noirish Los Angeles

[MichaelRyerson]

Originally Posted by HossC

I thought that 724 South Genesee Avenue deserved a color picture.


GSV

The property websites give a build date of 1931 (the new building permit is dated late-1930). Here are a few interior images I found on howardmg.appfolio.com.

Thanks Hoss and LAX. Have we seen this building before?

[Noircitydame]

Originally Posted by unihikid

One of the few times that i can date a pic.. My dad was a member of "The Rob(b)ins from 57-61..L-R Ty Lennord, Billy Richards, Roy Richards, and Carl Gardner.. Carl had joined in 53' when lead singer Grady Chapman https://books.google.com/books?id=37...hapman&f=falsewas in jail because of robbery. Also at this time bass singer Bobby Nunn who founded the group with the Richards Brothers, was in the Army. I would say this is mid 54', which would still be around the time that Louis Jordan was still a draw.

That matches the date of the one ad I had for 8524 Sunset as the new Club Trocadero (lately known as the 22 Club), May 1954 when they were having a not too noirish Mother's Day event.

lat 5-7-54

Another high-turnover location, it's the one that before Dino's, before the Club Trocadero, was the Ruth St. Denis Asia Bazaar shop into the late 1930s.

lapl

David Tennant Galleries next door (the future Tiffany Theater) took over the space for its auction house by 1939. Tennant moved out as of June 1, 1945

lat 5-27-45

It became the Russian restaurant Charochka through 1947
12-1945 lat

As of September 1951 it had been Club Bayou and was already out of business:
9-9-51 lat

Then Gypsy Camp gave it a go, a Hungarian restaurant featuring Shandor & his magic violin and host Jerry Rothman of the Cal-Neva Lodge at Lake Tahoe.
12-29-51

As noted above when Club Trocadero opened in spring 1954, it had previously been operating as the 22 Club. Not sure what it was before Dino's opened (3-21-1958)
lat

[ethereal_reality]

NCD, excellent run-down of all the venues at that one location, 8524 Sunset Blvd.

-and in order! Kudos for that

[ethereal_reality]

Originally Posted by unihikid

My dad was a member of "The Rob(b)ins from 57-61

Wow, that's so cool unihikid!

I found this photograph last night while I was researching for the Club Trocadero post.


http://www.angelfire.com/mn/coasters/robins.html

I'm not sure, but I believe this is before your dad's time with the group.

Look how young Tony Bennett looks! (not sure why one guy has pulled a gun )

__

[ethereal_reality]

re: 724 S. Genesee

I couldn't help but notice the five large lights along the roof-line aimed down toward the art deco facade. The building must be quite impressive at night, especially from S. Ogden Dr.

(I've looked everywhere for a night view but I didn't have any luck)


gsv

Lunch at Chasen's for anyone who can spot the person looking out the window.

scroll down for answer
V
V
V
V
































There she is!


detail

I can't explain the green ball that appears to be on the outside of the window.

__

[ethereal_reality]

We've visited the Auto Club on S. Figueroa Street numerous times on NLA, but what about the one on N. Hill Street?


eBay

I wanted to include a photograph but I couldn't find one on short notice.

I'm off to Illinois for Easter; see you all on Monday. Have fun everyone!
__

[Martin Pal]

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

Here's what's happening on the same block today.


gsv
__

This project, formerly known as the Millennium Project and now known as the Sunset La Cienega project looms in your eyesight almost anywhere you go in the city now.

What's also going on in the neighborhood and city around this massive development are traffic nightmares, water main breaks, periodic power outages both planned and unplanned and regular road closures.

L.A. Curbed

The scale of this thing is pretty unbelievable. I recently read that three hundred parking spaces out of around a 450 allotment in one area has been eliminated as has an underground walkway beneath La Cienega Blvd. (the center street between the buildings in the above rendering), so people would be able to traverse from one section to another without disrupting traffic, has been eliminated.

This is the largest project, but there are several other of these monsters in various stages of development for the narrow winding streets of Sunset Blvd. and from most residents viewpoints it just seems too much.

[unihikid]

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

Wow, that's so cool unihikid!

I found this photograph last night while I was researching for the Club Trocadero post.


http://www.angelfire.com/mn/coasters/robins.html

I'm not sure, but I believe this is before your dad's time with the group.

Look how young Tony Bennett looks! (not sure why one guy has pulled a gun )

__

This is before my dad joined the group. but i can tell you who's who.
L-R Bobby Nunn, Roy Richards, Ty Terrell, Tony, Billy Richards, and Carl Gardner. Carl and Bobby went on to form The Coasters when the lable they were signed to "Spark" got bought up by Atlantic Records.

Originally all of the Robins we're to sign over but the Richard Brothers wanted to stay on the westcoast where Atlantic was on the east. The new Robins (Carl and Bobby)found a new name for the group, The Coasters (since they were from the west coast).Bobby got kicked out of The Coasters a few years later but started his own Coasters group with former Robins Billy Richards Jr.(Billy Richards nephew), Grady Chapman, and my dad Bobby Sheen....Dad's group had the west coast...and Carl's the east coast.

[GatoVerde]

Originally Posted by John Maddox Roberts

The conical tents could be government Sibley tents, widely used in the Civil War and I think as late as the Spanish-American war. The others look like standard wall tents. If these people were living on government handouts, they might all be castoff Army tents.

Thanks JMR for the info on the Sibley tents. I've included an image of one from the civil war in Indiana (below.)

A note on a image of the woman in front of the reed house. While the house might be assumed to be a kizh (house,) it's probably not built in the style of the Kizh people at the time of initial contact with Europeans. The houses from then have been described as being intricately woven with pitch being used to water seal the roofs. However, Rios Bustamamante, Mexican Los Angeles, mentions that the Pobladores brought specialist, jacaleros to build jacales (huts) which are described as having wickerwork walls built around a framework of poles, covered with dried mud and roofed with tiles. However, based on her basketry skills, the woman is a local, not a Pobladora.

If the image is a collodion process, the earliest date is the 1850s, and 1870s if it was a gelatin dry plate.

[HossC]

Today's Julius Shulman post shows us another Stiles Oliver Clements design in the shape of the State Compensation Insurance Fund building. This is "Job 1620: Stiles Oliver Clements, State Compensation Insurance Fund of California (Los Angeles, Calif.),1953".
NB. The set also includes another image very similar to the first one seen here.





And now the interior shots.







All from Getty Research Institute

Having the Bryson in the background of the first picture made the location easy to find. Located at 600 S La Fayette Park Place, it's now the Los Angeles Academy of Arts & Enterprises.


GSV

[Beaudry]

Originally Posted by HossC

Another great post, Beaudry. We haven't seen 439 South Hill Street under either of those names before, but it did crop up as the Subway Terminal Office branch of the Citizens Savings Bank and Trust when I did my round-up of their locations. Noircitydame kindly found some pictures and information in post #20884. They showed the building as the Peoples National Bank and the National Bank of Commerce. I followed up with a few longer shots showing different signage in post# 20886.

Thanks Hoss! One of these days I gotta learn to pay attention. The building had gone through several iterations in the name-game and I didn't do my due diligence, so to speak. Federal Title was it seems her moniker near the end, before she became vacant; by right she should be called the People's National Bank Bldg.

Something interesting found while going through the Times, early drawings for the PNB from 16 May 1926 (and an image of the completed Walker & Eisen for comparison's sake).

usc

The rendering is by Armand Monaco, about whom there are bits and pieces on the net, like here and here.

[Beaudry]

Originally Posted by broadwy_central_bldg

Hey, Beaudry, our friend Ed Workman gave us an update on that LARY car in this comment. (Brace yourself: it's not good news.)

Thanks! Somehow I missed that (I just said in my last post I needed to learn to pay attention) and...gads, I have no idea how to respond. I mean...let me see if I got this straight:

a) arguably, among those things Angelenic commonly revered and routinely fetishized nothing is so beloved as the fabled streetcar of yore—we have this collective Who Framed Roger Rabbit memory about our glorious streetcar past (which, in all honesty, did not really exist), however despite that, b) the streetcar is so indelibly part of our fabric, especially downtown, that one would think we should have some single remaining LARy or Red Car basically on a revolving platform with Klieg lights on it 24 hrs a day, which we kind of had, to wit:

rrpicturearchives/Charles Freericks

c) an actual car has been a favorite touchstone of those who knew it was there (since 1999), and had we hauled her out and put her on said aforementioned platform all would have been delighted, except for d), and here's where it gets weird: in the last few weeks we decided to take this St Louis Streetcar Company Class H-3 built in 1924, and destroy her, through neglect, stupid accidents, and cannibalism?

There had to have been some better plan for the girl, considering that RPR Consulting "performed a condition survey of this streetcar prior to acquisition and shipment to Los Angeles for potential use as a display in the downtown area, and also served as a sub-contractor to California Waterproofing & Restoration, who developed a restoration proposal for static display of the car."

I suppose it's not the most ignominious end. Like being an organ donor, she gave parts to worthy kin living in Perris. Still, I'm going to miss 1435, who gave a lot of pleasure to folk from there in her hideaway these last sixteen years, and who could have given downtown a real pride-laden boost if there had been the right combination of vision and guts to put her on display.

[John Maddox Roberts]

Originally Posted by unihikid

This is before my dad joined the group. but i can tell you who's who.
L-R Bobby Nunn, Roy Richards, Ty Terrell, Tony, Billy Richards, and Carl Gardner. Carl and Bobby went on to form The Coasters when the lable they were signed to "Spark" got bought up by Atlantic Records.

Originally all of the Robins we're to sign over but the Richard Brothers wanted to stay on the westcoast where Atlantic was on the east. The new Robins (Carl and Bobby)found a new name for the group, The Coasters (since they were from the west coast).Bobby got kicked out of The Coasters a few years later but started his own Coasters group with former Robins Billy Richards Jr.(Billy Richards nephew), Grady Chapman, and my dad Bobby Sheen....Dad's group had the west coast...and Carl's the east coast.

Unihikid, your posts and family photos are a great resource and insight. As I've posted before, what I come here for is not just the architecture (which is wonderful) but for a window in how life was lived in L.A. in the old days. You show us a part of L.A. that most of us never saw. Keep it coming!

[MichaelRyerson]

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

We've visited the Auto Club on S. Figueroa Street numerous times on NLA, but what about the one on N. Hill Street?


eBay

I wanted to include a photograph but I couldn't find one on short notice.

I'm off to Illinois for Easter; see you all on Monday. Have fun everyone!
__

This fanciful rendering never came to pass. The N. Hill Street Auto Club building was a much more modest structure albeit also camera-shy. Here's a shot of it looking up, at Fort Moore Hill, from Sunset Boulevard and N. Hill Street (north of Sunset)...

Sunset Boulevard at Hill Street, 1925

In the archive as 'Sunset Boulevard looking south at Hill Place and Fort Moore Hill.' Strictly speaking, there was no 'Hill Place' in 1925. This would pre-date Hill Street moving over and assuming the roadbed of Castelar north of Sunset and what had been Hill Street where it angled down off of Fort Moore Hill crossed Sunset and continued to a terminus at Alpine Street. This section of Hill Street ultimately became Hill Place but not before Castelar had been renamed Hill Street. Certainly not in 1925. Immediately on the right we have is the apartment building at 560 N. Hill Street backing to Sunset Boulevard. Up there on Hill Street where it makes it's turn to run parallel to Sunset, sporting the Coca Cola adverts, is the old Auto Club Building at 546 N Hill Street (and just beyond it, to the right, is the back of Mary Hollister Banning's carriage house). The Auto Club occupied this building briefly starting in about 1918-19 and moving into their big headquarters building on S Figueroa by 1923.

LAPL

[Those Who Squirm!]

Originally Posted by re:LAX

724 S Genessee Ave

You'd think somebody at LACMA would have put the address on here. It's almost directly across the street from the museum, but just beyond the Occidental* tower. I remembered it immediately from having walked by it occasionally, when visiting the museum and parking south of the boulevard.


*Or whatever it's called now

[re:LAX]

Thanks for the welcome, MichaelRyerson. I've been avid follower of this forum for years, and when I saw the pic of 724 S. Genesee I was glad to finally have a bit of knowledge worth contributing! A friend used to live in that building, so it was cool to see it. One day I'll walk over and snap a nighttime pic.

I live near Fairfax/Olympic, and have learned so much about the neighborhood in this thread. Fantastic job by all!

[MichaelRyerson]

Originally Posted by re:LAX

Thanks for the welcome, MichaelRyerson. I've been avid follower of this forum for years, and when I saw the pic of 724 S. Genesee I was glad to finally have a bit of knowledge worth contributing! A friend used to live in that building, so it was cool to see it. One day I'll walk over and snap a nighttime pic.

I live near Fairfax/Olympic, and have learned so much about the neighborhood in this thread. Fantastic job by all!

With the exception of e-r, we've all experienced that sense of pleasure at finally having something to contribute. When I ran across the image of 724 I suspected it might be mid-Wilshire because of the glimpse of the next door building on the right. It seems very Miracle Mile to me. I hope you can get that night shot. It would make e-r (and the rest of us) very happy.

[Earl Boebert]

Good coverage of a difficult topic:

http://www.theawl.com/2016/03/l-a-sludge

Cheers,

Earl

[MichaelRyerson]

Originally Posted by Beaudry

Thanks! Somehow I missed that (I just said in my last post I needed to learn to pay attention) and...gads, I have no idea how to respond. I mean...let me see if I got this straight:

a) arguably, among those things Angelenic commonly revered and routinely fetishized nothing is so beloved as the fabled streetcar of yore—we have this collective Who Framed Roger Rabbit memory about our glorious streetcar past (which, in all honesty, did not really exist), however despite that, b) the streetcar is so indelibly part of our fabric, especially downtown, that one would think we should have some single remaining LARy or Red Car basically on a revolving platform with Klieg lights on it 24 hrs a day, which we kind of had, to wit:

rrpicturearchives/Charles Freericks

c) an actual car has been a favorite touchstone of those who knew it was there (since 1999), and had we hauled her out and put her on said aforementioned platform all would have been delighted, except for d), and here's where it gets weird: in the last few weeks we decided to take this St Louis Streetcar Company Class H-3 built in 1924, and destroy her, through neglect, stupid accidents, and cannibalism?

There had to have been some better plan for the girl, considering that RPR Consulting "performed a condition survey of this streetcar prior to acquisition and shipment to Los Angeles for potential use as a display in the downtown area, and also served as a sub-contractor to California Waterproofing & Restoration, who developed a restoration proposal for static display of the car."

I suppose it's not the most ignominious end. Like being an organ donor, she gave parts to worthy kin living in Perris. Still, I'm going to miss 1435, who gave a lot of pleasure to folk from there in her hideaway these last sixteen years, and who could have given downtown a real pride-laden boost if there had been the right combination of vision and guts to put her on display.

I'm reasonably certain that if we look a little closer, we'll find Standard Oil and the B.F. Goodrich companies at the bottom of it all. Poor 1435.

[unihikid]

JMR thanks so much, i try to keep up with you guys but its hard, so that means a great deal to me.

Originally Posted by John Maddox Roberts

Unihikid, your posts and family photos are a great resource and insight. As I've posted before, what I come here for is not just the architecture (which is wonderful) but for a window in how life was lived in L.A. in the old days. You show us a part of L.A. that most of us never saw. Keep it coming!