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Old Posted Jan 20, 2012, 9:48 PM
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GaylordWilshire GaylordWilshire is offline
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The houses that cafeterias built, part III...

Well, actually, it turns out that the Schabers--cousins of the Boos brothers who opened a few of their own Los Angeles cafeterias--were either not as successful as their relatives, or at least not as pretentious. Their various Mid-City and Cheviot Hills homes were quite a bit more modest, and there's really nothing much left of them to show here. Pictures of their cafeterias, other than the one at 620 S. Broadway, are rare. In fact, all I could find of the others were small, fuzzy images.

LAPL

Another vintage shot of 620 S. Broadway--a great pic showing See's, Desmond's, and Silverwood's signs. Question: What exactly is the piece of street furniture to the left of lamppost? The building still stands, as we've seen in a prior post, but the sidewalk has been replaced.

If I've got this right, at some point Al and Erhard Schaber swapped buildings with the owner of 720 S. Hill--no idea why. The Broadway building was a Forum Cafeteria in the mid '50s, one of a national chain that seems to have acquired the Schaber operations somewhere along the line. This is the only pic of the Hill Street location I could find:

voncoelln.com

The building still stands:
Google Street View


The Schabers and/or the Forum chain also operated a store at Wilshire and LaBrea, which didn't last long. One on Victory Drive in North Hollywood lasted longer. The pic below is of one or the other:

voncoelln.com
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