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These quite unusual Batchelder tiles have been listed on EBay. In the years I’ve been watching for Batchelder tiles, I can’t say I have ever seen anything like these.
Bidding on the upper tile, featuring a man apparently playing the cymbals, starts at $300. The two angels, which are in separate lot from the same vendor, start at $250. As with anything on EBay, an item and vendor should be evaluated thoroughly before submitting a bid.
This is the fourth in the Rediscovering Los Angeles series, from Nov. 25, 1935, by Times artist Charles Owens and columnist Timothy Turner.
Horses did not disappear from the streets of Los Angeles for quite a while after the introduction of the automobile, and even in 1935, when this livery stable was to be razed for construction of Union Station, it was still operating, but rented out rigs to junk men who collected scrap metal, paper and old clothes. Turner wrote: “Look in vain, you will, for anything, the least thing in the world, to denote that we are living any later than 1895.”
Unfortunately, Rediscovering Los Angeles was never published in book form, unlike the later Nuestro Pueblo, by Owens and Joe Seewerker.
Dec. 2, 1935: In this installment of Rediscovering Los Angeles, Times artist Charles Owens and columnist Timothy Turner visit El Capricho de los Dorados, a tiny Mexican restaurant on Aliso “below Alameda Street.”
Turner says: “These little places are generally run by a family, a man and his wife with daughters serving the table. A widow with a lot of daughters can do very well (sometimes better, they say) than with a man around.”
He also mentions the restaurant in his book “Turn Off the Sunshine.”
The Richfield Building in an undated postcard.
After years of deprivation, darkness and worry during World War I and its aftermath, America was ready to look toward a shining future of prosperity and sunshine in the 1920s. Overnight, fashion, music and the arts embraced change, style and risk-taking. Much was modeled after the 1925 Exposition International des Arts Decoratifs et Industriel Modernes in Paris, which displayed bold conceptions of applied arts, reveling in eclectic, glorious design. The new style embraced technology and the machine age, reflecting a belief in a dynamic, energetic future.
Architecture celebrated the Moderne style as well. Color, geometric shapes and lavish ornamentation replaced monochromatic massing in buildings. Triangles, sunbursts and zigzags screamed progress in modern buildings as they stretched toward the sky. New York’s Chrysler Building exemplified the new look, bold, sleek and gorgeous. The American Radiator Building also embraced the modern by daring to wreath itself in gold and black colors, a glamorous and contemporary design.
Mary Mallory’s “Hollywoodland: Tales Lost and Found” is available at Amazon.
The Richfield Building in the 1960s, courtesy of Mary Mallory
Los Angeles’ Richfield Co. looked to shake things up in Los Angeles too, by grabbing the spotlight as a leading player in the oil industry. Their new headquarters at 555 S. Flower St. would be the siren announcing their explosive future in reshaping the petroleum industry.
In late 1928, Richfield hired Morgan, Walls and Clements, one of Los Angeles’ premier architectural firms, to conceive a bold, forceful building as their headquarters. Founded by Ezra F. Kysor in 1868, Morgan, Walls and Clements evolved over the years into a leading designer of important office structures. Stiles O. Clements, their chief designer, had studied at Drexel Institute of Technology, MIT and the Beaux Arts Academy in Paris before joining the firm in 1913.
Clements embraced the Radiator Building as a model, copying its gold and black colors and vertical design of windows and lines in the downtown Richfield Building. The colors saluted Richfield’s moneymaker, its Texas tea. Turning the inside out, luxurious color and glamorous detail would jazz up the building’s exterior and dominate the bland Los Angeles’ skyline.
As David Gebhard explains in the monograph, “The Richfield Building 1928-1968, the bold and visionary sheathing was beautiful as well as functional, and an excellent match for its gold ornamentation. The Architectural Record noted that, “The walls are black to prevent undue contrast with the countless windows which might destroy the silhouette.” The gold drew out the black, giving it a sophisticated glamour that other buildings lacked. Gold highlighted the vertical nature of the windows, which the architectural firm called, “An expression of modern art and thought” in an unpublished press release.
Contractor P. J. Walker hired Consolidated Steel Co. to fabricate the steel frame on which the $1.75-million building would sit, designed by Erick and Deline, engineers. 2,300 tons of steel composed the framework, erected in a record 31 days in early 1929. Tile designed by Gladding, McBean, and Co. lined the building’s exterior. Fred Ortman of the company described the makeup of the tile in the July 14, 1929, Los Angeles Times. “On a body composed of imported English clay, local ball clay, feldspar and flint, the glazes, colored with exact percentages of iron peroxide and manganese oxide, were sprayed on in a green state and burned with bodies to form a homogeneous mass. A yellow glaze was produced as a base color for the gold, which is the genuine California article, the precious metal was then applied to this and burned twice, producing a dull, lustrous effect, which will gleam in the rays of the California sun as long as the building stands.”
A Richfield Building elevator, courtesy of Mary Mallory.
The Richfield Building’s exterior dark green tile only appeared black from the sun’s reflection off the mirrored surface. Real 14-carat gold leaf was contained in the gold surfaces lining the windows and sculptures. “The gold ornamentation is of terra cotta coated with a layer of finely pulverized gold, held in suspension in a transparent glazing solution,” per the Architectural Record.
The entrance featured Belgian black marble, Cardiff green stone trimmings, Russian bronze metalworks, Benedict nickel hardware, rubber tile on the floor, and black lacquer-coated woodwork. Six high-speed, etched metal elevator doors and two freight elevators were installed beginning April 20, 1929, the first on the West Coast. The building’s two-story underground parking garage was also one of the first ever installed in an office complex. The building itself was a giant U-shape, actually two wings united by the façade on Flower Street.
Sculptor Haig Patigian was hired to design massive, dominating gold figures lining the top of the structure, and four terra-cotta figures above the entrance. Patigian described his work in a Morgan, Walls and Clements press release. “I designed all the sculpture in question with two principles in mind – to keep in harmony with the architecture of the building and to have my ideas conform in a measure to the business and business connections of the Richfield Co. The figures around the top with their…powerful torsos and decorative design of wings…symbolized motive power.” The statues embraced the future while saluting the past, an updated copy of monumental art that had decorated structures for hundreds of years. The four figures above the entrance represented the fields of Aviation, Postal Service, Industry and Navigation, all vital to Richfield’s success.
The air-conditioned structure contained 11 floors of offices, with the 12th the social hub of the building. Here could be found the main lobby, cafeteria, executive dining rooms, barbershop, showers, massage room, ladies’ lounge, assembly room with a stage, and rooftop garden.
Topping the luxurious wedding cake was a 125-foot-tall beacon tower, a visual play on an oil derrick, providing a searchlight for airplanes, a possible decking location for zeppelins, and a floodlight to illuminate the building. The Richfield name lined the tower’s sides in eight-foot-tall neon letters, which The Times called “a brilliant red candle in the sky.” It weighed 70,000 pounds itself. The colorful building and its flashy billboard soon dominated the downtown skyline.
The Richfield Building’s 12th floor soon became a social gathering spot for clubs, universities and other business organizations, which rented the assembly room and dining rooms for meetings, parties and conferences.
Tragedy struck on Aug. 29, 1950, when 40-year-old land and lease office attorney Dudley Eugene Brown committed suicide by jumping from a 12th floor office, climbing over a glass windbreak to jump. During the fall, Brown struck a 10th-floor ornamental promontory, which pushed his body beyond the sidewalk and into the street.
Two painters suffered critical injuries on Aug. 12, 1953, when they fell 50 feet from scaffolding that collapsed while they painted the tower, throwing them to the 12th floor of the building. Injuries included fractured arms, legs, hip, ribs, skull, and internal injuries.
The Richfield Building, courtesy of Mary Mallory.
Unfortunately, “progress” caught up with the gorgeous building. Some people now considered the structure garish, gaudy, and a monstrosity, and new skyscrapers dwarfed its size. The Richfield Co. merged with Atlantic Refining Co. in 1966, and decided that the building was not producing enough revenue. They purchased surrounding buildings, creating a property flagged by Flower, Figueroa, 5th, and 6th Streets, and decided to turn it into a mini Rockefeller Center in 1967, called the Atlantic Richfield Plaza. The site would be composed of two 52-story towers, open space, promenades and other buildings. Louis Ream informed The Times on March 9, 1967, that “We’d like to think as big as possible – the economics of a site like this dictates that we do.” He claimed, “The building is beautiful, but it is only 54% usable. We’re planning on tearing it down, with tears in our eyes.”
Groups immediately opposed the planned destruction, arguing for preservation and inclusion of the building in the new project. Denise Scott Brown, a UCLA professor of urban design, attempted to rally supporters to fight for the building, decrying both Atlantic Richfield’s aim and the city’s destruction of Bunker Hill, “simply because we tend to despise our immediate past.” Instead of the raw and dead land left by urban renewal’s wiping away all traces of the historic past, she suggested renovating and integrating the building into the project, saying its bold design could stand up to the modern, glass structures. Unfortunately, the fledgling historic preservation movement was not strong enough to withstand the powerful forces opposing it.
Wrecking crews entered the building’s interior on Nov. 12, 1968, and began dismantling the building. The elevator doors were saved, but not much was salvaged or preserved. The Cleveland Wrecking Co. was hired to remove the 40 towering figures from the top of the structure. In two weeks, they removed them by tying chokes around their necks and waists before cutting away the concrete, leaving only the top torso of the figures. Two were decapitated, and others suffered broken noses or wing tips in the process. The company removed the figures to their yard, where they were sold for $100 each, the cost it took to remove them from the building.
Ironically, in September 1969 an exhibit at the Building Exhibition Center celebrated the centennial of Robert Clements and Associates, the heir to Morgan, Walls and Clements, with drawings of the former Richfield Building.
While the beautiful Richfield Building was lost, it helped galvanize growing support for historic preservation and reuse and adaptation of historic structures, leading to the formation of such groups as Los Angeles Conservancy and Hollywood Heritage. Today, developers and builders are rapidly renovating and rehabbing glorious apartment buildings, hotels, and theatres in downtown Los Angeles, allowing historic structures to once again shine as the lovely monuments they were intended to be.
What grandma used to call a “penny postal” showing the State Normal School in Los Angeles has been listed on EBay. And who would like to tell us what’s there now? This postcard is listed as Buy It Now for $2.99.
A sketch of the “The Witch’s House” by Charles Owens from “Nuestro Pueblo,” courtesy of Mary Mallory
Once upon a time, home design and architecture saluted fantasy and make-believe, and not just in fiction. Bilbo Baggins and lucky leprechauns resided in twee little bungalows, short, off-kilter, hutch-like, but so did imaginative and childlike Los Angeles residents of the 1920s. Storybook architecture, dreamed up and promoted by film industry veterans, flourished near movie studios, magical little Brigadoon-like structures.
A strong proponent of storybook design was Hollywood art director Harry Oliver. Noted for his work as art director on films “7th Heaven” (1927) and “Street Angel” (1928). Oliver merrily dreamed up colorful structures on the side, like the famous Van de Kamp’s windmills and Los Feliz’s Tam-o-Shanter restaurant. Another whimsical structure, however, remains his most famous design, the Witch’s House in Beverly Hills.
Mary Mallory’s “Hollywoodland:Tales Lost and Found” is available as an ebook.
A postcard of the “Witch’s House” is listed on EBay as Buy It Now for $10.97.
Oliver began working as a printer’s devil as a child and came to California as a theatrical scenery painter in 1908. By 1919, he was working for film director Irvin Willat as a technical director. Starting as a cameraman in New York’s fledgling film industry in 1908, Willat moved from studio to studio until he ended up as an integral lenser for producer Thomas Ince, especially on films like “Civilization” (1916) and “False Faces” (1919). Willat shot atmospheric films and devised intricate visual effects for the times as well, and sometimes edited the pictures on which he worked.
Willat directed the film, “Behind the Door” in 1919, on which Oliver served as technical director. Admiring Oliver’s work, Willat employed him as technical director on two more pictures that year, “Below the Surface” and “Down Home.”
When it came time to design an administration building for his new Irvin Willat Productions in February 1920, the director turned again to Oliver. Oliver’s playful design appeared on the March 1920 cover for the Home Designer magazine, a gabled, angular cottage with thatched roof straight out of “Snow White” or “Hansel and Gretel.” By April 15, 1921, the studio was virtually completed, and the dreamy building appeared as a set in the film “The Face of the World,” starring Barbara Bedford and Edward Hearn.
Unfortunately, Willat quickly ran into financial problems and by 1922 folded his company. The sweet structure was employed as a set for several years, until journeyman film director/producer Ward Lascelle purchased it. Lascelle, who entered the film business working for Fine Arts Studio and D.W. Griffith, acquired property in Beverly Hills at Carmelita Drive and Walden Drive in 1925, and realized that the colorful building would draw attention as his personal residence.
The March 1925 Photoplay magazine called the building, “An artistic structure, one might say, almost futuristic, all gables and gables and gables.” The magazine related that Lascelle bought a lot in Beverly Hills, and “he went to Willat and purchased his studio’s main administration building. He moved it gables and all…” to his property.
New Movie Magazine featured the house in its September 1930 issue, describing it as a “Witch’s House,” and giving a little history. “A strange Mother Goose creation of broken roof lines and eerie windows, this house was the studio of Irwin (sic) Willat. When he abandoned picture production, the structure was moved to Beverly Hills, where it is now the residence of Ward Lascelles (sic), another picture executive.”
The Green family and others owned it over the years, and by 1980, the home contained 12 rooms in 3,700 square feet, including wet bar, wine cellar, three fireplaces, maid’s quarters, three bedrooms, and four bathrooms. The home also appeared in at least two other films, “The Loved One,” and “Clueless.”
A popular tourist attraction today, “The Witch’s House” represents the perfect whimsical and spooky Halloween residence, a proper abode for such popular culture witches as Witch Hazel or Wicked Witch of the West.
Grand and Temple via Google Street View.
In the Dec. 16, 1935, installment of Rediscovering Los Angeles, Times artist Charles Owens and columnist Timothy Turner visit the St. Angelo, on “Grand Avenue just off Temple Street on the northern slope of that unappreciated group of hills which form the nucleus of Los Angeles.”
Once a fancy hotel where James Whitcomb Riley stayed for several months, by the 1930s, the St. Angelo was a hotel for working men, Turner writes.
Unlike Nuestro Pueblo, Owens’ later work with Joe Seewerker, Rediscovering Los Angeles was never published in book form. The Times encouraged readers to clip the entries and save them in a scrapbook.
Harold Lloyd and Greenacres in New Movie Magazine.
At the beginning of the fledgling motion picture industry, actors and other creative types earned adequate salaries, in line with middle-class jobs. They lived in modest bungalows, residential hotels, apartments or rented small homes.
When star names sold films at the box office, salaries began skyrocketing. As salaries rose, so did the quality of personal residences. Some actors lived in style at the Alexandria Hotel, Los Angeles Athletic Club and other quality hotels and apartments, while several stars began buying or building elaborate homes to display their wealth and stature in areas like Los Feliz, Hancock Park and Whitley Heights.
Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford renovated a modest hunting lodge on Beverly Hills’ Summit Drive into the lovely estate Pickfair, the de facto Buckingham Palace of Hollywood royalty. Producer Thomas Ince constructed Dias Dorados in Beverly Hills’ Benedict Canyon. Mack Sennett intended to build a lavish estate above and behind the Hollywoodland sign in 1925, killed by financial pressures. Comedy superstar Harold Lloyd soon followed in constructing his own residential palace.
Mary Mallory’s “Hollywood: Tales Lost and Found” is available for the Kindle.
Gloria Lloyd at her playhouse, as shown in New Movie Magazine.
Earning fame at the Rolin Film Co. playing in comedic short films, Lloyd left in 1921 to enter feature film production with producer Hal Roach. These films shot him to superstardom as one of Hollywood’s top comic stars, so much so that in 1924, he formed his own independent Harold Lloyd Productions. While one of the world’s most successful celebrities, Lloyd still lived at home with his father. When Lloyd married his leading lady and co-star Mildred Davis in 1923, they continued living at 369 S. Hoover St. before purchasing a home at 502 S. Irving Blvd. for $125,000 a few months later.
As Jeffrey Vance relates in “Harold Lloyd, Master Comedian,” Lloyd’s business manager and uncle, William Fraser, suggested in 1923 that he spend $60,000 to purchase 10 acres of Beverly Hills property in Benedict Canyon, named after the former owner, P. E. Benedict, as an investment. Lloyd eventually purchased six additional acres from the adjoining Thomas Ince estate. Lloyd’s property consisted of 12 Beverly Hills acres, and four Los Angeles acres. On this land, he would construct his own personal Xanadu.
After years of bouncing between tiny, temporary homes during the family’s peripatetic life, Lloyd dreamed of a stable, permanent dwelling place suitable for a private family residence. He hired the architectural firm of Webber, Staunton & Spaulding in 1925, asking them to design a three-story, Italian Renaissance-style villa to cost $1 million, per the Aug. 27, 1925, Los Angeles Times. He also hired A. E. Hanson, who had recommended the architectural firm, as landscape architect to design native-looking grounds in the Italian style, work expected to last 1½ half years.
Lloyd and family held a private groundbreaking with the architects in 1926, as landscaping work commenced at 1225 Benedict Canyon Drive. To keep their daughter Gloria happy while they consulted with contractors and oversaw construction, the Lloyds first built an elaborate child’s playhouse on the grounds. This thatched-roof English cottage featured running water, heat, electricity and child-sized furniture in its four rooms, more elaborate than many contemporary houses of the time. Surrounding the cottage was a miniature wishing well, an aviary, monkey cage, miniature pony stable, playground with small clock tower, swing, slide, acrobatic devices and an incline to race a mini-car.
By July 1927, landscaping was virtually complete, described in the 1972 Los Angeles Times as “like a park, without people…” Home construction began. As Annette d’Agostino Lloyd describes it in “The Harold Lloyd Encyclopedia,” “Greenacres boasted seven separate gardens, 12 major fountains, a 100-foot waterfall with canoe lake and a mill pond below, a 250,000 gallon, Olympic-sized swimming pool (one of the largest in Beverly Hills, which cost over $400 a month to heat)…the pool was adjoined by a Pavilion area, which was used for lavish night-time summer parties and film screenings, with its own bandstand and bar facilities.” Buster Crabbe would later teach the Lloyd children to swim in this very pool, and on-site wells ran all the fountains.
Armed guards patrolled the grounds, which also contained a 12-car garage, greenhouses, gazebo, indoor handball court, tennis courts, stables, outdoor bowling green, and a nine-hole golf course, designed by famous golf course architect Alister MacKenzie, who had also designed the nine-hole course on adjoining neighbor Jack Warner’s estate. Lloyd would hold invitational golf courses for the world’s top pros like Leo Diegel and Walter Hagen on the combined course.
The massive palace welcomed the family in August, 1929, after two year’s construction costing $2 million. The “home” matched Joe Gillis’ description upon first spying Norma Desmond’s rundown estate, “It was the kind of place that crazy movie people built in the crazy 1920s.” The 44-room, 32,000-square-foot palace dwarfed Pickfair and Chaplin’s estates, a luxurious monument to excess, dubbed “Greenacres” in 1937 after going eight years without a name. Eventually, the children began calling the home, “The Mausoleum.”
Sam Watters gives detailed description of the estate in his book, “Great Houses of Los Angeles, 1920-1935.” The reinforced concrete structure featured a 120-foot square entrance court surrounded on two sides with a cloister and stairs leading to the entrance. The house contained 14-inch thick walls, its own private telephone exchange, custom-made Spanish antique furniture and Persian rugs on the first floor, American furniture on the second, a 50-foot-long sunken living room with a gold leaf-coffered ceiling that doubled as a projection room, detailed, wood paneling and ceilings, six bedroom suites with their own baths, 26 bathrooms, a dining room sitting 24, music room, sunroom, playroom, cocktail den, basements and two kitchens. A 40-rank theater organ and piano could be employed to accompany film screenings. The sunroom, or l’Orangerie, would later feature a year-round Christmas tree, three full trees tied together and sprayed with fire retardant, on which hung 5,000 glass ornaments.
Sixteen gardeners, two chauffeurs, two cooks, two butlers, three maids, housekeeper, two governesses, and three personal secretaries tended to the Lloyds’ needs.
The Lloyds were mostly homebodies, entertaining friends and acquaintances at the large estate. On Sunday afternoons, 30 to 40 friends were invited for games, a buffet dinner and then a movie in the evening.
In 1937, Greenacres was employed as the location for Jeanette McDonald’s wedding brunch/shower for her women friends, followed by badminton, tennis, and swimming. Men joined the group at five for cocktails.
For Christmas that year, Mildred Davis wrote friends, asking them for photographs autographed to Harold, and received more than 300 from the likes of Amelia Earhart, Babe Ruth, Cecil B. De Mille, Chaplin, and Helen Keller. These prints lined the walls of an underground passageway, later dubbed the Rogues’ Gallery, which extended from the house to the cocktail den and game room.
In 1943, one film shed housing many of Lloyd’s negatives and prints caught fire, destroying most of his “Lonesome Luke” series of films.
The cascade fountain at Greenacres
The two Lloyd daughters would be married in the home, and granddaughter Suzanne would be raised there by her grandparents after her mother suffered a nervous breakdown and moved to Europe for 10 years. As his career wound down, Lloyd became obsessed with the Shriners and his hobbies, painting, taking 3-D photographs, and eventually, LP records. He played the stereo so loudly that gold leaf fell from the ceiling like snow.
Lloyd disliked change and loved seclusion, and nothing was moved, changed, or updated unless it was absolutely necessary, penny-wise but pound-foolish. Furnishings grew shabby, frayed and shopworn. Lloyd also suffered from superstitions. He always left the house through the door he entered and would not allow himself to be driven entirely around the fountain in the front drive.
When he died in 1971, his will specified that the home was to be put in use “as an educational facility and museum for research on the history of motion pictures in the United States.” While the estate considered how to accomplish this goal and placate unhappy neighbors, Ralph Story visited the home for a television show entitled “Citizen Lloyd,” which ran Aug. 18, 1972.
The museum opened April 20, 1973, with the Shriners given the first tour of the property, followed by private tours through May. In June, Gray Line Tours began conducting daily tours from 12 to 5 costing $4.50 each, with tourists bused in from the Beverly Hills Hilton Hotel. Tours ended in March 1974, because of neighbors’ complaints.
During this time, Greenacres hosted some television show filming, including “Westworld,” (1973), Baretta,” (1975), and later, “Death at Love House” (1976).
The house became a white elephant to the estate, with its huge mortgage and property taxes an onerous burden to cover. They attempted to donate it to the city of Beverly Hills, but the cost was too high for the city to consider paying off the mortgage, sprucing up the house, and running it as a museum itself.
The estate was auctioned off July 27, 1975, with the proceeds to benefit film preservation and scholarship funds. Nasrollah Afshani paid $1.6 million for the property, which he later subdivided into 10 one-acre lots, after receiving approval from the cities of Beverly Hills and Los Angeles, with the estate and its surrounding five acres surviving intact.
Bernard Solomon bought the property, now located at 1740 Greenacres Place in 1978, trying to renovate and return it as much as possible to its’ original look. He brought in original landscape architect A. E. Hanson to help restore the grounds. In 1984, Greenacres was named to the National Register of Historic Places.
Unfortunately, the Solomons soon divorced, selling the home to film producer Ted Fields in 1986. Fields later sold the property to current owner, magnate Ronald Burkle. The magnificent home is occasionally employed as the location for charity and political fundraisers, but is no longer accessible to the public.
Photos are courtesy of the Harold Lloyd Trust.
Dec. 30, 1935: For this installment of Rediscovering Los Angeles, Times artist Charles Owens and columnist Timothy Turner visit Los Angeles’ former Masonic Hall, a building from the 1870s on Main street “on the east side just south of the Plaza.” Unlike the later series by Owens and Joseph Seewerker, published in book form as “Nuestro Pueblo,” these features were never reprinted. It’s interesting to note that even in the 1930s, Los Angeles was being rediscovered.
And here we find it at 472 N. Main St, courtesy of Google’s Street View.
Jan. 13, 1936: One look and I knew this gem was gone. In fact, even the cross street has been obliterated. The U.S. Hotel was at Main and Market, across from City Hall.
Times columnist Timothy Turner writes:
“Rapid change and disregard of traditions is considered the rule in Los Angeles. Yet we have the U.S. Hotel, which was built in the 1860s by Louis Mesmer, remodeled in the 1880s and is still owned and operated by his son, Joseph Mesmer, in the 1930s.
Main and Market from the 1945 Thomas Bros. Street Guide of Los Angeles.
Jan. 20, 1936: For this installment of Rediscovering Los Angeles, Times artist Charles Owens and columnist Timothy Turner visit a Chinese laundry on Figueroa near Temple.
Turner writes:
It was a busy hive before John Chinaman cut off his pigtail, back when he had the quaint custom of taking a huge mouthful of water and spraying it over the bone-dry clothes before he applied the iron. This traditional custom was finally broken by threats and pleadings of municipal health officers, who accomplished the substitution of a tin mechanical sprayer.
“Chinatown,” anyone?
One of Einar Petersen’s murals at the Spring Street Guaranty Building and Loan Assn., courtesy of Mary Mallory
Fame is fleeting. An individual might go unrecognized while creating great art while alive, only for the works to be considered masterpieces decades after their death, as with painter Vincent Van Gogh. Others slowly build a portfolio of work, gaining increasing recognition and respect with each new piece. They maintain fame for a long while, but see it disappear as times, styles and values change. Many become forgotten.
Unfortunately, this second scenario applies to Einar C. Petersen, recognized as one of Los Angeles’ and California’s greatest muralists in the 1920s. Achieving great reviews for his first Los Angeles mural at the New Rosslyn Hotel in 1915, Petersen would go on to craft murals for San Francisco’s Hunter-Dulin Building as well as downtown’s Mayflower Hotel, Beverly Hills Security-National Bank, and particularly, the forest mural for Clifton’s Cafeteria on Broadway Street in downtown Los Angeles. As new owners and developers came along, most either removed or painted over Petersen’s murals, save for the one in Clifton’s.
Mary Mallory’s “Hollywoodland: Tales Lost and Found” for the Kindle is available from Amazon.
Spring Street Guaranty Building and Loan Assn. at 435 Spring St. commissioned him in 1928 to create murals for the lobby and one for its conference room titled “Aladdin and His Lamp.” It intended the murals to extol the wonders of saving with them, and the riches it would bestow.
The organization had been formed by Hollywood native Gilbert Beesemyer, developer of Hollywood and Vine, and controlling secretary of Hollywood’s Guaranty Building and Loan Assn. He bought and used the charter of Vermont Building and Loan Assn. to establish Spring Street in late summer 1928. It was renovating the ground floor of the Title Insurance Building on Spring Street as its offices for a September opening.
Their Sept. 13, 1928, ad in the Los Angeles Times featured the lobby with drawings of Petersen’s murals prominently displayed on the walls, acknowledging his creation of the murals, and inviting the public to the grand opening.
The Times review of the building that day described a lovely Art Deco office, which was stylish, and emphasized Petersen’s glorious murals. “Construction and decoration of the new offices are a departure from the usual style. The principal color scheme is silver and black, while paintings and panels depicting the life of Aladdin adorn the walls. A specially designed lighting system throws consistently changing colors over the paintings.”
To help promote both themselves and the murals, the company created a 10-page brochure with color illustrations of the lobby murals. While it declared the story of Aladdin and his lamp a myth, it announced that, “The Magic of Building and Loan is a very real, material thing.” Investing money and getting mortgages with the company would bring success to those participants, as well as a haven for their money.
The booklet opened with the foreword stating, “We are indeed grateful for the praise and admiration which the citizens of Los Angeles have expressed for our new quarters in the magnificent Title Insurance Building, even in advance of their completion.
“In the firm belief that the days are gone when a cold, forbidding aspect can any longer be considered an essential qualification for the offices of financial institutions, we have tried to combine beauty and warmth with utmost utility and a really friendly, helpful, capable spirit of service.
“This little booklet has been prepared in response to hundreds of requests for copies of the beautiful ‘Aladdin and His Lamp’ murals which are the principal decorative feature of our offices, and to the unmistakable indication that there are literally thousands who would like to know more about Building and Loan as exemplified by the Spring Street Guaranty Building and Loan Assn.
“It is our earnest hope that it will both please and interest you.”
One of Einar Petersen’s murals at the Spring Street Guaranty Building and Loan Assn, courtesy of Mary Mallory.
Page 3 of the brochure gave the story of the murals. “…The Story of Aladdin, which was chosen as the theme of the 10 mural paintings and panels on the walls of our Title Insurance Building offices, shows us first, an indolent, wastrel boy who falls into the hands of a magician, and is tempted by the tales told him of riches without effort. Next, we see him in the Sorcerer’s Cave, with the Lamp, surrounded by untold wealth. How he discovers the secret of the Ring and the Lamp are known to almost all. Even with their magic power at his disposal, the age-old traits of frugality and economy manifest themselves, and he sells the silver dishes in which the Genii brings his food, exhausting the money thus obtained before again calling upon his magic talisman.
“…Happy as is the final outcome of the Tale, it carries a forceful illustration to we moderns of the precariousness of wealth, position, and success obtained solely through good fortune. The loss of his priceless Lamp, his Palace, his Princess, his own life, almost; are such incidents.
‘Indeed, ‘Aladdin and His Lamp,’ as executed for the Spring Street Guaranty Building and Loan Assn. by Einar Petersen, famed Los Angeles artist, shows the futility of ‘trusting to luck,’ in a most vivid and beautiful way. And the Spring Street Guaranty Building and Loan Assn. is proud to have had the privilege of adding these colorful paintings to the art treasures of Los Angeles, and California.”
The Times would go on to feature photos of some of the murals in the Sept. 16 and Dec. 2, 1928, papers. Bessemyer would help greet Santa Claus for the Hollywood Boulevard Assn.’s Santa Claus Lane that December as well.
Spring Street was riding high. It merged with Beesemyer’s Hollywood Guaranty Building and Loan Assn. on Dec. 25, 1928, only 60 days after forming. It was affiliated with the U. S. Guarantee Corp., with assets of $25 million, with Beesemyer as president.
Unfortunately, Beesemyer was following the early practices of the wastrel Aladdin, and employing the funds of the two organizations as a piggy bank. In December 1930, the Hollywood Guaranty Building and Loan Assn. collapsed, with Beesemyer admitting to illegal actions after auditors found that $8 million was missing.
Beesemyer pleaded guilty Dec. 13, 1930, with his trial occurring early in 1931. Creditors discovered that half of the losses came from theft, and half through bad investments on Beesemyer’s part, especially in oil wells that kept coming up dry. Bessemyer admitted to buying land with the association’s money, putting the title in his name and hiding the deficit in the accounts, while never covering the overdrafts, with lax auditing by the state helping prolong the disaster. What was worse, some employees knew of his illegal actions, but turned the other way.
The court found Beesemyer guilty, giving him a 40-year sentence, in which he had to serve at least 13 years. He was sent to San Quentin as convict No. 1947155, after willingly turning over all property to help depositors who had suffered losses, and filed for personal bankruptcy.
It took almost five years to resolve matters with Guaranty, with creditors finally receiving 25% on the dollar. Even more troubling to investors was the fact that the state considered Beesemyer a model prisoner in his accounting job in the prison commissary, granting him an immediate parole on Aug. 4, 1939, after protests and hearings from the public. After serving only eight years, Beesemyer was free to leave the state, moving to Chicago for a job. He disappeared from the papers.
Spring Street Guaranty Building and Loan Assn. also closed in December 1930 because of its connection to Beesemyer, sitting empty for a time. L. L. Elliott Co., an investment firm, operated there in 1934, before being replaced by Mitchell Brown and Co., another investment firm, in 1935. The address is not mentioned again until the lobby became a Christian Science reading room in 1944, lasting at least through 1953, when the location again disappears from papers.
What became of the murals? Were they removed during all the upheavals, or did they survive until recently? I toured the building in April 2012, discovering that the lobby of 435 S. Spring St. echoes that of the New Rosslyn Building just a block away, containing blank beige walls. In July 2013, one panel of the New Rosslyn murals came up for sale on eBay, so perhaps these lovely Aladdin murals rest someplace, and will magically reappear one day, to testify to the talent of the virtually forgotten Petersen.
Jan. 27, 1936: Times artist Charles Owens and columnist Timothy Turner visit the Hopperstead home, which was built at Hill and Court streets in 1880. When Turner wrote this column, family members were still living in a portion of the house, while other parts were rented out to roomers.
Miller Hopperstead’s house was built with balconies on three of its sides from which the family used to look over all that was Los Angeles, lying eastward and north and south of them. In flood time they used to count the houses and barns floating down the Los Angeles River.
Fans of the Los Angeles River, please note.
In case you just tuned in, Times artist Charles Owens and columnist Timothy Turner did a weekly series on some of the old landmarks in Los Angeles, many of them doomed by the impending construction of Union Station. Unlike the later series Nuestro Pueblo, by Owens and Joseph Seewerker, Rediscovering Los Angeles was never published in book form. The Times encouraged readers to clip and save the items. It is worth noting that even as early as 1935-36, when these stories were being written, Los Angeles was already being “rediscovered.”
Feb. 3, 1936: In this week’s installment of Rediscovering Los Angeles, Owens and Turner visit Tortilleria Jalisco on Republic Street near the Plaza. Notice the Hall of Justice in the background.
Turner describes women making Mexican women making corn tortillas by hand:
There is not one difference in this process of bread making than when found by Cortez and Pizarro. Corn culture indicates that the more civilized American Indian had skillfully and really scientifically cultivated it for millennia, longer than any European or Asiatic vegetable had been grown by man. So the tortilla is possibly the oldest prepared article of food in the world.
Mexicans especially of the lower classes have never given up their taste for the corn tortilla.
What appears to be an alley is actually the remnant of Republic Street, on the east of Main Street, via Google Street View.
Several people have suggested that “Never Built Los Angeles,” which has yet to be added to the Daily Mirror library, would be an excellent holiday gift. The book by Sam Lubell and Greg Goldin with a forward by Thom Mayne examines some of the many proposed buildings that never got off the drawing board. In case you don’t know, the history of Los Angeles is full of projects that were developed by various committees and designers and merely gathered dust once they were finished.
“Never Built Los Angeles” can be found at Book Soup, Skylight Books or Vroman’s (call first to be sure they have it in stock) and is available from Amazon.
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This program from the Mason Opera House for a 1920 performance of “The Mikado” has been listed on EBay, with bids starting at $5.50. The Mason was one of the leading theaters on Broadway. It was demolished in the 1950s to make way for a Cold War monstrosity that was in turn demolished after being damaged in the Northridge earthquake. After several years of being nothing but a big hole in the ground, the site is now undergoing construction for federal courthouse.
Which will look like this.
After the show, stop in at the Pig and Whistle at 224 S. Broadway, now the site of The Times parking structure.
Feb. 10, 1936: Times artist Charles Owens and columnist Timothy Turner visit Miss Abegale Stark, 72, who lives in the back of a house built for her father in the 1880s. She says the family came to California in a covered wagon in 1860 and they originally had a ranch in Newhall but “the big fires on the range one year in the ’70s drove us out.”
The home was originally on a 110-foot by 165-foot lot with fruit trees, but she sold off bits of it over the years and by 1936 was renting out the front to a locksmith and a shoeshine man.
Flower between 7th and 8th Streets, via Google Street View.
Joining us in our question, blogger Militant Angeleno also asks “What happened to the Lindbergh Beacon on City Hall?”
The Militant says: “Leaving the Lindbergh Beacon off during the holiday season makes Huell Howser’s angel cry.”
Feb. 27, 1936: This week, Times artist Charles Owens and columnist Timothy Turner visit the Baker Block, one of the huge gingerbread buildings that flourished in downtown Los Angeles, like the Hall of Records.
The Baker Block, at Main and Arcadia, was demolished in 1942 after being occupied by Goodwill Industries for many years.
Behold, the hand of progress: Main and Arcadia, site of the Baker Block, via Google Street View.
March 2, 1936: Here’s a treasure — a drawing of the grand staircase in the Baker Block. I have seen pictures of the exterior before, but never anything of the interior. Columnist Timothy Turner writes that the staircase is worn and that two bronze Roman soldiers who held up gas lights on the top landing have been taken away. “But otherwise it remains the same,” he says.
