noirish Los Angeles

[cantoneseboyLA]

Originally Posted by sopas ej

Hehe you would think a place called "KLYT" would be for the ladies, huh? But no, it's for the guys.

I looked it up online; this is from a 1967 phone book, which would suggest that at this point, the Palace Turkish Baths had been around since at least 1905:

from gaytubs.com


Here's a contemporary photo of 132 E. 4th Street courtesy of Google Earth:


KLYT is in the building that says "Charmed Fashion." It's the door on the left. Makes me wonder what this area looked like in 1905.

I remembered this KLYT place. I used to go there since late 1970's when I wanted a shower, steam bath, and a cheap place to sleep when I'm in LA. I'm not gay, I ignored the patrons. From the clerk who told me, the Palace Turkish baths was started on 1907, same time when the building was built. The building is called The Graham Hotel, its entrance is on 130 E. Fourth, a few doors west of the bath's 132 entrance. I heard from the desk clerk that Rock Hudson used to go there in the 1940's. Then the property was sold in early 1980's to a Taiwanese, he retrofitted the building for earthquake. He found out I repaired old wood windows, so I fixed some for him. Many of them in rear was replaced in the 1940's with steel casements. Recently, by bicycle, I went to the hotel's entrance, very much time warp, original 1907 woodwork remained, very noirish. The apts are always rented full. Now I go there occasionally for a steam bath, and the area has a new building across the street for loft living where it once was a paved parking lot. Time will tell the area will be safe again.

[GaylordWilshire]

Various Brown Derbys (and lots of early '50s Cadillacs with the odd Kaiser and Nash) are featured in a great clip found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=9c3UoPZyFHc....


And from another vintage clip at http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=edRplPjE55c...

[rbpjr]

The building behind the "Warner Bros." building dome and to the right looks very modern for this time...can anyone I.D. it?

[Handsome Stranger]

Originally Posted by GaylordWilshire

Robert Inman

Said to be an original color shot of the Simons at Wilshire and Fairfax. Gorgeous.

Agreed! Still, I wish I could get my hands on a better copy of the image. The color badly needs balancing.

cantoneseboyLA, I found your info about the bathhouse interesting. I remember driving by it several years ago. For a kid from the suburbs like me, the neighborhood was frankly terrifying. Not sure if I'd have the nerve to visit it even now. Besides, there is an abundance of very nice (and probably much safer) Korean spas just west of downtown that serve nicely when one needs a good soak.

[GaylordWilshire]

Empress of Dress

Empress of Dress

The Botiller mansion at 9481 Sunset, Beverly Hills, under construction in 1928 and now. The Botillers were an old Southland family, but by all accounts the house was the best thing about them. For some reason the family semi-adopted Loretta Young's brother, who lived here for a time. A later owner was bigshot entertainment lawyer Neil McCarthy (grandfather of actress Sharon Gless, for whose family there is a street named in East L.A.--more early-Los Angeles connections). One of his wives complained in the '60s that there was too much traffic noise from Sunset.... and now the owners are the controversial Resnicks of Pom juice and Fiji water (totally not "green", no matter how they spin it) notoriety. Opinions on the current chatelaine vary, but perhaps so they did of Marie Antoinette of a previous Petit Trianon. (I bet Marie, for all her cluelessness, was less full of herself.) Anyway, I'm sure the windows are never opened, so traffic noise isn't a problem. The Resnicks apparently spent a fortune replicating the original fence--though it doesn't look quite the same to me--and bringing it out to Sunset. But then we have the great leveler... garbage. Just like the humblest bungalow elsewhere in town, the grander than grand Resnicks have to put up with wheelybins in front of the house.


Google Street View

Google Street View

Ugly Angel


Btw, Mrs. Botiller mentioned above was the daughter of Susanna Bernard, who built another landmark palace in L.A....

Originally Posted by GaylordWilshire

...the landmark Bernard house still stands at #845:

LAPL


"Floyd B. Bariscale" has documented it here:

http://bigorangelandmarks.blogspot.c...-carriage.html

[Bilbo]

If anyone has a business directory from the late 1930s would they kindly have a look under "haberdasheries" and see if Wilkerson's "Sunset House Haberdashery and barber shop" is shown and - if so - the address of Sunset House - I'm having difficulty tracing the business location

thank you - Bilbo

[GaylordWilshire]

Los Angeles Times January 3, 1938

Amazingly, the building is still there:

Google Street View

Google Street View


ancestry.com

Rothschild and Drucker appear to have been in the process of moving on in early 1938; the above ad is from the 1944 Beverly Hills directory; Drucker was still listed as being associated with Rothschild's in 1955.... In his Black Dahlia Files, Donald Wolfe claims that Drucker's shop was a bookie joint.

It's a bit confusing as written, but the following is from http://www.beverlyhillsbarbers.com/#!history:

[Fab Fifties Fan]

Originally Posted by Bilbo

If anyone has a business directory from the late 1930s would they kindly have a look under "haberdasheries" and see if Wilkerson's "Sunset House Haberdashery and barber shop" is shown and - if so - the address of Sunset House - I'm having difficulty tracing the business location

thank you - Bilbo

Bilbo,

I have looked through my collection of old L.A., Hollywood and Beverly Hills telephone directories and found nada.

~Jon Paul

[ethereal_reality]

I was shocked by the proximity of this community pool to the freeway and the exit ramp. After looking at the photo for a while
I noticed the top of a car in the bushes to the right and realized the entrance ramp was right behind the shrubbery.
Imagine the toxic air these kids were breathing (or the possibility of an out-of-control car careening into the pool).


Echo Park Pool July 9, 1958

http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/search...=1327543743294






below: Here's the pool today still 'smooshed' into that small area. The actually pool looks like it's in disrepair.


google street view






below: The pool house is a nice structure....understated, but nice.


google street view




below: The zig-zag decoration around the doorway mimics the grill-work in the window.


google street views





below: At first I thought the pool house was a simple one story structure..but from this view you can see it's much more substantial.



google street view






below: The big surprises are on the freeway side of the building. There are two stories with stairs leading down to a row of arches.
Also there's one of those El Camino Real Bells right along side the Hollywood Freeway.


google street view


below: I looked at the sign half hidden by the palm....it said Ped UC. I thought it might mean that there's a pedway underneath the freeway.


google street view




below: Sure enough, there is a pedway.....in the center of the photo with the red bougainvilleas.


google street view




below: A closer look at the bougainvilleas wreathed pedway.


google street view




below: I was a bit surprised because there is an open pedway a few hundred feet away at Laveta Terrace (lower right).


google street view



below: Laveta Terrace pedway.


google street view




below: Surprisingly there are four different ways for pedestrians to cross the Hollywood Freeway in this photo.
The two underground pedways mentioned above, the sidewalk along Glendale Blvd at the overpass, AND a pedestrian bridge at the far left.



google street view



below: The pedestrian bridge west of Echo Park Pool at Belmont Ave. (the little bungalow looks very cozy)


google street view




below: The southern portal of the Belmont pedestrian bridge over the Hollywood Freeway.


google street view


Glancing at a map, I would have guessd that there was only one way to cross the Hollywood Freeway in this small area (the sidewalk under the overpass)...so it was a nice surprise to discover the other three alternatives.

_____





Here are a couple more images of the freeway side of the Echo Park Pool House showing the stairs that lead down to the archways.



google street view




below: The arches can be glimpsed below the guard rail.


google street view


OK...I'm done beating this dead horse.

____

[PHX31]

/\GREAT post. It's quirky things like the pool/building/freeway/ped crossings that make LA immensely interesting to me.

[BDiH]

The building at 6715 Sunset Boulevard was home to Billy Wilkerson's Hollywood Reporter for many years, including the time when he went around the corner to the Top Hat cafe on Highland and discovered Judy Turner cutting class from Hollywood High School and launched her career as Lana Turner.

[ethereal_reality]

Originally Posted by andrew_scot

Fireplace & Inglenook in lobby, North Wall

Thanks for allowing us a glimpse inside the Young Apartments andrew_scot.
I like the fact that the lobby has an inglenook.....and that fireplace is very unique...it looks like it was hand-wrought.

___

[ethereal_reality]

'El Alisal'....the stone house built by Charles Fletcher Lummis in the Highland Park area.


http://photos.lapl.org/carlweb/jsp/F...olNumber=51005





below: Here's a map of the Highland Park area. (downtown Los Angeles is just off the map to the southwest)


http://highlandparklosangeles.com/wp...os-angeles.jpg

[3940dxer]

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

I was shocked by the proximity of this community pool to the freeway and the exit ramp. After looking at the photo for a while I noticed the top of a car in the bushes to the right and realized the entrance ramp was right behind the shrubbery.
Imagine the toxic air these kids were breathing (or the possibility of an out-of-control car careening into the pool).

____

I liked your post about this little known building and surroundings...another odd little spot I've passed a thousand times with no notice or thought. I'll have to stop there some time when I'm in the area for a closer look.

Just a few blocks north is that weird intersection where Glendale Blvd. passes beneath Sunset, with no reasonable way of turning from one street to the other. It inconvenienced me many times when taking the surface streets out of downtown and I could never understand why the intersection was built that way...until seeing the answer mu ch earlier in this thread. (It allowed cross traffic between two busy street car lines.)


http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showth...86986&page=115

Also (kinda rambling now) you reminded me of a topic I want to cover one day. In Echo Park and many other hilly L.A. neighborhoods there all sorts of old public staircases, on narrow public rights of way. Most are in decent repair and are still open to the public. They pass by interesting back yards and other private, otherwise unseen areas in older neighborhoods. They were built as short cuts for school children, people going to local markets, folks walking to bus and street car stops, etc. A lot of these are nice old wooden stairways, some are decorated with art, plaques, etc. Several are hundreds of steps long with great views, some are extremely steep. I don't think they've ever been mentioned here but many are quite interesting, and I'll definitely post about them some time.

This is a photo I found of one of my favorites, the Eldred Street staircase in the Mt. Washington / Garvanza area. This is a long older stairway that connects the west end of Eldred Street to Cross Avenue. It happens to be to the left of the "50" of the N. Ave. 50 label, on the left edge of the blue highlighted area, in e_r's map above. One or two of the houses on the upper section (not seen here) have no street access and can only be reached by the top of this stairway.


http://cambreenotes.com/secret-stairs-of-los-angeles/

[JeffDiego]

Gaylord:
You have outdone yourself. Fascinating photos - the 1916 aerial shot and the Sunset Blvd, mansion,and yes that is a wonderful clip of restaurants.
Thank you.

[FredH]

A couple of days ago, I had never heard of China City. Now that I have read up on it, I find it fascinating.

A little history - When old Chinatown was being torn down in the early 1930's to build Union Station, people realized that a new Chinatown should replace it. One of these persons was Peter SooHoo, who put together a group of Chinese business people and planned to build a new Chinatown on Broadway. Another person was Christine Sterling, who had been the driving force behind the building of the Olivera Street tourist attraction. SooHoo and Sterling could never agree on a plan, so they built competing projects. SooHoo built New Chinatown up on Broadway (which is still there) and Sterling built China City on the block surrounded by Spring, Ord, Main, and Macy streets. China City opened in June, 1938.


LAPL

China City had three entrances. One by the corner of Macy and Main:


LAPL

One a little north on Main:


LAPL

And one around the corner on Ord Street:


LAPL

China City was full of nice shops and restaurants:


LAPL


LAPL


LAPL

They even set up the house from the 1937 hit movie The Good Earth, with actual props from the movie:


LAPl

Everything was going pretty well until February, 1939 when a large portion of the place somehow caught fire and burned down:


LAPL

Boy, that building across the street sure looks familiar...


LAPL

...HOLY CRAP, ITS PHILIPPE'S!


Google Street View

I always assumed that Philippe's was there forever! Wow! A crusty machine shop was in there in 1939.

Anyway, to finish the China City story, they rebuilt the burned out portion and opened again in August, 1939.
They lasted until 1948, when another fire finished them off.
(Sounds like someone was playing a little rough to me.)

[Bilbo]

Thanks G_W for the shots of Sunset House - I was looking for something slightly grander - the name implies something bigger - my previous internet searches kept bringing up Sunset Tower - so I thought the House may have been a smaller version of that.

Thanks to to FFF and BDiH for your input - I have just read "L A Noir" which indicates that Mickey Cohen had a haberdashery shop - Cohen must have known Wilkerson - so could Cohen's shop be the same one ?

[3940dxer]

FredH, thanks for your fantastic and intriguing post about New China City, I really enjoyed it. And great work recognizing the 1001 N. Alameda building pre-Phillipe's! I wouldn't have noticed that, but glad you did. I think you just inspired me to have lunch there today.

Now, someone needs to do a little Phillipe's research! I wonder if we can dig up some old photos or stories about the former locations -- apparently there were several.

Thanks again Fred, really enjoyed your post.

[jg6544]

There is a thread "Here in Los Angeles I have no car" on the City Photos A-M board that is worth a special visit for anyone who loves L. A. as I do. Nothing noirish about it, but simply beautiful photos of our beautiful city.

[GaylordWilshire]

Originally Posted by Bilbo

Thanks G_W for the shots of Sunset House - I was looking for something slightly grander - the name implies something bigger - my previous internet searches kept bringing up Sunset Tower - so I thought the House may have been a smaller version of that.

Thanks to to FFF and BDiH for your input - I have just read "L A Noir" which indicates that Mickey Cohen had a haberdashery shop - Cohen must have known Wilkerson - so could Cohen's shop be the same one ?

Mickey's shop wasn't the same one--his Michael's Exclusive Haberdashery (and later, but not for long, the Mickey Cohen Exclusive Haberdashery) was at 8804 Sunset. His henchman Hooky Rothman was shot to death here on August 18, 1948.





Ad: Los Angeles Times January 2, 1950

pics: LAPL