In all our exploration of Egyptian-revival-style buildings, has this one been discussed? I got interested in it when researching
London House and environs:
cc pierce/usc dl (detail)
Morgan, Walls and Morgan's great, tomb-like Archive, extending six under ground, was 56 x 76 feet of concrete, brick and steel. It cost $15K:
southwest contractor and manufacturer Aug 20, 1910
vol 5 No. 15
Built on a two-and-a-half-acre plot of rolling farmland, its only neighbor was Hollywood Cemetery (1902). It was the first structure built
on the future site of what-would-become Raleigh Studios. Baist didn't bother with a 1910 map of this area.
The 1914 map shows very little encroachment, although most parcels had been platted:
baist 1914, plate 35 (detail)
Beginnig in 1915, the movie studios started moving in. Douglas Fairbanks rented the Clune Studio from 1919 to 1922, filming "The Mark of Zorro" (1920)
and "The Three Musketeers" (1921), among other films. When Clune refused to sell Fairbanks the studio, he and Pickford moved on :
baist 1921, plate 35 (detail)
The Archive didn't have any signage until 1927, resulting in
noirish rumors about its use. LAT did a little feature that year reassuring everyone
of its benign purpose, enhanced with one of that newspaper's famously murky photos (making it look anything but benign):
LAT 13 Mar 1927
In 1928, the great wooden ice-skating rink (variously known as Glacier Palace, The Winter Garden and Polar Palace) was built
on the NW corner of Van Ness and Clinton, running north to the grounds of the Archive (lasting until consumed by fire in 1963):
The Archive had outlived its usefulness by 1939 and was demolished that same year. In the 11 years that the Archive and the rink coexisted (1928-1939),
they must have made a very strange pair:
LAT 13 Jan 1939