noirish Los Angeles

[belmont bob]

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

Figueroa Street looking north near the vicinity of Sunset Boulevard circa 1950.


http://blog.hemmings.com/index.php/tag/los-angeles/

I'm a bit confused by this photograph. The cars seem to literally disappear in the distance.
Is the Hollywood Freeway lurking just ahead devouring all this Figueroa traffic?

I am also surprised by the number of lanes on Figueroa. Five north and two south for the afternoon commute.
I didn't realize they were manipulating traffic lanes to such an extent back in 1950.
__

Way back in the early ‘50s one, auto manufacture had a design that people equated with the back looking like the front. See if you can identify the car in this photo that appears to be going the wrong way.

[belmont bob]

Originally Posted by GaylordWilshire

No info in the ornament, although in the vintage photo above I can see the diamond shape that's still on Diamond Walnut packaging.


LAT



The new building was announced in the Times on February 1, 1920... not sure why it was delayed, although a little incident in the warehouse can't have helped...


LAT

has anyone found views of this before or after? The whole thing is kind of nuts if you ask me.

[GaylordWilshire]

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

Figueroa Street looking north near the vicinity of Sunset Boulevard circa 1950.


http://blog.hemmings.com/index.php/tag/los-angeles/

I'm a bit confused by this photograph. The cars seem to literally disappear in the distance.
Is the Hollywood Freeway lurking just ahead devouring all this Figueroa traffic?

I am also surprised by the number of lanes on Figueroa. Five north and two south for the afternoon commute.
I didn't realize they were manipulating traffic lanes to such an extent back in 1950.
__

Originally Posted by belmont bob

Way back in the early ‘50s one, auto manufacture had a design that people equated with the back looking like the front. See if you can identify the car in this photo that appears to be going the wrong way.

BB, are you referring to the Studebaker, sixth car up in the third lane from the right? I knew that (larger) view looked familiar-- here's part of one of sopas's posts from a couple of years ago:

Originally Posted by sopas ej

Rush hour, somewhere near Sunset and Figueroa, 1949

LIFE

There was a period prior to and during the construction of LA's freeways, when reversible lanes were used on major surface streets during rush hour.

LIFE

[Chuckaluck]

1938 - 4530 Loma Vista Avenue, Vernon





LApl

[GaylordWilshire]

LAT

[ethereal_reality]

Originally Posted by GaylordWilshire

LAT

all those walnuts immediately brought this to mind....

"It May Look Like a Walnut" episode of the Dick Van Dyke Show

http://www.freepresshouston.com/film...van-dyke-show/

one of my favorite episodes! -the power of pop culture I guess-
__

[GaylordWilshire]

LAPL/GSV


735 Broad Ave, Wilmington. Top photo dated March 23, 1940 by the LAPL. But the cop car is a Ford.





Great memory, ER. Wasn't this a dream sequence?

[ethereal_reality]

Widney Hall, the oldest building on the USC campus.


http://www.flickriver.com/photos/7294653@N07/tags/usc/





below: Widney Hall circa 1880 showing its initial Italianate design


http://www.flickr.com/photos/7294653@N07/1456123509/



below: Widney Hall in 1903. (addition of a roof-top flagpole)


http://waterandpower.org/museum/Early_Views_of_USC.html







below: at this point in time (1915) the original porch is gone. (as well as the flagpole)


http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb....n%201915).html






below: Widney Hall with a later porch and addition (both did not survive)


http://www.flickr.com/photos/7294653@N07/1456123519/

for more information on Widney Hall please go to
http://bigorangelandmarks.blogspot.c...dney-hall.html






google aerial
__

[GaylordWilshire]

A few more Widney variations...





LAPLx3/Drawing: Water & Power

[tovangar2]

Originally Posted by sopas ej

Raymond Chandler cameo in "Double Indemnity"
• Video Link

Thank you so much sopas ej, that had never come to my attention before :-)
A real treat for me.

Does anyone know the story on the set/location (?) shown in the above screen grab?

.....................................................................

I think the decorative element on two sides of the California Walnut Growers Assoc (a cooperative, rather like Sunkist) Building tower must be glazed terra cotta, not paint, e_r. The vividness hasn't varied through time.

It cost $250K in 1921 on a $45K lot. Loopnet currently pegs it at $6.7 million. It looks like it was built to last, and has:

http://imageevent.com/misterernest/s...uzepubb.frog_s

1930s:

http://www.rurdev.usda.gov/rbs/pub/jan99/1930s.html

Curbed Los Angeles reports on the building's lofting here: http://la.curbed.com/tags/the-walnut
It's to be called "The Walnut".

And thank you GW for the article on the previous building's collapse (oh, if only cameras had been rolling!). Unforgettable. Do you know anything about the clean up? Were the nuts saved? I hope the building was insured and that Mr Frazen made a successful recovery (wouldn't be near as funny otherwise)

......................................................................


We needed a little comic relief on this anniversary (http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...ostcount=13199) of the St Francis dam tragedy (the third of Mulholland's dams to fail) two years after it was built. Mulholland didn't lose his job as Chief Engineer over it (that the city was aware of the dam's danger prior to its collapse may explain his retention). Mulholland retired in '29 aged 74, although he kept his offices and was retained and paid as Chief Consulting Engineer. He died in 1935. Neither the St Francis Dam nor Mulholland's prior engineering of the double hoodwinking of both the Owen's Valley farmers and the citizens of Los Angeles have impacted his public legend much (going by what my kids were taught in school). His cronies successfully circled the wagons around him (and themselves).

The Mulholland Memorial Fountain, just one of the memorials to Mulholland, built five years after Mulholland's death by one of LA's famous Committees of powerful businessmen and civic leaders:

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

The St Francis Dam victims (sources cite as many as 600. Some bodies were found in the ocean as far south as the Mexican border), mostly poor workers of Mexican ancestry, are buried in an unmarked, mass grave at Ivy Lawn Memorial Park in Ventura County.

Collecting the dead at Harry Carey Ranch:

ucla/islandora

The St Francis Dam probably would have collapsed earlier but the water level was low much of the time because of the continued dynamiting of the Los Angeles Aqueduct by saboteurs. The dam was back at full capacity the night it collapsed. The last attack on the Aqueduct was in 1976, the same year someone tried (and failed) to blow up the Mulholland Fountain.

[ethereal_reality]

photo and comment by KevinW


I've circled the large building that stands near the intersection of Manchester & Sepulveda.




close-up from a dif. photo (I thought it was the same at first)







The building is the old 1,248 seat Loyola Theater.
(the theater opened on Oct. 3, 1946 and closed in 1982, the year I moved to Los Angeles)


http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fb...type=1&theater






http://books.google.com/books?id=Fma...iAdSPUXA&w=575





a beautiful color noir

http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/490





The theater as it appears today.

gsv

As I was looking at the view above I noticed something a bit strange. Between the two ihop signs there appears to be a large statue
of a man and a horse.





I swung the google-car around to get a better view.


gsv

Sure enough, there it is by the entrance to the ihop...and it's really huge.



here's another view. notice that there is a light to illuminate the statue

gsv

Can anyone (perhaps you KevinW) tell me what stood on this corner before the ihop. I'm pretty sure ihop didn't erect the statue (I believe the stone on the base was added later to match the stone on the ihop)

-H E L P me solve the statue mystery-

__

[GaylordWilshire]

Dear Old Hollywood


Re the location of "Pacific All Risk Insurance":

Originally Posted by tovangar2

Does anyone know the story on the set/location (?) shown in the above screen grab?

I think I read somewhere that in the script are detailed directions to the set designer about how the space should be built...not sure where I read that though. I thought maybe it was "Dear Old Hollywood," but I didn't see it there just now. The script might be online-- I think the Chandler cameo shot looks like a set, although the big picture I found at top looks pretty realistic...then again it's pretty fuzzy.

[Mayor Shaw]

The pictures of the Loyola brought back some memories for me. I remember going there as a little kid with my siblings to see the Beatles movie "Hard Days Night". I say to see it because from the minute it started until well after it was over, the screaming girls made it impossible to hear anything being said or sung. I'll never forget my first hand brush with Beatlemania. I'm sorry to say ER I don't remember the statue

[GaylordWilshire]

Well, that was easy--the "Pacific All Risk" set directions are right on the first page of the Double Indemnity script online (IMSDb). I supposed this could be instructions on how to decorate an existing building, but the use of the term "set designer" rather than "set decorator" may be a bit of a clue.



A-8 TWELFTH FLOOR INSURANCE OFFICE

(Note for set-designer: Our Insurance Company occupies the
entire eleventh and twelfth floors of the building. On the
twelfth floor are the executive offices and claims and sales
departments. These all open off a balcony which runs all the
way around. From the balcony you see the eleventh floor below:
one enormous room filled with desks, typewriters, filing
cabinets, business machines, etc.)

Neff comes through the double entrance doors from the
reception room. The twelfth floor is dark. Some light shines
up from the eleventh floor. Neff takes a few steps then holds
on to the balcony railing and looks down.

....


A-10 NEFF

Moves away from the railing with a faint smile on his face,
and walks past two or three offices (CAMERA WITH HIM) towards
a glass door with number twenty-seven on it and three names:
HENRY B. ANDERSON, WALTER NEFF, LOUIS L. SCHWARTZ. Neff opens
the door.



Love the description of the opening:


A-1 LOS ANGELES - A DOWNTOWN INTERSECTION It is night, about two o'clock, very light traffic. At the left and in the immediate foreground a semaphore traffic signal stands at GO. Approaching it at about thirty miles per hour is a Dodge 1938 coupe. It is driven erratically and weaving a little, but not out of control. When the car is about forty feet away, the signal changes to STOP. Car makes no attempt to stop but comes on through.

Originally Posted by GaylordWilshire

hiddenlosangeles.com

[tovangar2]

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

a beautiful color noir

http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/490

One of my sisters knew the developer who rehabbed the Loyola into medical offices. He was super annoyed that he'd been forced to retain the facade and pylon (but not, alas, the neon). We went over one midnight, as soon as we'd heard he was going to gut it, hoping to save something. But when we forced a backdoor (man, I hate to tell you how many times I've been in that situation), we found the wrecking crew had beat us to it. There was nothing left but a shell, the floor littered with rubble. A spooky scene.

There was a great old Italian restaurant on the corner of S Sepulveda and W Manchester Ave before the IHOP. I always wondered if the statue was supposed to portray a particular individual. It's really quite good. I wish I knew who the sculptor was.


gsv



P.S.

Thank you GaylordWilshire for the info on the "Double Indemnity" offices. I was rewatching the film again the other night and got intrigued because the offices are so large and elaborate (which made me think it was a location) but never quite looked real (which made me think it was a set). I hadn't thought about it again until I saw sopas ej's screen grab. The film sure got some mileage out of that set:

Paramount Pictures / netflix

The offices set was miles better than the grocery store. That one was painful.

Paramount Pictures / netflix

Running a red. Not a set :-)

Paramount Pictures / netflix

[KevinW]

[/QUOTE]I swung the google-car around to get a better view.


gsv


Can anyone (perhaps you KevinW) tell me what stood on this corner before the ihop. I'm pretty sure ihop didn't erect the statue (I believe the stone on the base was added later to match the stone on the ihop)

-H E L P me solve the statue mystery-

__[/QUOTE]

I've always wondered what that Horse was myself. If you see the LAX sign up by the iHop sign, you'll see it says "LAX Calvary Chapel". My son always calls it the Cavalry chapel because of the horse.

[GaylordWilshire]

I haven't found a picture of the corner when it was a bank, but apparently that's a sculpture by Bill Megaw of the Millard Sheets studio.

Check out the story here.

[Albany NY]

.

[ethereal_reality]

Originally Posted by GaylordWilshire

I haven't found a picture of the corner when it was a bank, but apparently that's an unsung Millard Sheets sculpture at Sepulveda and Manchester.

Excellent information GaylordWilshire! Thank you.



http://adamarenson.com/2012/09/milla...and-sepulveda/
__

[Flyingwedge]

I swung the google-car around to get a better view.


gsv


Can anyone (perhaps you KevinW) tell me what stood on this corner before the ihop. I'm pretty sure ihop didn't erect the statue (I believe the stone on the base was added later to match the stone on the ihop)

-H E L P me solve the statue mystery-

__[/QUOTE]

I've always wondered what that Horse was myself. If you see the LAX sign up by the iHop sign, you'll see it says "LAX Calvary Chapel". My son always calls it the Cavalry chapel because of the horse.[/QUOTE]

# # #

I remember when Imperial Bank was on the SE corner of Sepulveda and Manchester (but I didn't know the story behind the statue, so thanks GW!). Imperial Bank moved across the street to the NE corner when an office building was built there around the mid-70s, replacing an old Italian restaurant, perhaps the one tovangar2 remembers (Was it Tony's?).

I believe I was at the last movie ever shown at the Loyola Theater, which I remember as The Who's Quadrophenia. The promoter insisted that the sound was in something he called "megaquad," although I'm not sure there really was such a thing. I remember my college roommate being quite incredulous.

Westchester's other theater, the Paradise, was also converted into an office building.