noirish Los Angeles

[ethereal_reality]

Thanks so much for annotating the 1936 aerial HossC. That really helps a lot.
Those are some extremely narrow light 'courts' in the LaSalle and Hotel President. (especially the LaSalle)
Can you imagine opening your window for some fresh air, and getting the sight, sound and smell of your neighbor 4 feet away.
(..cooking sauerkraut again! urgh!)
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[MartinTurnbull]

Looks like it’s going to be a night of glam with singer Abbe Lane headlining at Ciro’s on the Sunset Strip. Having Xavier Cugat as your backup band ain’t too shabby! (1952)

[ethereal_reality]

1928

http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/cdm/co.../id/5917/rec/5

That steel tower at far right caught my eye. What do you think it was for? -as opposed to an ordinary utility pole (as seen in the background).



Taube Plumbing is gone, but there was this little 'windmill' dispensing water. I've never seen one before. -are they common in L.A?


GSV
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[MartinTurnbull]

Originally Posted by CityBoyDoug

ER has some comments on this mural....as does SCB.

Has anybody ever seen a color photo of the NBC foyer? It's such an amazing mural, you think someone would have thought to capture it in color...?

[ethereal_reality]

1933

ebay

[Martin Pal]

Originally Posted by MartinTurnbull

Has anybody ever seen a color photo of the NBC foyer? It's such an amazing mural, you think someone would have thought to capture it in color...?

Umm, well, actually, I've made a few posts about that very question the past few months. I've made some inquiries here and there, but have little information, other than:

--There appears to be very few photographs of the mural at all.

--Someone at L.A. Heritage heard that the mural was saved, but Bruce Torrence at Hollywood Photographs is adamant that it was not.

--The painter of the mural, Ed Turnbull, painted several murals in U.S. cities and you can find color photos of those, mostly because the murals are still there, including the one in the ceiling of the Chrysler Building in NYC, which was painted on canvas and then cemented in place.

--The NBC mural is usually called/titled "The Power of Radio."

--Some folks at L.A.P.L. and L.A. Conservancy have been looking into this a bit, but so far have not come up with anything.

Yes, you would think "someone" would have thought to photograph it in color, at least when the building was to be disassembled, but, come to think of it, the only color photographs of the mural at the back entrance of Bullock's Wilshire I have seen are all modern ones, so who knows?

I've seen lots of tourist photos taken "outside" the NBC Building, perhaps photographs were not allowed to be taken inside the lobby area. I've even been trying to find someone that might have actually seen the mural in person.

I hope you have posted this query on one of your Garden of Allah blog pages somewhere, too. Maybe a reader will come up with something...even another b&w photo of it or a tourist photo, perhaps.

Have you ever done a blog entry about Monkey Island?

[Martin Pal]

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

pre-Hollywood Freeway


Richard Wojcik at https://www.facebook.com/VintageLosAngeles


Richard Wojcik at https://www.facebook.com/VintageLosAngeles

Miss Short seems to have stayed in a great many places.

Great find, e_r, thanks for posting this photo.
______________

Also, I have never seen one of those windmill water dispensers anyplace.

[Martin Pal]

Originally Posted by CityBoyDoug

You can tell this is December because the Christmas decorations are seen ''laying down in the street". See them?

I saw that, but it didn't occur to me that's what they were. I was thinking they were some kind of flag banners that we've seen many times. (Did anyone ever come up with what those were for, or signified? I don't recall.)

[AlvaroLegido]

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

Here's an interesting interior I don't think we've seen before on NLA.


ebay


The address on the postcard places the cafeteria in the green terra-cotta tiled Sun Realty Building, designed by Claude Beelman in 1930.


GSV

but as I look again at the interior of the cafeteria, I believe it's a distinct possibility the postcard predates Beelman's 1930 building.
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I'd say it predates the 1930's because of the setting. This looks japanese : a style that was in fashion (in Europe too) by the 1900/1910's.

[HossC]

A couple more pictures from around the Hotel Clift. The first is dated 1940 and shows the construction of the First Street viaduct over Figueroa. The large white building on the left is the one which previously housed Asher and Ponder. The Clift is on the right.


USC Digital Library

Flooding in 1952. The hotel is the La salle. Both the Clift and the La Salle appear in the City Directories until 1962.


USC Digital Library

[ProphetM]

Originally Posted by Martin Pal

______________

Also, I have never seen one of those windmill water dispensers anyplace.

I grew up in SoCal (Orange County) in the 70s and 80s and they were common enough that I never really thought twice about them, in real life then or in photos here. Like the photo booths they used to have in mall parking lots, one of which was crashed into by Libyan terrorists in Back to the Future. IIRC the water dispensers were most typically in supermarket parking lots.

[GaylordWilshire]

Originally Posted by MartinTurnbull

Looks like it’s going to be a night of glam with singer Abbe Lane headlining at Ciro’s on the Sunset Strip. Having Xavier Cugat as your backup band ain’t too shabby! (1952)

Another shot of Ciro's, this time with the actual Abbe Lane:



From a 2010 post of ER's, which is missing a pic. I thought it my duty to replace it (see below):
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...postcount=2252


unknown

Well, this may not be Mr Muscle Beach 1957, but the caption reads "Muscle Beach 1957." Close enough.

[CityBoyDoug]

Originally Posted by GaylordWilshire

Another shot of Ciro's, this time with the actual Abbe Lane:



From a 2010 post of ER's, which is missing a pic. I thought it my duty to replace it (see below):
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...postcount=2252


unknown

Well, this may not be Mr Muscle Beach 1957, but the caption reads "Muscle Beach 1957." Close enough.

GW, that's a good photo but I found another one on Wiki that appears to be a missing photo from an e_r post.
The sign in this photo also says 1957. I guess 1957 was a good year for Muscle Beach.

Wiki is keeping close tabs on the doings of Noirish LA. I suppose its high time I start minding my P's & Q's. I promise.

Link:https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl...QxiAwAA&iact=c

wiki

[Wig-Wag]

[QUOTE=ethereal_reality;6573301]1928

http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/cdm/co.../id/5917/rec/5

That steel tower at far right caught my eye. What do you think it was for? -as opposed to an ordinary utility pole (as seen in the background).


ER, take another look at google street view but pan up. The tower is still there today and carries high tension power lines.

Cheers,
Jack

[rcarlton]

October 26, 1960 Defendant in $50,000 Auto Injury Suit, Tells of Crash Which Occurred as She Tried to Avoid Another Car. English star Audrey Hepburn, wearing a dark blue jersey suit from Switzerland, and a "French twist" hairdo, today testified in court as defendant in the $50,000 suit brought against her by Actress Joan Lora, who is of Italian descent but played the part of a Spanish dancer in a TV film shown to the jury. This international potpourri was part of a proceedings [sic] which had its origin on July 14, 1958, when Miss Hepburn admittedly rammed her car into one driven by Miss Lora at Santa Monica blvd. and Beverly dr., in Beverly Hills.

Looking at her map and Google Earth I am having a hard time finding the accident site.

LAPL

LAPL

Oops...I was looking at Beverly Blvd not North Beverly Drive.

[CityBoyDoug]

Originally Posted by Krell58

reverse/I can't quite make out what this says (except for 9th Street)




Truck completely destroyed.

....Truck Compt Dest.


Thanks Krell, I wonder how the truck driver ended up.

[HossC]

Originally Posted by rcarlton

Looking at her map and Google Earth I am having a hard time finding the accident site.

LAPL

Here's the intersection as it appears on Google Maps (albeit rotated to match the diagram). There seems to be a white pickup at the location that Ms Hepburn was pointing to.


Google Maps

[GaylordWilshire]

Great to see those huge street maps.

Based on the "french twist"-- it looks more like a beehive to me, not that I really know--it looks like she may have been filming Breakfast at Tiffanys...although I it didn't come out until Oct 1961. Were movies filmed that far ahead back then? Anyway, according to the Times on Oct 29, 1960, Hepburn lost the case, though she only had to pay $6,250.

[HossC]

After I posted a picture of the First Street bridge over Figueroa yesterday, I found some more pictures of that intersection. At least one of the descriptions calls the intersection a "bottleneck", while another is headed "traffic congestion" - the traffic doesn't look too bad to me.

I'm guessing that this first picture was taken from the fire escape of the Asher & Ponder building. The apartment building on the right is the Shasta - the sign near the lamp post says "Singles and Doubles, Newly Renovated, All Outside Rooms". The one on the left took a little more tracking down, but I eventually found the Ten-Eyck Apartments at 111 S Figueroa in the "Furnished Rooms" section of the 1936 CD. The little store on the corner is just visible in the aerial of Figueroa and Second that I posted earlier. Notice that the house on the far side of First Street has been raised up ready for moving.


USC Digital Library

Three years later and the house on First has gone, along with some of the one behind. That area is now part of the employees' parking lot for the DWP building.


USC Digital Library

The truck at the intersection is advertising Barbara Ann Double Flavor Bread - does anyone know what this was? The Barbara Ann Baking Co Ltd was at 3545 Pasadena Avenue. Also, what's the car on the right with the light-colored roof? My knowledge of cars from this era is limited.


Detail of picture above.

A higher angle from a year earlier. This one was probably taken at the same time as the one I posted of Figueroa and Second.


USC Digital Library

A reverse angle of the intersection, also dated as 1936. At the top is the back of the Clift which appears to have a nice garden laid out in its courtyard. The three apartment buildings on First Street between Figueroa and Fremont are the Denver at 912, the Beverly Ann at 916 and the K F at 918.


USC Digital Library

USC has a few pictures of the bridge construction in 1940. It looks like the Shasta and the corner store had to go, but the Norfolk Apartments building is still there.


USC Digital Library

[oldstuff]

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

Little girl with white muff and matching hat, Los Angeles.

ebay

So what is A.D.S. in the distance? -and who needs a muff in L.A.?
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I think that the A.D.S. sign says "Market" underneath.


and...I had that same muff and hat when I was the age of that little girl in the early 50's. When you are that age, and have to wear dresses, you get cold. Besides, It was lovely white rabbit fur and very soft. I loved mine and carried it every chance I got, even if it was not cold.