the Hotel Figueroa. (close-up below)



detail


Promise me you'll revisit Flyingwedge' post on this area. It covers the 'overall factory (with photos from 1929! and Baist maps),
and is without a doubt one of the top ten posts on the thread.
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...ostcount=12197




For this next slide, the Statler Hilton hotel guest must have leaned out the window and aimed their camera eastward, down 7th Street.


http://www.ebay.com/itm/Original-196...YAAOSwojRYSf4b

The large building on the right is obviously Baker Bros., but my eye is drawn to the red neon on the opposite side of the street.
If I'm not mistaken, that's the Fine Arts Building.

Does anyone recall why it would have red neon on both sides of the entrance in 1962?


here's a closer look.

detail



Today I found another 1962 slide, probably taken by the same tourist.

"35 mm color slide 1962 * Los Angeles CA LA Basin Smog * Kodachrome"


http://www.ebay.com/itm/35-mm-color-...UAAOSwnHZYUBBt

I'm not sure where this would have been taken. (& that looks more like fog than smog to me) -

__

[Martin Pal]

Originally Posted by tovangar2

Has anyone seen "La La Land"? Rotten Tomatoes gives it a positive 94% critics & 90% audience rating.

The filmmakers made an effort to hit some of our landmarks (although that ploy didn't save Gangster Squad), including my beloved Lighthouse Cafe,
a seeming beacon of dangerous glamour in my 50s, Hermosa Beach childhood:


black label films / youtube


Filmed in Cinemascope & Technicolor

The trailer is here if you want to play a quick game of Spot the Location.

LA Curbed has a map showing some of the locations if you get stuck.

I saw "La La Land" on November 18th! I got the soundtrack yesterday. I really liked the film and will see it again.

Speaking of Gangster Squad, Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone were in that, too.

Thanks for the LA Curbed location link. The movie makes great use of the Griffith observatory, even recreating an exact moving car shot from Rebel Without a Cause.