noirish Los Angeles

[Martin Pal]

I saw a couple interesting matchbooks recently.

Jane Jones' Little Club
8730 Sunset Blvd.



This location has been posted about on NLA. Tourmaline noted that before it was Jane Jones' Little Club it started out as the King's Club and was then the Club Marcel, before Jane took it over. One of the links on the post indicates the Little Club was known as a lesbian venue.
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...ostcount=35816

On this post Tourmaline found a very close-up LIFE Magazine photo of the facade, highlighting the neon sign seen on the matchbook.
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...ostcount=35807

At present, the Sunset Towers is at the 8730 Sunset Blvd. address:
Yelp
_____________________________________

The other matchbook that caught my attention:

THE CHILLIS CLUB
620 1/2 W. 6th St. Los Angeles

I can find no information about this location at all, either written or photographic. The matchbook indicates the place might be in tune with horse racing in some fashion.

A visit to 6th St. in the Googlemobile shows a newer building with several fast food restaurants on the street level, all with the same address: 630 W. 6th St.: Mitaki, Subway, Eko Eats and Ocho Mexican Grill.

The building to the left of this is an old building, has the address of 614 W. 6th St. and this location has been posted about on NLA. The following post by HossC features a Shulman set of photos from 1967 and further information about that location with links from E_R, GW and Fab Fifties Fan.
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...ostcount=31766

As for the 620 1/2 W. 6th St. address and the Chillis Club:

[ethereal_reality]

I believe this slide is new to nla. (I thought it was a repeat at first because of the familiar 'Shelter' sign)

"1957 Los Angeles, California, Street Scene, Coca Cola Truck, Orig. Slide"


EBAY

Slide Brand: Red Border Kodachrome from 1957

Slide Film Size: 35mm

Processing Date Stamp on Slide Mount: None

Writing on Slide Mount: Los Angeles, Cal 6/57
___________________________________








HELPFUL CHART 1941-58


TRAINUTZ

[CityBoyDoug]

Oldest surviving McD in CA....Downey

[acorn8332]

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

I believe this slide is new to nla. (I thought it was a repeat at first because of the familiar 'Shelter' sign)

"1957 Los Angeles, California, Street Scene, Coca Cola Truck, Orig. Slide"


EBAY

Slide Brand: Red Border Kodachrome from 1957

Slide Film Size: 35mm

Processing Date Stamp on Slide Mount: None

Writing on Slide Mount: Los Angeles, Cal 6/57

The tall street lights along this stretch of Spring Street resemble the ubiquitous UM 1906 found Downtown. But, they are actually Union Metal's Model #1642.




The GE Form 9 Novalux luminaires are currently lamped with LED. Originally, the 8-panel globes (I always called them "The Eggbeaters") would have been lamped with arc-lights. Later, they were converted to Incandescent, and still later the orange-glowing High Pressure Sodium.




The UM 1642 copper shafts were restored in conjunction with the City Hall renovation of 1998-2001. Here we see a bit of the shaft atop the base which is painted in the LABSL's standard color of "Spring Street Green."



The above three photos are mine, taken October 02, 2017.


According to the 1924 Union Metal Catalog, the copper shafts were available at extra cost. The UM 1642 street light itself was priced at $303, excluding trolley pole & luminaires. Union Metal would gladly provide quotes for these items.



1924 Union Metal Catalog Reprint
Union Metal Corporation
Canton, OH

[BillinGlendaleCA]

About 30 years ago, my boss and I were doing work at one of our locations in the area and were looking for a cheep place to eat. We ate at that McD, though the prices were a tad bit higher. A few nights ago, I was watching a police chase on the news and they drove right by it.

[Flyingwedge]

Originally Posted by tovangar2

Looking up something else in Sarah Bixby Smith's Adobe Days, I read again her very brief description of her childhood memory of the visit of President and Mrs. Hayes to Los Angeles in 1880, the first US president to come to California. A grandstand was set up in front of the Baker Block and, after the speeches, Mrs Hayes was taken across to the "fashionable parlors" of the St Elmo Hotel by the ladies of the town for tea. That evening there was a public reception followed by a formal dinner at the Horticultural Pavilion "destroyed a few years later by fire". Smith recalled seeing Gilbert & Sullivan's comic opera, "HMS Pinafore", at the Horticultural Pavilion just a year after its 1878 debut in London.

Smith wrote that the Pavilion, "a barn-like, wooden building", forerunner of Hazard's and the Auditorium Building, was opposite from her first LA home, a house on Temple near Charity. The Pavilion was across Temple "on top of a hill that is now gone". It was built under the auspices of the Horticultural Society. Prudent Beaudry donated the land for it in 1878. E.F. Kysor was the architect.

I don't recall ever seeing a picture of the Horticultural Pavilion before, but found one taken ca 1878-1879 from our first high school on Poundcake Hill.
The Pavilion is on the southern slope of Fort Moore Hill on the right. This is an early shot of the building as it's not landscaped yet and the steps have yet to be built down to Temple. :

uscdl (url)http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/cdm/si...0/rec/1099/url)

Sand St runs behind the Pavilion, out of shot to the right in the image above, with the Protestant Cemetery north of that. The Pavilion was built on it's own little block, with two small access streets running south off Sand Street which met in front of the building. The one on the west was "Pavilion" and the one on the east was named "Stockton".

Horticultural Pavilion, looking south. Temple is at top with Sand st running along the bottom edge, separating the Pavilion from the cemetery. Stockton is on the left (east) side of the Pavilion and Pavilion St on the right:

calisphere

I believe t2 posted the only extant photo showing the short-lived Horticultural Pavilion, although different versions
of the image exist. Here is a close-up of the Pavilion from the same photo at the California State Library. The two
towers look unfinished on top. Left of center appears to be a steep stairway from Temple Street up the bluff face.
The house cut off in the lower right corner is on the NW corner of Temple and Hill:



stereo-0034


Although it is widely held that the Pavilion burned down, it was actually torn down due to a foreclosed mortgage,
even though the land for the Pavilion was, as t2 noted, donated by Prudent Beaudry, whose offer was formally
accepted June 8, 1878. In addition, the Pavilion, constructed by the Southern California Horticultural Society,
was not completely built to plan. The SCHS also published the Southern California Horticulturalist.


This is what the Horticultural Pavilion was supposed to look like, but never did (this image was printed many times,
and this was the clearest copy I found):



Sep 14 1878 Pacific Rural Press @ CDNC


Here is a description of the above illustration from another newspaper (only the main central hall is being built,
and the directors are firmly resolved to incur no indebtedness):



Oct 19 1878 LA Herald @ CDNC


The ground floor plan; as far as I can tell, only A, B, C, D, E, and maybe I were built:



Sep 4 1878 LA Herald @ CDNC


The second floor plan; again, I don't think M or R were ever built. The upstairs galleries are described as being
18 feet wide here:



Sep 4 1878 LA Herald @ CDNC


More background and information on the Horticultural Society and the Pavilion:






Sep 4 1878 LA Herald @ CDNC


After the lot was sufficiently graded, construction of the Pavilion probably began on Monday, August 26, 1878.
Here is an advertisement for the Pavilion's grand opening exhibition:



Sep 1878 Southern California Horticulturalist @ Hathitrust


The October 15, 1878, Los Angeles Herald described the events at the Pavilion from the previous evening
and listed the exhibitors. In the spring of 1879, there was talk of finishing the Pavilion's towers:



May 4 1879 LA Herald @ CDNC


The SCHS reported in December 1880 on the results of the 1880 Horticultural Fair, noting that the Pavilion could
not be finished because of debts incurred the previous year. President Hayes was at the Pavilion during the fair on
his one-day visit to Los Angeles on October 23, 1880.


The mortgage that ultimately spelled the Pavilion's doom was taken out because . . . well, I'm not sure why, or when.
But by the spring of 1881, things were getting dicey (the guy's name was actually Stinson, not Stensen):



Apr 6 1881 LA Herald @ CDNC


There was still some optimism, however:



Apr 7, 1881 LA Herald @ CDNC


The Horticultural Fair of September 1881 was the Pavilion's last:



Sep 9 1881 LA Herald @ CDNC


After the 1881 fair, the Horticultural Society was still having money problems. I believe John H. Shields,
one of the SCHS directors, wrote this description of and plea to save the Pavilion:




Nov 15 1881 LA Herald @ CDNC


The drama continued:



Dec 7 1881 LA Herald @ CDNC


A little more detail:



Dec 9 1881 LA Herald @ CDNC


This shows the Pavilion lot going from Stinson to Hubbell, as described above (I guess):



Dec 7 1881 LA Herald @ CDNC


Eventually, time to save the Pavilion started to run out:



Feb 16 1882 LA Herald @ CDNC


This Thursday, March 2, 1882, LA Herald article is titled "The Doomed Pavilion":



CDNC


I guess Mr. Hubbell had had enough:



Mar 4 1882 LA Times @ ProQuest via LAPL




May 10 1882 LA Times @ ProQuest via LAPL


So perhaps Hubbell sold some of his Pavilion land to Loomis:



Jul 28 1882 LA Times @ ProQuest via LAPL


It would be interesting to know which residences were constructed with materials from the deconstructed Pavilion:



May 25 1882 LA Times @ ProQuest via LAPL


Perhaps this was one of them, although I'm not sure where it was:



Sep 2 1882 LA Times @ ProQuest via LAPL


The 1888 Sanborn doesn't seem to show the actual site of the Horticultural Pavilion, which is just off the top of the
map below. North is at the top. Temple runs left to right, and Olive ends at Temple in the center. Hill Street is at
the right edge:



ProQuest via LAPL


The 1894 Sanborn shows what I'll call matching two-story double homes at the south end of the old Pavilion site,
between Sand (in front of the school), Stockton, Pavilion, and the narrow drive on the south. Temple runs along
the bottom:



ProQuest via LAPL


This photo is c. 1895 and looks west on Temple from about the same spot as the first photo in this post. In fact, the home
in the lower right corner of the photo below -- on the NW corner of Temple and Hill -- is also in the lower right corner of the
close-up of the Horticultural Pavilion that I posted above. Right of center and behind the buildings on Temple you can see the
brightly lit south sides of those matching two-story double homes at the south end of where the Pavilion was:

Originally Posted by ScottyB

CSL

If you can't see all the images above, try clearing your browser's cache then reloading the page.

[ethereal_reality]

Originally Posted by Handsome Stranger

OK, location sleuths...can anyone figure out where this house is?
It appears several times in the 1956 Roger Corman sci-fi movie It Conquered The World as the home of Dr. Tom Anderson.

Originally Posted by UphillDonkey

5815 Green Oak Dr. Still there, largely unaltered, painted red.

I drove the google-mobile up Green Oak Dr. to take a look at this place for myself

only to be stopped several hundred feet from the house.


gsv






but at least I got to see that it's painted red just like UphillDonkey said.


gsv

*Looking at Handsome Stranger's screen-grabs again..I think the house might have been red when they shot the movie. (if red looks gray in black n white)
________




While I was up there I noticed another house in the area that was wrapped like a big ol' birthday present. (fumigating)


GSV

so I decided to go take a look.





Here it is. They should wrap it back up.


detail

the triangular windows are all kinds of wrong. In my humble opinion.




BUT....take a look across the street.


GSV

Wow. I likee.




I drove around the corner to get the view from the other side, and the damn google-mobile STOPPED AGAIN.


___



If only I knew someone with a camera that might drive up there and snap a few photographs of these two places.

I'm kidding. you don't have to go up there

[CaliNative]

In the 1965 dark comedy/satire "The Loved One" (based on Evelyn Waugh book about L.A. cemetary & ex pat. British culture) the heroine sweet Ms. Thanatogenous swings precariously from a hillside stilt house. It looks like it might be in one of the stilt homes above Ventura Blvd, maybe Encino? Anybody have a location? If you haven't seen the movie, it is worth seeking out & often funny. Mr. Joyboy (Rod Steiger) & his huge 700 pound mom swallowing roast suckling pigs whole are especially hilarious in a grotesque way. Poor Joyboy dinner date Ms. Thanatogenous never recovered from seeing mom in action.

Second question--if you could time travel back to one decade in the past, in L.A. or elsewhere, which one? I'd love to spend a few weeks in the 1920s. Maybe catch a game with the Babe, buy some stocks in the mid '20s at the start of the Big Bull market and sell them & go short right before the '29 crash. Magic.

[Otis Criblecoblis]

Originally Posted by Scott Charles

PS: One of my favorite details of the image posted by Beaudry:



Here is a vintage Nesbitt's sign almost identical to the one in the above photo:

LINK

I used to drink a lot of orange soda when I was a kid, and Nesbitt's was my favorite. My family would take vacations in our car, and I used to buy Nesbitt's from those old soda machines where you would grab the bottle by its top and pull it from the machine (remember those?). Those machines used to be everywhere, in front of hotels, liquor stores, etc.

Scott, thanks for this thoroughly delightful post! I remember Nesbitt's from my youth, although my favorite from among their varieties was their wonderfully-complex cream soda, which unlike most such sodas was colorless.

I was enraptured by the Nesbitt's promotional video. It inflamed my natural love for my home state. Plus, I love Ken Carpenter's voice. I'm a big fan of all the classic radio announcers, who took the spoken language to unparalleled heights.

Thanks also for the link to the Soda Pop Stop. I share your aversion to HFCS, and while I nowadays drink sodas rarely, when I do it is a rare treat, and it had thus better be sweetened with sugar as God intended.

[oldstuff]

Originally Posted by Martin Pal

I saw a couple interesting matchbooks recently.

Jane Jones' Little Club
8730 Sunset Blvd.



This location has been posted about on NLA. Tourmaline noted that before it was Jane Jones' Little Club it started out as the King's Club and was then the Club Marcel, before Jane took it over. One of the links on the post indicates the Little Club was known as a lesbian venue.
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...ostcount=35816

On this post Tourmaline found a very close-up LIFE Magazine photo of the facade, highlighting the neon sign seen on the matchbook.
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...ostcount=35807

At present, the Sunset Towers is at the 8730 Sunset Blvd. address:
Yelp
_____________________________________

The other matchbook that caught my attention:

THE CHILLIS CLUB
620 1/2 W. 6th St. Los Angeles

I can find no information about this location at all, either written or photographic. The matchbook indicates the place might be in tune with horse racing in some fashion.

A visit to 6th St. in the Googlemobile shows a newer building with several fast food restaurants on the street level, all with the same address: 630 W. 6th St.: Mitaki, Subway, Eko Eats and Ocho Mexican Grill.

The building to the left of this is an old building, has the address of 614 W. 6th St. and this location has been posted about on NLA. The following post by HossC features a Shulman set of photos from 1967 and further information about that location with links from E_R, GW and Fab Fifties Fan.
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...ostcount=31766

As for the 620 1/2 W. 6th St. address and the Chillis Club:

I do find a photo of another matchbook, for the Chillis club, on the site of "Michael Brannan Photography and collections" which says that the location had "turf information and race results" and also baseball, football and election results. A bookie maybe? Under the guise of a bar or restaurant?

614 is listed as being the Harten building, built in 1920 and other than signage, the front appears unchanged. It is quite impressive

[HossC]

Originally Posted by CaliNative

In the 1965 dark comedy/satire "The Loved One" (based on Evelyn Waugh book about L.A. cemetary & ex pat. British culture) the heroine sweet Ms. Thanatogenous swings precariously from a hillside stilt house. It looks like it might be in one of the stilt homes above Ventura Blvd, maybe Encino? Anybody have a location? If you haven't seen the movie, it is worth seeking out & often funny. Mr. Joyboy (Rod Steiger) & his huge 700 pound mom swallowing roast suckling pigs whole are especially hilarious in a grotesque way. Poor Joyboy dinner date Ms. Thanatogenous never recovered from seeing mom in action.

I'm not sure I'll recover "from seeing mom in action" either!

Here are a couple of views of Aimee Thanatogenous' condemned house.



The precarious swing is on the far right.



Both MGM

According to IMDb and Wikipedia, the house is 3847 Oakfield Drive, Sherman Oaks. Rather than being condemned, it was under construction at the time.


GSV

[Scott Charles]

Originally Posted by Otis Criblecoblis

Scott, thanks for this thoroughly delightful post! I remember Nesbitt's from my youth, although my favorite from among their varieties was their wonderfully-complex cream soda, which unlike most such sodas was colorless.

I was enraptured by the Nesbitt's promotional video. It inflamed my natural love for my home state. Plus, I love Ken Carpenter's voice. I'm a big fan of all the classic radio announcers, who took the spoken language to unparalleled heights.

Thanks also for the link to the Soda Pop Stop. I share your aversion to HFCS, and while I nowadays drink sodas rarely, when I do it is a rare treat, and it had thus better be sweetened with sugar as God intended.

I just checked, Otis - unfortunately, Nesbitt's no longer makes a cream soda. The only available flavors are orange, strawberry and peach.



I'm glad you liked the Nesbitt's video. I liked it, too.

I guess(?) that most people can't tell the difference between real sugar and HFCS, or they simply do not care.

Personally, I don't think that HFCS tastes as good as real sugar, but the thing that really bothers me about it is the weird "aftertaste", for lack of a better word. Whenever I drink something with HFCS in it, I feel like I need to spit (or brush my teeth) after drinking it. It feels like it leaves your mouth coated in a sort of fake, slimy “sweetness” you can't get rid of without brushing. Yuck!

[HossC]

Originally Posted by oldstuff

I do find a photo of another matchbook, for the Chillis club, on the site of "Michael Brannan Photography and collections" which says that the location had "turf information and race results" and also baseball, football and election results. A bookie maybe? Under the guise of a bar or restaurant?

The CDs from 1928 to 1939 list the Chillis Block/Building at 620½ W 6th Street under "Buildings-Office and Public", but I couldn't see any reference to a club. Strangely, the 1930 CD has a duplicate listing as "Ghillis".

I found a couple of building permits for that address in the 1920s. They refer to a 6-story building owned by I Eisner (I'm guessing Isidor Eisner).

[Martin Pal]

Originally Posted by oldstuff

A bookie maybe? Under the guise of a bar or restaurant?

...turf information and race results...sounds like The Sting.

[Handsome Stranger]

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

I drove the google-mobile up Green Oak Dr. to take a look at this place for myself

only to be stopped several hundred feet from the house.

A worthy alternative to the google-mobile is Bing.com/maps, using the "streetside" function. (Their street photos seem to be taken at more frequent intervals.)


[source:bing.com/maps]

And I think you're right that the house may have been red in 1956 when the movie was made. It does appear to be two-toned in some shots.





PS - The movie was shot in only five days!

PSS - Mcdonald's in Downey has a humongous and fabulously archaic street sign that features a long since discarded mascot named "Speedee."

PSSS - "The Loved One" is brilliant and weird. Most of the dialogue is looped, giving the movie a very otherworldly tone. Many location shots were filmed at the Graystone Mansion. Liberace is quite funny portraying a haughty and dismissive casket salesman. And if IMDb can be trusted (I know it can't), a cameo appearance by Jayne Mansfield was cut before release.

[HossC]

Originally Posted by Handsome Stranger

A worthy alternative to the google-mobile is Bing.com/maps, using the "streetside" function. (Their street photos seem to be taken at more frequent intervals.)

An alternative, yes, but I'm not sure that I'd go as far as "worthy". I also checked out the Streetside views of the areas that e_r couldn't get to with the Googlemobile. As well as the top of Green Oak Drive, Bing also covers the inaccessible parts of Bronholly Drive/Carolus Drive. I found entering Streetside more complicated than Streetview - has Bing ditched the little peg man? Once I got to the top of Carolus Drive, I found it hard to navigate onto Bronholly Drive, even though I was presented with an arrow to click on. Despite the images on those roads apparently dating from 2016, they were more like the quality of the early GSV images, and while you can zoom in, you can't take a step back for a wider view like you can in GSV.

I originally read your comment about the photos being "taken at more frequent intervals" to mean that Bing's cars travel the streets more regularly. I then realized that the phrase was ambiguous, and that you probably meant that there's only a few feet from one photo to the next, which is definitely true.

I'm glad that Google Maps has competition, but Bing Maps still has plenty of room for improvement (IMHO).

[Beaudry]

Originally Posted by Flyingwedge

I believe t2 posted the only extant photo showing the short-lived Horticultural Pavilion, although different versions
of the image exist.



If you can't see all the images above, try clearing your browser's cache.

GREAT post! Thank you for all the investigative work on the Pavilion. I kept scrolling up and down between these two images, so, I made this:



And then this:

all, CSL

(Above, note the St Angelo at upper left for reference)

[Beaudry]

I can't give enough praise to the CSL for embiggening their images. For example, I remember being thoroughly intrigued back in May of 2010 when gsjansen made this post, including this shot from the LAPL:



—and there was much eye-straining to gauge whether the structure to the right of the lady in white was in fact 601 West Sunset, as featured in Kiss Me Deadly.

huntington

Now, at CSL is this image, which takes it to a whole 'nother level:

[HossC]

Originally Posted by Beaudry

all, CSL

(Above, note the St Angelo at upper left for reference)

Great comparisons, Beaudry. I thought I'd bring it up to date:


Google Maps

The roads are about the only constant.

[ethereal_reality]

Fascinating post on the HORTICULTURE PAVILION Flyingwedge.


Nov 15 1881 LA Herald

so was this fountain with the 25 ft upward leap and the small lake ("lakelet")
located inside in the main hall or somewhere outside on the grounds?
It isn't marked on any of the plans.
_______



I also have a question about the building in the lower left corner of the images below.

Originally Posted by Beaudry

It looks like several floors were added to the structure. (to be precise...to the bottom of the structure)



It looks like it might have been turned into a hotel. Does anyone know?
__