noirish Los Angeles

[ethereal_reality]

"Here's a better shot of your mystery street."


originally posted by MichaelRyerson.



Thanks MR, I guess the curvature in the earlier snapshot was indeed, an optical illusion.




below: The earlier photograph that seemed to show a slight 'curvature' (lower right).


ebay






below: So the 'mystery' street ascends up to the Sunkist Building (I know we've covered this before...but my memory stinks).


slide found on ebay

I take it that stairways are located within the five archways?

_____

[MichaelRyerson]

Yeah, an optical illusion. Happens to me all the time. And yes, the arches lead to the stairwells at 5th Street level and then up to the arches halfway up and back out to the exterior stair cases. I remember my father taking my brother and I someplace downtown with some regularity (I don't remember exactly where) and he would make a point of parking up above so we could come down through the sort of ornate stairwells. I think there must have been several such configurations around downtown. Now, of course, street crime would discourage most people from using them. More's the pity.

[MichaelRyerson]

Los Angeles Railway (LARy) South Park Shops, painting bus & streetcar, 1934
image from Metro Transportation Library and Archive


Also to say, with real sadness, I just found out Los Angeles Past (Scott) has closed up shop. He was a frequent and intelligent contributor here.

Also It's gotten remarkably quiet around here as well.

[GaylordWilshire]

Great shot--reminds me of exactly the feel you get inside the barns at the Orange Empire Railway Museum, where you walk between streetcars and buses...

Orange Empire Railway Museum


As for Scott, he was of the mind that political correctness alters history--way overstated, imo, certainly in terms of this thread--and he left in a huff, taking all his posts with him, like the proverbial ball. One positive result was that it made me feel alot younger than I actually am, in that as much as I love looking into the past, I know there are as many reasons to be glad I don't live in it as there were good things about it. Nostalgia is tricky that way--it photoshops out the negative. But that's what Noirish Los Angeles is for...nostalgia that doesn't edit out the dark side.... Also--do you really see it as quiet here? Seems pretty lively to me.

[GaylordWilshire]

LAPL

GoogleSV

I ran across this shot of the house at 629 S. Lucerne, and naturally had to see if it still stands.
It does...the lions are gone from sidewalk...thought maybe they'd been moved up close to the
porch, but the ones there now seem to be different. This is one of those old Windsor Square
houses that seem untouched by time. The birds of paradise, what looks like it might be a casual
approach to keeping up the grounds. I wonder if the house isn't inhabited by the figure in the
left upstairs window, who I imagine is elderly....

Originally Posted by malumot

Yeah those roll-up doors are a nice touch.
I keep tellin' you guys but you don't wanna listen...were about this far (holds thumb and forefinger close together) from seeing Snake Plisskin walking down the street.
Now obviously that doesn't hold for ALL of LA...........
But for much of it - it does.

Meanwhile, in the midst of the dystopian fantasies of some, apparently spawned by old movies, a DTLA revival is in full swing.... Which, it seems obvious, is signified by the restoration of the Chocolate Shoppe. To assume that cities are doomed is as mistaken as assuming that all suburbs are thriving and that rural places are like Mayberry. (If they are, what's with some American small towns seeming to have become nothing more than meth labs and some disappearing altogether? From what I read, cities are full of energy and the 'burbs and rural areas are not, and it's the way things are going these days. Thank God for those half my age.

[MichaelRyerson]

Well, I didn't know about the huff or the proverbial ball part. Sometimes emotion gets the better of us all. Gotta do what makes you happy. As for my other remark it really just had to do with the dearth of activity over, oh I don't know, maybe the last 12-18 hours. Certainly the activity has ramped up exponentially over the last ninety days. This picture appeals to me a several levels not the least of which is I can almost smell the paints and thinners. And we rarely get to see an image of these machines in pristine shape.

[3940dxer]

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

The 'storybook style' Spadena House, also known as the Witch's House, located at the corner of Walden Drive and Carmelita in Beverly Hills.


http://www.panoramio.com/photo/712469

...The Spadena/Witch's House was originally located on Washington Blvd. in Culver City.
(further details below)

I was in the area today so I stopped by to have a look and shoot a few "now" images. It appears that the house has gotten some TLC in the last few years. Except for those shingles.

[Moxie]

You reminded me that I meant to comment on this from e_r on page 337...

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

A view of the property in the 1980s.



not sure where I found this.

That is a screencap from the 1995 movie Clueless, showing Alicia Silverstone walking in front of the house. The scene is toward the end of the movie. I'm not thinking people will want to read more about filming locations from the movie, but if you do: http://www.itsfilmedthere.com/2010/03/clueless.html

[Wig-Wag]

GREAT Photo of The Los Angeles Railway South Park Shops! Thanks for posting it!

Cheers,
Jack

[GaylordWilshire]

Los Angeles Times, October 31, 1931


We've seen a good bit of the W.C.T.U. here before, including this shot in a post of e_r's:

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

usc digital archive

The building started out looking like this in 1889 (photo 1922):

LAPL


The city took 12.5 feet of W.C.T.U. property from the Temple side in 1928 to widen that street. To preserve most of
the building, a 12-foot, 4-inch section parallel to Temple was removed (indicated in top photo), with the south section
then being moved back to rejoin the north. I haven't seen a picture of the resulting structure, which didn't last
long in its new form very long. The 1933 Long Beach earthquake damaged the building...but like the W.C.T.U. itself, it
wasn't giving up so easily. After the quake, the two top floors were removed, resulting in what's seen in e_r's shot
above, and it remained that way until it finally met the wrecking ball in 1950. A county heating and cooling plant
is now on the site. The Carry Nations of L.A., to this day oblivious the famously disastrous effects of Prohibition,
moved to a house at 551 S. Kingsley where they still try to take us back to the '20s:

WCTU
551 S. Kingsley


A little more here and at the W.C.T.U.'s own interesting site here.

[GaylordWilshire]

W.C.T.U.


I wasn't aware of the W.C.T.U.'s Home for Women until now. I'll let the ladies describe it: "Constructed in 1927 to replace an earlier home in nearby Highland Park, [it] was a spacious building with accomodations for 100 guests. Later a convalescent hospital wing was added.... Located at 2235 Norwalk Ave., in the Eagle Rock area of Los Angeles, it served its patrons well for many years. However, with the passage of time, major earthquake and other safety refiting became necessary and the Home was closed and the building sold to GLAD, an agency for the deaf, in the early 1990's."


The building today:
Google SV

[donraymedia]

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

"Here's a better shot of your mystery street."


originally posted by MichaelRyerson.



Thanks MR, I guess the curvature in the earlier snapshot was indeed, an optical illusion.




below: The earlier photograph that seemed to show a slight 'curvature' (lower right).


ebay






below: So the 'mystery' street ascends up to the Sunkist Building (I know we've covered this before...but my memory sucks).


slide found on ebay

I take it that stairways are located within the five archways?

_____

I worked in the Edison Building (One Bunker Hill Bldg at the time) at Fifth and Grand in the early and mid-'70s. The street in question was Upper Fifth Street. If I were walking from the parking lot on the west side of the Engstrum Apartments and wanted to get to Fifth Street down below, I would take those stairs. It wasn't nearly as scary as you might think because, at the time, Bunker Hill was barren, the Sunkist Building was gone and there was not a lot of foot traffic. At that time, homelessness was practically nil. The parking entrance to the underground Edison Building was on Fifth Street. A short tunnel led the drivers into the Edison basement parking area. --- Don Ray

[donraymedia]

I worked in the Edison Building (One Bunker Hill Bldg at the time) at Fifth and Grand in the early and mid-'70s. The street in question was Upper Fifth Street. If I were walking from the parking lot on the west side of the Engstrum Apartments and wanted to get to Fifth Street down below, I would take those stairs. It wasn't nearly as scary as you might think because, at the time, Bunker Hill was barren, the Sunkist Building was gone and there was not a lot of foot traffic. At that time, homelessness was practically nil. The parking entrance to the underground Edison Building was on Fifth Street. A short tunnel led the drivers into the Edison basement parking area. --- Don Ray (sorry if I'm posting to the wrong places --- I'm dumb!

[MichaelRyerson]

muse-1940

The Muse of Music 1940

image from hollywoodbowl.com

Hearst Newspaper Collection, Special Collections, University of Southern California Library


muse-2-1940

image from hollywoodbowl.com
Music Center Archives/Otto Rothschild Collection

[GaylordWilshire]

LAPL

A shot we've most likely seen before, but I believe it's appropriately noirish as well as mournful, considering that the
end is nigh. No one brings the old place alive like Steve Vaught has over at Paradise Leased. I really regret never
having explored it. (David...care to breach the chain-link fence?)

LAPL

I'm sure we've seen this shot too, but since it's from the roof of the Statler.... an atomic dawn, March 7, 1955.
Below... the soon-to-be-gone Statler roof and just about the only thing left in the 1955 view, besides City Hall
and the mountains--the Jonathan Club. The LAPL has dozens of pictures of the club, from construction (when it was the skyscraper) to many
views of its interior.

Google Satellite

[rcarlton]

I don't recall seeing this photo: Opening of the Los Angeles Aqueduct,
November 5, 1913
California Historical Society

USC

Note four men opening the valves. Anyone know where this spillway is located?

North portal, Elizabeth Tunnel. 1908

UC Riverside, Water Resources Collections and Archives

North portal, Elizabeth Tunnel. 1911

UC Riverside, Water Resources Collections and Archives



Workers standing in front of tunnel entrance in the Los Angeles-Owens Valley Aqueduct, c. 1908
Antelope Valley

The completed Fairmont Tunnel (aka the 'Elizabeth Tunnel') of the Los Angeles-Owens Valley Aqueduct, c. 1920s

Antelope Valley

Students at Ivanhoe School act as water drops going through the Elizabeth Tunnel following completion, which occurred during construction of the LA Aqueduct in the first part of the 20th Century. Depicting William Mulholland on the right side is David Guerra of the Theatre of Will.
LADWP

[rcarlton]

Some different pictures of Angel's Flight.







Court Flight.



All from Loyola Marymount University, Department of Archives and Special Collections, William H. Hannon Library

If these have been show before my apologies, nice to have several in one place.

[Graybeard]

Originally Posted by rcarlton

I don't recall seeing this photo: Opening of the Los Angeles Aqueduct,
November 5, 1913
California Historical Society

USC

Note four men opening the valves. Anyone know where this spillway is located?

www.donaldlaird.com
"The Cascades"
This is the terminus of the Los Angeles - Owens River Aqueduct, bringing water 338 miles from the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada to the city of Los Angeles. Begun in 1905, the great aqueduct was completed November 5, 1913. The Mono Craters Project, completed in 1940 extended the system 27 miles to its present northernmost intake near Tioga Pass.
http://www.donaldlaird.com/landmarks...0-699/653.html

[3940dxer]

The spillways are just north of the 5 Freeway, near Balboa Blvd. The original spillway seen in the B&W photo, the one dedicated by William Mulholland ("There it is. Take it.") is the shorter one on the left. The larger spillway on the right was built later. The ill fated St. Francis Dam was nearby.


www.google.com

[rcarlton]

St. Francis dam disaster, more than 600 souls lost, 12 March 1928...eminent engineer disgraced, falling from public view. Very Noire like!

Santa Clarita Valley History


The Santa Clarita Signal

Todays History Lesson

Ebay

Santa Clarita Valley History

CSULB Geology

William Mulholland (September 11, 1855 – July 22, 1935) was the head of Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, in Los Angeles. He was responsible for building the water aqueducts and dams that allowed the city to grow into one of the largest in the world. His methods of obtaining water for the city led to disputes collectively known as the California Water Wars. In 1928, his career ended in ignominy when the St. Francis Dam failed just hours after he had given it a personal safety inspection.

Wikipedia