I used to spend quite a bit of time in Hollywood Memorial Park Cemetery (now Hollywood Forever, originally just Hollywood Cemetery) in the late 70s & early 80s when I lived a block and a half north of it. You'll recall that this area, directly south of the original Hollywood, was, at one time, called "Colegrove".
The land the cemetery occupies was once part of the old Gower Ranch.
John (1820-1880) and
Mary (1823-1904) Gower, originally from Maine, moved first to Hawaii and finally to the Cahuenga Valley in 1869, the first year of Southern California's first Boom. This was very early days for the area. The woman who would found Hollywood, Daeida Wilcox Beveridge, was then an 8-year-old back in Hicksville, Ohio. The Hollywood Hotel would not be built for another 33 years, although Pico House was going up at the Plaza. The Gowers bought a large parcel of land south of what was to become Sunset Blvd and, together with their 5 Maui-born children, grew wheat and barley. The Gowers also invested in modern harvesting equipment, hiring themselves and their equipment out to other farmers from the San Fernando Valley to Long Beach. This is how they met Issac Lankershim, a client. John Gower died in 1880. Mary Gower, 76 in 1899, was happy to sell 100 acres, south of Santa Monica Blvd, to Issac's son James Lankershim and his business partner and brother-in-law, Issac Van Nuys, for their cemetery venture (yes, Mary is buried there. Her husband John was moved from his original resting place to join her. All five of the Gower children are buried near their parents plus the husband of
Hattie, 1862-1951, their youngest child, our own
C. C. Pierce, 1861-1946).
Harvesting farmland in the Valley:
theautry.org
On my visits, I was always intrigued by a small, single-story stone house that seemed to have been caught by one corner in the high wall that surrounds the cemetery. It was beautifully constructed of rough-hewn granite with a contrasting stone outlining the windows and a pantile roof. There was an arched window, on the side closest the wall, with an elaborate stone frame surrounding it. The building is directly north of the lake and its location was obviously, at one time, quite important, not least because it is just across from Griffith J Griffith's memorial, a 40 foot tall obelisk, erected in 1902, the year before he shot his wife and 17 years before he died. (Trust Griffith to snag the most prominent spot in the new cemetery)
hollywoodforever.com
The stone building, inside the wall along Santa Monica Blvd (approx between N Bronson & N Van Ness), was the "pump house", according to a staff member, housing the mechanical plant for the irrigation system. I found that a very unsatisfactory answer. I pointed our the quality of the materials, workmanship and the little building's location. He, exasperated by my questions, exploded, "Lady, I don't know what you're talking about, it's just a
shed!"
find a grave
hollywoodforever
It was only sometime after the advent of the net that I found a copy of the C.C. Pierce photo (dated 1903) below. It turns out the building was the original chapel. When new it had both a covered porch and a dome-topped tower. It formed a charming group with the swing gates and the terrific gatepost, of the same design as the tower, with a plaque reading "Hollywood Cemetery 1902". What a sweet introduction to a country cemetery in the new "Lawn Park" style, a distinct change from the forbidding cemeteries of the past.
usc c.c.pierce collection
The lovely little entrance group only lasted in this form for two years.
The 1904 death of poet and author Eliza Otis brought an unexpected change to Hollywood Cemetery. Her friends commissioned a set of cast-bronze bells from Ms Otis' native Ohio, inscribed with lines from her poems. Foundry staff accompanied the bells to California and supervised the needed changes to the chapel tower and the installation of the bells, also teaching cemetery staff how to play and care for them. The 1905 photo below shows the reworked chapel tower after the installation. (Note the wire net fencing strung along the sidewalk, entwined with climbing roses). The newly-redesigned tower lacked grace. The cohesiveness of the overall design was lost.
hollywoodforever.com (detail)
A fuller view of the reworked, now top-heavy, tower. Such a travesty.
usc c.c. pierce collection
Eliza Otis' widower, Harrison Gray Otis, was not so grief-stricken that he didn't think to engage in a bit of one-upmanship. Otis ordered an obelisk monument for his wife (and himself), very similar in style to Griffith's, and exactly a foot taller.
In the next years Hollywood expanded rapidly. The newly-laid-out streets around the cemetery filled with homes. The house I owned back in the day was built in 1915.
Twenty-six acres of the southern, so-far-unused, 40 acres of the cemetery parcel were sold to Brunton Studios circa 1920. Paramount took this over and expanded east to Van Ness. The SW corner went to RKO. The cemetery kept 62 acres.
Things were not going well back at the chapel tower. The colossal weight of the bells was actually buckling the timber frame of the reworked tower. In 1925 the bells were removed to a large, new, purpose-built bell tower to the right of a new entrance drive further to the west at 6000 Santa Monica Blvd. It was three stories. Offices took up the second floor with a florist at ground level:
wiki
The little chapel's days were numbered. Once charming, it was now looking decidedly homespun and worn, a sorry contrast to the cemetery's lofty, Italian-Renaissance-style Hollywood Cathedral Mausoleum, built in 1919-22 to designs by Pasadena architects Marston & Van Pelt, with smooth white marble and stained glass.
The Chapel of the Psalms was built in 1928, rendering the old chapel obsolete:
lapl
Also in the late 20s, the firm of Morgan, Walls & Clements was engaged to design an administration building to sit on the other side of the drive from the new bell tower. Something luxe was needed to greet visitors and please potential 'residents'. The completed design (Stiles O. Clements was supervising architect) included space for a reception area, offices, and a Masonic lodge (no less) with plenty of room left to host civic and cultural societies and a music school. It went up in 1932.
hollywoodphotographs.com
A 1937 view of the Administration Building from inside the cemetery:
Herman Schultheis / lapl
gsv
As part of the glamorous 1932 make-over of the cemetery, a high wall was built along the street frontages. The wall was set well back on the Santa Monica Blvd side, leaving impressively broad lawns giving the cemetery an air of unassailable exclusivity. It was the building of the wall that took out what was left of the chapel's porch and damaged tower (the swing gates and gate post had already been demolished), leaving a corner of the chapel itself clipped by the wall, saved only because of its usefulness as a shed.
A very shady felon got control of the cemetery a few years later. Such noir and corruption ensued through the following decades that the corpses were actually leaving, Max Factor's among them. More would have left, but the owners were charging a whopping $500 fee per disinterment, at that time the cemetery's only source of income. The newly dead were staying away in droves. Basic maintenance fell by the wayside causing distressing indignities and indecencies. Health & Safety almost shut the place down altogether. The broad lawns along Santa Monica Blvd were sold off for strip malls. The multi-million dollar endowment fund vanished. The bells fell silent.
The Hollywood Forever people, who have it now, are trying to return the cemetery to the glamour of its pre-1940 past. They may have also recognized the significance of their shed. I haven't been by recently, but I notice from Google maps that a new drive has been laid to it.
gsv
The Administration Building (1932) on the left and the Bell Tower (1925), shrouded in creeping fig, on the right, home of the Eliza Otis Memorial Bells for the past 90 years
gsv
The previous entrance signage in 1937:
Herman Schultheis / lapl
The 100 acres, looking NW, sold by Gower to Lankershim and Van Nuys.
wiki
A C.C. Pierce aerial (looking south) is below. Santa Monica Blvd runs along the bottom margin of the photograph. This was taken, I think, in 1922 to 1924 because the Hollywood Cathedral Mausoleum is up but neither the Bell Tower nor the new entrance is installed yet. The little chapel and tower (now shorn of it's swing gate and gatepost) stands at the entrance. The head grounds-keeper's cottage is west of the chapel, on the other side of the entrance. Notice too that the southern part of the lake has been drained. This area will later be used for Douglas Fairbanks memorial and reflecting pond.
Brunton Studios has 26 acres, north of Melrose, bought from the cemetery association. South of Melrose, at the southeast corner of Melrose and Van Ness, is Billy Clune's studio, now Raleigh Studios.
usc c.c. pierce collection
In this detail from the aerial above, one can more easily see the chapel on the left and the grounds-keeper's cottage (with kitchen garden) along to the west. G.J. Griffith's obelisk is above, and slightly right of center
usc c.c. pierce collection (detail)
zoomable: http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/cdm/si.../id/4273/rec/2
For an update, see
here
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I can't quite make out what it says before 'drugs'. Is it 'Haigh'...the same store in HossC's photograph? The building looks different though.
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