LAPL
This shot of the Alexandria Hotel (John Parkinson, 1906) was taken after the 1907 addition was built on the 5th Street side, but before the Annex (containing the famous Tiffany-glass, sky-lit Palm Court) was added in 1911 on Spring St at the south end of the original building and before the early movie people came to make the Alexandria even more famous. Judging by the decorations, this may have been the notable occasion, very early in the history of the Alexandria, when the Salt Lake City Elks booked the entire hotel.
Parkinson designed what is basically a very restrained edifice but then let loose with some Edwardian-era, Gibson-girl frivolity in the details. The roof line is decorated with a balustrade, fronted by female demi-figures and topped by globe-shaped lights mounted on exceedingly curvy baluster-shaped plinths alternating with fanciful, almost mid-century-modern-looking spires.
Just above the mezzanine level four griffins sit upright. Chains, held fast in each griffin's beak, loop out to the ends of curlicue brackets before dropping down for a couple of feet and ending in very large globe lights.
Many more globe lights, similar in size to those on the roof, project out over the sidewalk just above the ground-floor shop windows, forming a continuous line along both the Spring St and 5th St facades.
It must have been a very pretty and festive sight in the evenings, as one arrived in one's carriage or motorcar, just as it grew dark, especially since all the globe lights on the Alexandria matched the charming street lamps of that era (one streetlamp is pictured in the photo) in both shape and scale, which may have inspired Parkinson's illuminations for the hotel.
All that was before the Alexandria descended into the gritty noir of the Nickel (older Angelenos term for our local Skid Row) and started, so it's said, averaging three deaths a week from suicides, overdoses, murders and drug-deal shoot-outs.
All the illuminations are gone now, as are the spires, and the Spring St streetlamps are of a much more utilitarian design. The lovely bay window, with it charming metalwork, which used to cap the Spring St entrance, together with the cantilevered cover which projected out over the 5th St entrance are gone too. The griffins remain, relieved of their chains, but the one on the corner is trapped behind the uninspired vertical sign added in the 1950's.
The company which accepted the city's financial incentives for the recent rehab of the Alexandria, part of the Spring St gentrification efforts, promised, as part of the deal, to restore both the lobby and the exterior. I guess they forgot.
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1906 griffin trapped behind 1950's sign.
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....wow, very interesting T2.
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