Clifton’s Cafeteria, 648 South Broadway, c.1936-2012

c. 1936-2012

Obscured for nearly half a century under aluminum panels, the battered old facade of Clifton’s Cafeteria is now visible from the sidewalk once again. The Broadway stalwart is currently undergoing a full restoration by developer Andrew Meieran, scheduled to be completed in 2013.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the building at 648 South Broadway was built in 1904. For most of its early years, its bottom floors were occupied by a Boos Brothers Cafeteria, a now-forgotten local chain with several downtown outposts. Clifton’s took over the struggling restaurant space in 1935, and partially rebuilt the building’s original Beaux-Arts façade (pictured here in 1927).

The building’s appearance was dramatically altered in 1963 by a remodeling scheme which covered the upper stories with aluminum panels and installed a new marquee over the rebuilt entrance. Concrete blocks were installed over several windows in 1988 as an earthquake safety measure. Though the bricks will almost certainly be removed in the near future, it remains to be seen if the mid-century marquee will follow suit.

Clifton’s Cafeteria reveals original facade [Los Angeles Times]

Original photo: ”whit-m2496 – A view of Clifton’s Cafeteria in Downtown Los Angeles.” Dick Whittington Photography Collection. USC Digital Library. USC Libraries Special Collections. http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/assetserver/controller/view/DW-96-109-1-ISLA.

Looking east on Fourth Street from Olive Street, 1922-2012

1922-2012

The top photograph shows the very abrupt transition between Bunker Hill’s aging residential sections and the growing business center to the east. In the shadows of their much taller neighbors, several old residences can be seen in the right foreground, in addition to the Antlers Hotel (c. 1902) on the left. Particularly shaken by downtown’s decline and redevelopment, the intersection of Fourth and Hill Streets eventually lost each of the buildings that stood on its corners in the early 20th century.

Perhaps the most noticeable losses in this view are the white terra cotta office towers that occupied the intersection’s northwest and southwest corners, the Black Building (1913) and Wright and Callendar Building (c. 1907). Perenially starved for office space, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power purchased the Wright and Callendar Building in 1946, and leased much of the Black Building in 1958. The towers were vacated in 1964 when the agency moved to its current Civic Center headquarters. It appears that both buildings were demolished shortly afterwards, and their block of Fourth Street was subsequently widened.

Looking north from Fourth and Hill Streets, c. 1930s-2010 [urban diachrony]

Sources:
1. “Expansion of hotels.” Los Angeles Times. 26 Sep. 1902. A8.
2. Hebert, Ray. “Water Dept. wants tenants for buildings.” Los Angeles Times. 15 Apr. 1963. 31.
3. “On Hill and Fourth.” Los Angeles Times. 25 Mar. 1906. V1.
4. “Twenty new skyscrapers.” Los Angeles Times. 22 Jun. 1913. V1.
5. “Water Dept. quest for home may end in 1964.” Los Angeles Times. 13 Aug. 1961. F7.”
6. “Water, Power buildings face sale Monday.” Los Angeles Times. 2 May 1965. I2.
Original photo: “ACSC-M143 – Looking east along 4th Street from Olive Street intersection, showing moving and parked traffic, Los Angeles, 1922.” Automobile Club of Southern California engineering notebook photoprints. USC Digital Library. Automobile Club of Southern California. http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/search/controller/view/acsc-m143.html.

Looking north on Figueroa Street from Fifth Street, 1941-2012

1941-2011

Up through the Second World War, Figueroa Street marked the boundary between Los Angeles’ business center and the dense residential neighborhoods to its west. Later decades have since transformed the thoroughfare into one of the primary avenues of a prototypical Modernist office district. In the early 1960s, during the first phase of the Bunker Hill Redevelopment Project, Figueroa Street was cleared, regraded, and widened north of Fifth Street. The left side of the contemporary view shows the parking structure at the base of Union Bank Square (1967), linked by a pedestrian bridge to the Westin Bonaventure Hotel.

Original photo: “CHS-M226 – View of traffic on Figueroa Street, looking north, November 1941.” Title Insurance and Trust/C. C. Pierce Photography Collection. USC Digital Library. USC Libraries Special Collections. http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/assetserver/controller/view/CHS-32965.

Looking north on Flower Street from Pico Boulevard, 1897-2011

1897-2011

Streetcar service first arrived in Los Angeles’ southwestern districts with the opening of the Consolidated Electric Railroad’s University Line. Built in 1891 and taken over four years later by the Los Angeles Railway, the streetcar route ran between Fourth and Spring Streets and the fledgling University of Southern California. The top photograph shows a northbound car traveling along a still semi-rural stretch of Flower Street.

Three decades after the demise of Los Angeles’ original streetcar network, Flower Street became one of the city’s first corridors to be served by a modern light rail line. In 1990, Metro Blue Line trains began traveling along and below the roadway north of Washington Avenue, nearly a full century after the University Line’s first streetcars. With Metro’s Expo Line scheduled to open in early 2012, Flower Street will soon again host a rail transit link between Downtown and University Park. Pico Station, pictured above, will be one of two stops to be served by both Blue and Expo Line trains.

Sources:
1. “Railroad affairs.” Los Angeles Times. 3 Nov. 1891. 8.
2. “The modern city.” Los Angeles Times. 1 Jan. 1897. 28.
Original Photo: “CHS-M240 – View of Flower Street looking north from Pico Boulevard, 1897.” Title Insurance and Trust/C. C. Pierce Photography Collection. USC Digital Library. USC Libraries Special Collections. http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/assetserver/controller/view/CHS-7117.

Northwest corner of Sixth Street and New Hampshire Avenue, 1985-2011

1985-2011

Though better known for its landmark religious buildings of more established denominations, Los Angeles’ Wilshire District also gave birth to one of the larger 20th century American spiritual movements, Religious Science. Established by Ernest Holmes during the 1920s, the Institute of Religious Science opened its second building at Sixth Street and New Hampshire Avenue in 1935, in an Italian Renaissance Revival building heavily inspired by the Loggia dei Lanzi in Florence.

Unlike most of Los Angeles’ lost religious buildings, this one fell victim not to the decline of its membership, but to its very successful growth. By the late 1980s, the Mid-Wilshire building was the headquarters of a 250,000-member constituency spread across 300 churches in 18 countries. With a need for new office space as acute as its lack of funds, the denomination partnered with IDM Corporation, a Long Beach developer, to redevelop its land. The church’s historic quarters were demolished in 1988, alongside several adjacent parcels. In the following year, the United Church of Religious Science reopened its offices in a new four-story building named the Holmes Center. Meanwhile, the adjacent plots on the north side of the block were replaced by a large rental apartment complex built above a shared parking parking structure.

Sources:
1. ”Church in new home.” Los Angeles Times. 27 Jul. 1935. A2.
2. Dart, John. “$6-million Wilshire District project church deals for a new headquarters.” Los Angeles Times. 3 Sep. 1988. 6.
Original Photo: Reagh, William. “United Church of Religious Science church and headquarters – 00075542.” 1985. Los Angeles Public Library. http://photos.lapl.org/carlweb/jsp/FullRecord?databaseID=968&record=1&controlNumber=78937.

LA/2B: an opportunity to shape the future of Los Angeles’ streets

In the past year, Urban Diachrony has documented some of the countless changes that have transformed Los Angeles’ built form in the past century. As readers will surely have noticed, one theme that emerges from many photo montages is the great destruction of the city’s historic bones due to an embrace of automobility and car-centric planning. Many of the city’s oldest buildings near Los Angeles Plaza were lost to highway construction; the grand residences of Hoover Street were lost to road widening; the famed Baker Block was lost to a road extension; and many more have made way for surface parking lots. The poor choices we have made in the construction of our transportation infrastructure have undeniably led to a great degradation of Los Angeles’ public realm.

The City of Los Angeles’ Departments of City Planning and Transportation are currently offering a rare opportunity for all Angelenos to describe what we want our streets and neighborhoods to look like into the new century. The project known as LA/2B aims to update the city’s planning policies and standards related to transportation and street design. Still in its early stages, LA/2B has established a user-friendly online town hall that has already seen a number of great ideas and discussions. Of course, the more participation LA/2B receives, the more likely those ideas will find a permanent place in the city’s planning objectives. If you believe as strongly as I do in the need to relieve Los Angeles of its car-dependence, now is the time to join the dialogue and be part of the public record. With any luck, we will get Los Angeles on the way to a more sustainable and more beautiful future.

More about LA/2B [LA/2B]
MindMixer town hall [LA/2B]

The Hotel Pepper, southwest corner of Seventh Street and Burlington Avenue, 1905-2011

1905-2011

Completed in 1904, the Hotel Pepper was arguably the most flamboyant of the many hotels built in Los Angeles’ Westlake district at the turn of the century. In addition to over one hundred rooms, the hotel boasted an observation deck on its eighth floor, offering its guests unobstructed views of the growing city’s landscape. Today’s observers may nonetheless be most intrigued by the building’s garish design, a confused blend of Moorish Revival and Italianate architectural elements. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Hotel Pepper seems to have been the only major work of its architect, C. H. Brinkhoff.

Despite some initial success, the Hotel Pepper had lost much of its status by the late 1910s, around the time it was renamed the Wesley Terrace Hotel. Like many of its Westlake neighbors, the hotel went into an irreversible decline following the Second World War; by the late 1950s, its old guest rooms were largely vacant. The building stood until 1966, when it was demolished and replaced by Foy Station, an austere Post Office branch.

Sources:
1. ”Doings of builders and architects.” Los Angeles Times. 4 Oct. 1903. D1.
2. ”Doings of builders and architects.” Los Angeles Times. 13 Sep. 1903. D1.
3. ”Fire in old hotel routs 25 guests.” Los Angeles Times. 23 Oct. 1957. 1.
4. ”Lease valuable property.” Los Angeles Times. 13 Apr. 1923. II1.
5. ”Private renewal project started.” Los Angeles Times. 24 Jul. 1966. N7.
Original photo: C. C. Pierce & Co. “CHS-M827 – Exterior view of the Hotel Pepper on the corner of Seventh Street and Burlington Avenue, 1905.” Title Insurance and Trust/C. C. Pierce Photography Collection. USC Digital Library. USC Libraries Special Collections. http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/assetserver/controller/view/CHS-31335.