Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark L
Wow. Thank you all for the several enjoyable hours I've spent going through this thread.
At the Central Library the other day I found my Great Grandfather's 1918 WW1 draft registration. At the time he lived at 212 S. Grand Ave. As far as I can tell, that was roughly where the Colburn School is today (several feet higher, obviously).
There are plenty of pictures of the Melrose one block north, but I can find none of that general n/e corner area at 2nd and Grand.
Any chance someone has one from that period? I would love to see a picture of where dear old Daniel Webster McMillan and his wife May lived.
Thanks again for this great collection of photos and info you all have contributed to.
Mark
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Hey Mark, you still there? Sorry it took me so long to reply to your question but I've been away from this thread for a long time. Well, maybe you'll come back and check it once and a while...
212 South Grand was the Frontenac, an upscale hotel & apartments--the tall, white, long building in the background, on the east side of Grand, in the image that ethereal_reality posted.
It was a magnificent place in the teens. It had been opened in October of '05 and and'd been erected by O. E. Engstrum, who put up only the finest establishments. It was 60x145' on a 110x165' lot. Engstrum left 35' to the south to give plenty of light and sun to the Frontenac, and from its roof garden, four stories above the crest of Bunker Hill, it commanded the finest views over the city. It cost 50k to build, which was a fortune then (and while that's only 1.2 million adjusted to our dollars, that's not adjusted to what it takes to build quality work!)...
Its 190 apartments, all two to four rooms with bath, were furnished with $35,000 worth of furniture. In 1909 it sold for $200,000. Now, if you wanna talk Bunker Hill downturn, in a 1939 WPA census, the property was valued at $60,000.
The pensioners were "relocated" (sounds like they were put into camps) and it was demolished in 1962. In an article from January of that year (which states that, by 1970, the Bunker Hill project would be completed, covered in thirty and forty story towers for urban work and living), "Under the agency's demolition program, the latest building to go is the old Frontenac Hotel Apartment, a four-story boxlike structure at 212 S Grand Ave. Its tenants were cleared out not long ago and wrecking crews moved in. Now daylight shows through the upper floors where workmen are tearing at is insides."
Here's an image from aught-nine, and one from the mid-late '50s.
I think there are so few pictures of it because it was across the street from the Dome, and everyone loved to shoot
that, turning their back on the poor Frontenac. Its exact location, should you ever want to visit, was 120' south of Second St. Roughly between the entrance of Coulbourn and MOCA.
Now, here's a shot from the glory days of Bunker Hill "gone to seed," 1953:
The Frontenac can be seen in basically every ubiquitous shot of BH taken from the top of City Hall (uh, except for those after 1962, of course). In this shot, that intersection at the bottom left is Olive and Second, and Second runs up to Grand. And there sits the unmistakable Dome. Across from the Dome, and a little ways over to the left there, that big guy is the Frontenac.
Anyway, that's where Daniel and May were, on top of the world!
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I see you used to live near that newsstand and Numbers Bar. The construction site is actually now done; it's a mixed-use development with residences and ground-floor retail. It's actually a nice development, in my opinion. 
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