About : standard furniture westlake
Title : standard furniture westlake
standard furniture westlake
male speaker: so i was at-- i don't know if folks know thela book festival, which was, what, a couple months back? eric lynxwiler: yeah, abouttwo months ago. male speaker: --ucla campus. and i was just walking aroundchecking out the booths. and then i stumbled on ericand his book on wilshire boulevard, which is a greatstreet in los angeles that i love to drive.
and struck up a conversation. and before i knew it, i wasinviting him to come to the office to give a talk. eric lynxwiler: and little didhe realize i would actually accept and-- male speaker: yeah, heactually accepted, so there you go. and this actually is also thefirst of hopefully many author talks similar to the waymountain view is doing, where
they invite authors to cometo talks, and even more successfully, the new yorkoffice does also. we've started the ball rollingon more aggressively trying to get authors, whether they'reauthors local to los angeles or otherwise to come in and givetalks here in our office. so if you have any suggestions,feel free to email me, for sure. so anyway, i won't go on anyfurther, because i'm really looking forward to this.
and so i'll let you takeit away, eric. eric lynxwiler: thankyou very much. my name's eric lynxwiler. and if you didn't catch thatcover, it's wilshire boulevard: grand concourseof los angeles. the book just cameout in october. and. it's not very easy forme to brag about it. but we're already ina second printing.
and we hit six weeks on the latimes bestseller list for a while, thank you. we were actually between jimmycarter and maya angelou, which kind of made me feela little weird. it's like, how didthat happen? well, i spent about three yearsworking on this history project with another guynamed kevin roderick. he works on up a blog sitecalled la observed. you might have heard his name inthe past. he was associated
with the los angeles timesfor quite a while. the book's birth came about whena few friends and i took a day off of work, and we walkedwilshire boulevard. we started in downtown withbreakfast, and 15.8 eight miles later, we had dinnerin santa monica. i highly encourage anybodyto do that. it hurts like hell, butit's a lot of fun. and it might even bloom anidea like a book on the history of wilshire boulevard.
by actually getting out of yourcar and stepping onto the sidewalk and being able to stopand smell the roses, so to speak, look inside storewindows, peek in lobbies, and knock on doors, wilshireboulevard just bloomed to me. and the lecture i'm aboutto give you-- i'm not really going toregurgitate the history of wilshire boulevard. i'm not just going to re-speakthe book to you. but i do want to tellyou about the book.
and in order to do that,i need a base. so the first photographi'm going to show you is wilshire boulevard. this was taken just a fewblocks away from here. this is santa monica's wilshireboulevard, back in about 1888, 1890 whenthe street was still called nevada avenue. now, wilshire boulevard bloomedin fits and starts. it started over towards downtownlos angeles in 1896.
that was the first four blocksof wilshire named wilshire. but this piece of wilshireboulevard that you've got in santa monica is actually olderthan downtown section. it was named nevada avenue, butit's still an older piece of the boulevard. what this piece of property wasso famous for were street races, actually. every year, the city of santamonica had a big street race that actually went from here,did a gigantic loop over to
the veterans administrationoffices, and then came all the way back. it was an enormous circle. but as santa monicagot more populated it became more dangerous. this particular piece wherewilshire hits ocean was known as dead man's curve. it was a 90-degree angle. and cars speeding actuallycaused a few accidents.
that was one of the reasonswhy they just said, no, we can't do that anymore. but i need to introduce you fromyour piece of wilshire now to gaylord wilshire. now, this is gaylord wilshire's section of boulevard. this is the downtown section ofwilshire, which was founded by this guy, gaylord wilshire,and his wife mary. i can't not point out how funnyi find it that its gay
and mary who foundedwilshire boulevard. i think it's humorous. but this is a photograph of themtaken about the 19-teens in england. gay's story in a nutshellis that he was a gadfly. he was born in cincinnati,ohio. he came out to oakland, sanfrancisco with his brother. they worked in weightsand measures. they made safes.
they came down herespeculating land. they helped found little chunks of long beach, fullerton. even some pieces of the desertstill have the wilshire name. now, he came to los angeles,where he promoted socialism. he was a huge, huge socialist.he even had his own magazine, wilshire's magazine. of course, he was so brazen heput his name on that too. eventually he took a piece offarm land that he owned.
and the farm was betweenwestlake park and sunset park, which is now known as macarthurpark and lafayette park, about four blocks. he converted those four blocksinto a gigantic thoroughfare and sold off piecesof that property for gigantic mansions. huge, huge people owned thosementions, big names. i can't even get into the namesbecause i can't even remember all.
but big names. the property was very ritzy. the thoroughfare wasincredibly wide. it was absolutely insane for afour block piece of property to have such a wide boulevard. and this is in thedays before cars. the goal was to have a promenadefor carriages, where the wealthy could not justlive, but show off their wealth, and also do a u-turnin a carriage.
so when wilshire boulevardstarted to bloom, it was when los angeles started to grow. it didn't grow east. it grewwest. and wilshire boulevard and its width was perfect for aburst to go west. so as los angeles expanded, wilshireboulevard pushed los angeles's boundaries towards the oceanas the city itself grew. sorry. i know you're eating,but one more thing. now, gaylord wilshire tried totake credit for this big old
burst of wilshire boulevard. he tried to takecredit for it. but in reality, he made thislittle residential enclave, and then he took off. he went to new york. he went to canada. he went to england. he traveled the world withhis wife, mary who-- i wish i could write a book onher alone, because she's kind
of an auntie mametype character. she's got a lot oflife in her. she actually studied under carljung during world war i. she traveled there with herson during world war i, to europe, in order tostudy psychology. she took a back to los angelesbecame a therapist to the stars during the depression. and meanwhile, her husband madefortunes, lost fortunes, got into billboardand gold mining.
tried to convince all hissocialist friends to give him money so he can open a goldmine, which went bust. he lost millions, upon millions, uponmillions, he made it, and then he lost it again. in the very end of his life,he came up with wilshire's [? ionica. ?] that's what that littleleaflet about constipation is for. among the myriad of things he'smost known for is this
horse collar. and it's an electrichorse collar. you literally wrap itaround yourself. in the illustration, the womanis wearing this gigantic belt. it's basically a wholebunch of wires. you plug it into a wall, and alittle, tiny light lights up to tell you that it's working. it solved constipation,cancer, hair loss, old age, gas.
it solved all your problems.until he actually tried it on himself on his deathbed,and it didn't work. he was on the edge of losingit all and, well, he did. thankfully mary persevered. she kept the wilshirename going with her and her son, logan. but still, the wilshirename is most known for wilshire boulevard. now, with that as a base, i'mgoing to introduce you to some
of the photographs thatwere used in the book. the next image is one thatwe decided not to use. this particular photograph wastaken towards downtown in a hilly section of wilshireboulevard. i'm fascinated bythis photograph. it was taken by dickwhittington. we dated it to about19, i think, 34. let's take a closer look. some of the details that we cansee in this image are, of
course, neon signs. and one of the things i'm wellknown for is working with the museum of neon art in downtownlos angeles. so if it has neon onit, i'm thrilled. and i tried to plugas much neon into this book as possible. so this photograph was veryvaluable to me, because it has an incredibly rare alka-seltzersign. the only one of its kind that'sknown it is in the
american sign museum incincinnati, ohio. so i was thrilled to findthis particular image. inside the window,we have a lot of point of purchase displays. if you could put these on e-bay,you'd make a fortune. they're so valuable. the weight machine-- on the right side, you canactually see the back of an electrical stop sign, the kindthat actually flashed to
drivers to say stop at nightwith the ribbon banding going down the base of it. that was something that wasadded by a very young aaa in order to promote stop. stripes. stop. it didn't really work. the other thing isthe street light. you can actually see onthe left the bottom
of that street light. that is a wilshire boulevardstandard introduced to wilshire boulevard in 1928. you can only find awilshire boulevard street light on wilshire. i know that seems ridiculous,but these lanterns are so incredibly rare. they stretched all theway from alvarado to la brea at the peak.
and now we've only gotmaybe two dozen left. they were absolutely enormous. big, beautiful. you'll them in pictureafter picture.. but because of the street signon that lantern, we could tell that this is at wilshireboulevard and, i think, wilshire place. the details are, again,incredibly rich. right in the same buildingwe have the lock.
the lock cafe is a nice littlea cocktail bar with a streamline moderne facade. i tried to do a little researchon it and found some details, but it didn'thave a story to tell. moving back, in an overview, thephotograph does have some cultural value, butdoes it add to the wilshire boulevard story? not really, and it broke myheart, but this photograph was left on the cuttingroom floor.
but thankfully, i can lecturelike this and show it off, because i still think it'sa fantastic photograph. in total, we dug up about1,200 images on historic and that included things likemenus, cocktail napkins, all sorts of illustrations,advertisements, and of course the photographs themselves, evensome rough sketches and watercolors of proposedbuildings. we had to narrow it down to,i think, 200 images. and if you ever get the chanceto pick up the book, one of my
favorite sections arethe end pages. because that's where i got tosqueeze in a lot of my, no, no, we have to putit in there. that's where a lot of mymatchbooks, menus, and napkin covers came in. but anyway, this photographdidn't make it. the ambassador hotel. i'm sure you've heardabout it. it was famous for thecoconut grove.
it made its premiereon january 1 1921. it was just recently demolishedby the los angeles unified school district,thank you. and it was a huge culturalloss for los angeles. because even though the buildingmay not have been architecturally significant, itwas culturally an icon of los angeles. because the ambassador hotelwas located on wilshire boulevard, it became classy.
and everything built aroundwilshire boulevard in that section just reeked ofclass and high air. there were hundreds ofphotographs of the ambassador hotel we could haveput in the book. and there were thousands ofstories about the ambassador i'm going to tellyou one story. the story is about a littlecharacter named mickey bishop. mickey bishop-- and i'm buildingthis for a reason. mickey bishop flew into town oneday and was discovered by
a woman who becamehis benefactress. she decided to give him achecking account and have stationary made his name. she wrote big checks to the redcross and to the audubon society in the nameof mickey bishop. this doesn't sound toooutrageous, except mickey bishop is a bird. he's a little canary which sheliterally found in her room at the ambassador hotel.
so she adopted him, named himmickey, and mickey became a huge character in losangeles circles. he was quite a big deal. now, i heard the story, and forabout a year and a half, i tried to find outif it's real. it took forever to findout if it was real. and finally one day, i went tothe los angeles library. well, i'd been digging throughtheir archives day after day after day.
but i went to a differentsection of the library, in the arts section. and out of desperation, i wentflipping through their clippings files. because they actually haveinspirational illustrations and photos and artwork organizedin these manila files, dedicated to things likegardens, trees, flags, colonial era dress, chairs,dividers like in this room. strange stuff.
and in a section of gardens,i actually found proof that mickey did exist. not only did mickey exist, butshe also honored him by having mickey bishop memorial birdbaths dedicated at lafayette park on wilshire boulevardand at westlake park on wilshire boulevard. the fountains are gone. mickey's memory isalmost gone. but thank god i foundthis tiny clipping.
and thank god the date and theissue number were on the back of that clipping. so i was able to get mickey'sfull story out of this parks and recreation circular thatkind of saved my butt and proved that mickey was true. the photograph of mickeyis kind of crappy. the photograph did not makeit into the book. it wasn't good enough. but the story, as fantasticas it is, it's
definitely in the book. so this is your chance tosay hello to mickey. he did exist. next is this beautiful buildingby claud beelman marking the terminus ofcrenshaw at wilshire. the building is fantastic. i love the palm trees. you've even got a neon signin the bottom corner. the cars are fascinating.
the streetlights are thereplacement streetlights for those wilshire standards thatwe saw in the 1920s. if you take a really close look,and i sure did, there's an airplane flying in theupper right hand corner. very small. this photograph is kind ofinteresting to look at. but it's not that great untilyou pair it with what came before this building. some of you may recognize--
once, i actually hada person scream-- this building. audience: sunset boulevard. eric lynxwiler: thank you. it's norma desmond house fromthe movie sunset boulevard. norma desmond's house was notreally located on sunset. it was located on wilshireboulevard, and it was filmed right there. you can just imagine williamholden walking through the
three archways on theright hand side. or as he left a norma walkingtowards the pool in the center foreground, being shot twice inthe back, once the front, i think, and then stumblingand landing in pool. if you're not familiarwith the movie-- sorry, did you see psycho? i can tell you how it ends. no, never mind. well, this was also a scenefrom another famous movie,
rebel without a cause. there was a scene in which themain characters ran down off of the griffith observatory,down a hill, to an abandoned house. well, the abandoned house wason wilshire boulevard. and coincidentally, therewas the remains of a non-functioning butappropriate pool. they all hid it in thebottom of this pool. and that was sal mineo, jamesdean, and natalie wood.
the house was in two iconicmovies about los angeles. and that wasn't enough to saveit from the wrecking ball. as you can see, the house waspretty crummy and crumbling when it was demolished to makeway for the claud beelman and getty building. the last photographi showed you? it's ok. but when you pair it withthis, the two tell an incredible story abouta before and
after on wilshire boulevard. they both made itinto the book. this one, kind of dull,kind of boring. but again, it has to havea picture to go with it. now, wilshire boulevard expandedin fits and starts. it almost absorbed otherstreets, like nevada avenue, in order to make its wayall the way to beach. now, it stopped at westlakepark, but it had to go all the way to downtown.
there were grand plans to pushwilshire boulevard through downtown and take it all the wayto whittier, but there was no way they could do that. the property in downtownwas too expensive. nobody actually had the gumptionto say, i'm going to buy your land, tear downyour building. it would have barreled throughthe spring street banking district, the broadway theaterdistrict, and the jewelry district on hill.
it would have takenout quite a few gorgeous, beautiful buildings. well, if you look closely atthis image, in the very center, we see the backof a building that's already lost its roof. that's one of the propertiesthat's going to be demolished in order to expand wilshireboulevard from figueroa all the way to grand. grand is as far as it got onits way towards whittier.
it was like three blocks, ithink, from fig to grand. that's all it got. but it makes for a reallygood photograph. ready? take a look at the covey's youdrive, where you can rent a car for $3. it's right on the left handside with a nice little silhouetted roof. because covey's is aboutto get a new
neighbor, wilshire boulevard. want to see it again? all right, one more time. because the effect is too cool. why not? wilshire boulevard barreledthrough a few blocks. but that was enough to push itinto downtown to make it even more, well, traffic worthy. for the longest time, wilshireboulevard drivers had to drive
around to get onto 6th streetand 7th street street in order to push through. well, block by block, theyfinally built it so that by the 1930s-- i think it was '32-- wilshire boulevard actuallywent all the way from the ocean into the heartof downtown. took forever, and this wasn'teven the last leg. get to you in a sec.
oh-- audience: what wasthe cross street? eric lynxwiler: the cross streetin this photograph? in the foreground,that's figueroa. in fact, i think practicallyevery building in this foreground has beendemolished. pretty much everything. if you're familiar with downtownand you know the intersection of fig andwilshire, or if you're
familiar with the wilshireboulevard hilton, there is a hilton on the far right handcorner where a two story car lot stands in this photograph. i don't have a current shot, butyou wouldn't recognize it even if i showed youa comparison. so let's move on to-- oh, and by the way, anybodynotice any trees? no. no trees in downtownat this point.
we were still livingin a desert. speaking of cars, one the thingsi wanted to make sure that this book covered was notjust the highlights of wilshire boulevard, not just theambassador hotel, bullocks wilshire, and the brown derby. i wanted to make surethis book covered common, everyday us. so, of course, i had toinclude the finest gas stations on wilshireboulevard.
and this was located across thestreet from i. magnin's, just down the street frombullocks wilshire. if you happen to be in thatneighborhood shopping for a fur coat, top hat, gloves, ortuxedo, whatever, if you were going to go shopping at one ofthe finest department stores on wilshire, why not goto one of the finest gas stations on wilshire? this was the opening day. but you'll note the men to theleft and right ready to
service your automobile, fillit with gas, and change the oil are wearing jodhpurs. they look fantastic. the women in the foregroundare getting in on the east orient design with a neon signon top, great tile, by wearing their little persian outfits. they even had a fantasticwaiting room for women, women only, with wonderful littlewicker chairs, air conditioning.
it was very nice andcalm and peaceful. unfortunately, the gas stationis no longer with us. and neither is this littlegem, which was located in miracle mile. this was bob's airmail service. it's a real fokker, f-o-k-k-e-r,which was used in the war, transplanted towilshire and cochran in the miracle mile district. you can actually pump your gasunder the wings and get your
oil changed behind. the propellers did spin,and the wings were outlined with neon. unfortunately, it'sno longer there. we also lost this little fella,which was located in the highland area, thehancock park area. this is where wilshire andhighland or thereabout. the tall neon tower beckons todrivers from a distance. you could see it for miles.
it kind of looks like an s.charles lee design, but we couldn't confirm that. speaking of neon towers,this is westwood. these buildings weren't locatedon westwood because westwood itself had no buildings on wilshire boulevard. they actually kept wilshireclean of structures. it was all green gardenand grass. it was beautiful and inviting,and in the 1960s, far too
valuable to remainpark property. that's when wilshire just boomedwith high-rises in the westwood area. but before that, we had neontowers like these, the richfield tower in theforeground, beckoning to drivers to say, pulloff of wilshire and get your gas here. every single one ofthese is gone. but thankfully, wehave photographs.
and all of these photographshad to be put in the book. if you're wondering what crowdswere like on wilshire, this is wilshire andfigueroa again. the cars are heading towards theintersection of figueroa. that's grand way offin the distance. that hotel i mentioned, thewilshire hilton, that would be eventually on the rightwhere the studebaker service in this image. we can see the beautiful streetlights of wilshire, but
also those fantastic cars. i gave a lecture at the petersenautomotive museum. and i had to stop and pausebecause everyone had to announce, oh, i usedto own that car. i used to have acar like that. and they rattled off name, make,manufacturer, and model. great. i'm glad you're enjoying. but in this photograph,what truly impresses
me is not the cars. it's the street-- and i keep telling you aboutthe street lights. this is how fantasticthey are. this is a closeup shot oneof the remaining wilshire boulevard street standards. the lanterns themselves areabout six feet tall. you can stand inside of one. they are huge.
and of course, wrappedaround these-- i think they're bronze. bronze? yeah. are artichokes, acorns, boughsof flowers, and of course, four armless and leglesscaryatid nude maidens with bobbed haircuts. perfect, perfect, lovethem to death. if i could possibly scramble upone of these street lights
and rip one of those women, offi would, because they're just that adorable. so is this something that youwould really be able to see while you're speedingalong in your car? no, not at all. but in the 1920s, the citybeautiful movement said ornate everything. and even though it was way theheck up in the sky, two stories tall, they still drippedit with detail and
these beautiful little womenjust to make wilshire boulevard that muchmore affluent. some of the beautiful gems thati found while cruising the miracle mile. this was designedby an architect named s. charles lee. it's a black and goldbank building. it's still standing. recently put on the national
register of historic landmarks. this one is a churrigueresquestructure. it's a ralphs grocery storewith a melody lane restaurant on top. it was designed bystiles clements. moving on, in a streamlinemoderne style, again, stiles clements, this wasthe four story-- one, two, three, four,five story-- coulter's dry goodsdepartment store.
it was groundbreaking in itsarchitectural style and its use of glass blockon the facade. one more, the mullen and bluettdepartment store in a late moderne style. all of these buildings are onthe miracle mile, or were on they were all designedin period appropriate architectural styles. and they're all within20 years. and if i haven't said the namestiles clements enough, i'll
say it again. the man was an amazingarchitect. he might be best knownfor the richfield building in downtown la. it was demolished in the '60s. you might know his work atthe wiltern theatre. he designed wiltern atwilshire and western. these four gems are some ofthe smaller structures. they're not the grand, gorgeous,iconic beautiful
buildings that everyone wouldflock to just to be seen in front of the door step now. these were the common structuresfor common men and women just doing their dailyrounds of shopping. they are often forgotten, andstiles clements was most famous for designing them. unfortunately, since they areoften forgotten, he has been. and if i could do another book,i would make that other book on stiles clements, justbecause i'm such an
admirer of his taste. in every architectural style heworked in, he perfected it, and then another people woundup copying his style. he is amazing. so just to point out, on thisone page, just a few blocks apart, all 20 years apart fromeach other, zigzag moderne art deco, churrigueresque,streamlined moderne, and late moderne. beautiful, unbelievable.
only one of these buildingsremains, and that's the black and gold on the bottom left. know where we are? audience: koreatown? eric lynxwiler: yes, actually. koreatown, also knownas wilshire center. the wilshire center area waswrapped around the ambassador hotel, with that art decopylon on the right. now, for those of you who arewith me and dislike the lausd
for actually tearing down theambassador, they did do one good thing, and nobodyasked it of them. that art deco pylon on theright still stands. it was covered in a 1970s nowgrove pylon covered in stucco. and when they pulled the stuccooff, this art deco tower was still there. their plans are to keep thattower, thankfully. and they're going to restoreit as part of their new la unified school district kthrough 12 twelve campus.
so at least a piece of thatstructure remains. and it's pretty damn nice. it sits across the streetfrom the gaylord hotel. the gaylord hotel isno longer hotel. it's an apartment building. and if you haven't beento the hms bounty-- and you must. the hmsbounty is fantastic. they make really good longisland iced teas. but right next to that issomething that we did lose.
audience: did the bountyactually exist back then? eric lynxwiler: well, actually,back before it was the hms bounty, it was alsoknown as the gay room, named after gaylord wilshire. since you brought it up, therumor is that gaylord wilshire actually wound up suing thegaylord hotel and apartments because they used hisname in conjunction with wilshire boulevard. we couldn't prove it was true.
we just found rumor after rumorafter rumor, and we didn't put it in the book. but i do have a matchbook, whichis actually in the book, of the gay room, which is wherethe hms bounty was. it was also known asdimmesdale's harbor, something like that. it changed hands overand over again. but in the '60s, itbecame the bounty. so if you haven't been tothe bounty, it's a must.
good fish and chips. next to that is a little dome. that little dome isthe brown derby. now, the brown derby restaurantis an icon of hollywood history. some people aren't familiarwith the history of it. they don't know the name. there were five inlos angeles. it was a chain all ownedby the same guy.
and only one of them was inthe shape of a derby hat. the thing was a whole bunch ofthese people were having dinner at the coconut groveacross the street. and somebody said, if the food'sgood enough, they would eat it out of a hat. so they built the brown derbyacross the street so that after the coconut grove closed,they can run across and have their chili and tamalesand fried chicken at the brown derby restaurant.
and it really attracted quitea crowd and following. it was such a big deal, itspread los angeles wide, so that we had five. but here comes the fun part. it's thinking. there we go. now we, know that there wasa brown derby in the shape of a derby hat. and that was located at wilshireand alexandria across
the street from the ambassadorin the koreatown area. but there was also a morefamous brown derby at hollywood and vine. that one was demolished,i'm sorry to say. there was another one locatedat wilshire and rodeo. that was demolished. there was another one locatedon los files, over by hillhurst, i think it is. that one is now thederby dance club.
you may have gone swingdancing there. it was recently made intoa los angeles landmark. and hopefully itwill be saved. it's kind of still threatenedwith demolition. but it's a landmark. hopefully we'll keep it. the big deal is that inresearching this book, we did something kind of controversialand spectacular at the same time.
we found a missing brownderby restaurant. i still can't believe thatsomebody could have lost a brown derby restaurant. but the whole history oflos angeles states that there's four. every book, even historians onthe brown derby-- and you might be shocked to know thatthere are historians on the brown derby-- knew of four.
so when i found a photographand said, there's a missing brown derby. it existed for nine months,and then it went out of business, they alljust went, nah. can't be. not possible. i'm like, well, tell me thephotograph has been doctored. tell me the photographis not real. long story short, herb somborn,who opened up the
brown derby chain,in about 19-- i want to say it's 1932. the numbers escapes me. it was in the greatdepression. times were tough. and for some reason he decidedhe was going to open up a fancy dining restaurant,and he was going to call it the high hat. there is going to be the brownderby for the common masses
and high hat french dining--thank you for getting it-- and the high hat dining forthe not hoi polloi. in the depression, it couldhave been anything. it could have been the food. it could have been the cost. itcould have in the location. it didn't work. he quickly changed the name tothe brown derby and tried to run it as the brown derbywith the regular menu. well, at that point, there werethree brown derbys on
and maybe that killedthe market. it was walking distance tothe shape of a hat one. anyway, it didn't last. he wound up turning thisproperty over to another restaurateur. and perino's restaurant openedin the place of this guy. now, you might knowthe perino's name. you may have seen it in themovie american gigolo. perino's was an incredibly ritzyfrench restaurant that
succeeded with a splash. it was a big, big, big,big, big deal. and by the 1950s, they leftthis location and went to another location in the hancockpark area, which is where they succeededeven more. finally tanked. the building's justbeen demolished. and in its place, we're goingto see the perino's apartments.
i'm not all that thrilled. but just because of the rarityof that particular photograph of the brown derby, the tie-inwith the illustration of the very same facade adopted byperino's, i have to include one more image becauseit's so rare. how about an interior shot? this is going to be an interiorof the brown derby, later perino's, in its streamlined-ish art deco style.
apparently the booths were madeof leather and riveted in brass rivets. it was spectacular. it didn't last, so much so thathistorians completely forgot it, until i provedits existence. so thank you. i'm happy about that. now, i'm leaving you with ablank screen because i've got two more photographs i wantto show you before
we wind up our lunch. the photographs that i've showedyou so far have been pieces that did make it into thebook, pieces that didn't. and i hope i've kind ofclarified what made the cut and what didn't. because some of thesephotographs are fantastic, but they didn't have storiesto tell. other photographs were ok, buthad stories, and the stories were greater than the photo, so,well, they didn't make the
cut, but the story did. the next photograph i'mgoing to show you is probably my favorite. it did not make the cut. because in the timeline of thebook that we were working in, we could not possiblyfit it into the timeline of wilshire boulevard. the photograph was shotin the 1960s. it was found in the archivesof the los angeles times.
it was only published once, andunfortunately it probably will never be published again. but since i have a copyand i can share it, i'm going to do it. are you ready for "the deliveryof a mastodon?" have you been to the la brea tar pitsand seen their gigantic fiberglass mastodons? well, in the 1960s, in order topromote the addition of the fiberglass mastodons to the labrea tar pits, they towed it
by volkswagen down 6th streetin order to take it from the artist's studios and dropit off at the park. it's cute. it's adorable. i love it so much iwant to hug it. but i just couldn't putit into the book. it didn't fit the storylines. but i'm so glad i'm able toshow you, because i would never have the opportunityotherwise.
audience: it looks like thefront wheels are about to come off the road. eric lynxwiler: i have no ideahow much that weighs, but there are two more mastodonsthat go along with this one. i didn't find thosephotographs. this is the male standing onthe side with the baby, looking at the one that'scaught in the tar. and by the way, if you everwondered, just as an addition because you're so interested,they try and keep the water
level at a certain heightbecause as the water level rises on top of the tar, thatfloating mastodon in the center of the lake can actuallybreak free of its chain and mooring and then gofloating for a little swim. and it has. and it's apparently a big painin the ass to haul it back and stick your hand into thetar and go like this and reattach it. but yeah.
next time it rains, take a lookdown wilshire boulevard and see if the mastodonhas gone for a swim. my final photograph isof the miracle mile. it's, again, one ofmy favorites. it did make it into the book. it's a beautiful shotof wilshire boulevard and fairfax. and i figured it's always agreat background photograph that keeps people enthralled,even with a magnifying glass,
for all of its detail, includingthe la brea tar pits, which are just aboutthe center, above the may company building. so while you're staring at thatbeautiful photograph and enjoying the background, it's mychance to say thank you and answer any questions you mighthave about wilshire boulevard. thank you. thanks. yes?
audience: you said there werestill some of the old standard stoplights? where are they located? eric lynxwiler: the streetstandards are located in between alvarado at westlakepark and figueroa. that's just that one section. and what drives me nuts isthat there's practically nothing of any architecturalsignificance in that section except for those streetstandards.
and so few people bother drivingthat little blip of wilshire that they'repractically invisible. nobody knows they're there. but oh my gosh, they'rebeautiful. audience: is logan wilshirestill alive? eric lynxwiler: no, loganwilshire died, unfortunately. i tried tracking downwhere he was buried. but he was cremated, and hisashes were taken away. now, gaylord wilshire died onhis way to europe, and he's
buried in a cemetery in thebronx in new york, in a pauper's grave, basically,because he had nothing at the end. little tiny tombstone. but i had to go andpay my respects. they even got the date wrongon the tombstone. his birth date was wrong. audience: not now, but later,can you tell me where that is? eric lynxwiler: it'san enormous
cemetery in the bronx. i'll have to dig it up. but the name is like one wordwith two parts, like crestview cemetery, or something, yeah. mary was also cremated. she died in the 1960s. and her ashes weretaken by logan. logan was cremated, and i don'tknow where his ashes were taken.
i would love to find out moreabout that side of their death, the remains. but beyond logan, therewere no grandchildren. there were no heirs. on one lecture i gave for thejonathan club, somebody actually came up, shook my hand,and said, hello i'm the great grand-aunt daughterniece nephew whatever of gaylord wilshire. i'm like, you're the first andonly relative i have ever met,
and you're 20 times removed. but thank you very much. unfortunately, she's it. i can't track down anybodyelse in that family. but what a story. and in case you're interested,the wilshire archives are at ucla in the specialcollections. and just going through theirboxes of personal photographs, which were all jumbled up, ittold a fantastic tale of an
incredibly rich, then poor, thenrich, then poor family who bought land all oversouthern california. and thankfully, theytook a few pictures of it and kept it. because they woundup in this book. but that's the huge answerto your short question. what else can answer for you? audience: so, how do you feelabout the red line going [inaudible]?
eric lynxwiler: good question. i think that the red line is ahorrible thing but inevitable. i don't think that there'sany way to stop it. because wilshire boulevardis considered the spine of los angeles. there are other streets thatare iconic, but wilshire boulevard is a lineardowntown. that was one of thebases of our book. you could live your entire lifeon wilshire boulevard and
never leave it. you can literally be born onwilshire, be educated k through doctorate on wilshire,enjoy all sorts of dining, entertainment, life, living, etcetera, and then be buried on wilshire. you could do it allon one street. it's in a way a lineardowntown. instead of having everythingcrammed in one little bubble, it's all spread out across threecities and different
climate zones. but it's all there. my god, did i answer yourquestion, or not? the red line coming, or theextension of streetcars running under at or above it,my big fear is i remember hollywood boulevard, when theywere doing tunnels underneath hollywood boulevard, and howhollywood died as a result of the tunnels being constructed. does anybody remember how whathollywood was like back then?
i was there too, and itwas pretty depressing. now, hollywood is booming. it's great. it's fantastic. oops, gone to sleep. but i just don't know ifwilshire boulevard can survive that period. i wish it could. i don't know.
audience: is it a done deal? eric lynxwiler: no, it'snot a done deal. they still don't even know ifthey're going to do above ground or tunnel. the push right nowis to do tunnel. but i still look at the la breatar pits and go, are you crazy, tunnel? i used to live in the miraclemile just a few months ago. i lived there for years andfinally moved to downtown.
but the methane is richin that whole area. buildings have actuallyexploded. if you go to the grove shoppingmall and you look at the walls, sometimes hidden inthe walls you can see the methane detectors flashing. because they are doing their jobin making sure the grove does not explode. now, imagine putting a tunnelwith trains traveling and sparking underneathall of that.
that scares the hellout of me. they say they can worktheir way around it. maybe they can scootover to olympic boulevard or something. but the methane fields aroundthe miracle mile are huge. they're still belching. and you can't stopthe tar either. in a way, i would liketo see it not happen. but i think it's inevitablewith the
growth of los angeles. it's probably going to happen. not in our lifetime. i can't see it happeningwithin the next 40 years, but it will. somebody else had a question. audience: in one photo, itseemed like cars were going one direction on bothsides of the street? what was that about?
eric lynxwiler: oh, in thatphotograph of downtown? that was actually anexperimental shot. the photograph he's talkingabout is the one showing hordes of cars pouring towardsfigueroa and downtown. and they were actually drivingon the wrong side of the street in order toget down there. that was an experiment that thecity of la did in order to see how many cars they can cramonto wilshire boulevard in order to solve sometraffic issues.
so many people were pouringinto downtown at once-- rush hour in the morning,rush hour at night-- that they actually transferredsome streets traveling west to go east. so they just tried toscoot them all in there. it was still trafficand congested no matter what they did. what else can i answerfor you? audience: i have a question[inaudible] you can't really do it all whenyou live from birth to
death on wilshire if you can'tride the subway from one end to the other. eric lynxwiler: youcould walk it. audience: that's too far. [inaudible ] eric lynxwiler: in the meantime,instead of having a subway, wilshire boulevardstill has a rapid bus. and the rapid bus ispretty darn good. when i was living half a blockfrom wilshire, i would take
the rapid bus and godowntown on it. audience: but the rapid busstill destroys the streets. eric lynxwiler: the rapid bus isstill hard on the streets, you're right. but there are plans to put ona rapider rapid bus before they do the subway. and they're actuallyplanning on-- the gutter systems in losangeles have this way of leaning so that water doesn'tgo over the sidewalk.
that's the funny part. they're planning on kind ofleveling the gutters with the sidewalk so that the busestraveling on that route will travel fast and straight insteadof fast and tilted. audience: so [inaudible] eric lynxwiler: yeah, exactly. that's going to bethe balance. anyway, it hasn't been approved,but that's one of the plans to make the rapidbus more rapid on wilshire
until we get a subway. where do you all live,by the way? does anybody livenear wilshire? used to? i used to too. it was getting toocongested for me. too much. questions? audience: this is not so much awilshire question, but it is
a los angeles road question. i'm guessing you're probablya good person to ask this. but all over los angeles, thereseem to be these plates at intersections whichi've read on them. and it seems pretty obvious thatthey were somehow early precursors to automaticstop lights. so some kind of sensor plate,where instead of wires, it was actually set off by thepressure of the car driving over it.
eric lynxwiler: yeah audience: do you knowanything about that? eric lynxwiler: those stillexist. some of them are actually still functioning. it's kind of a street sensorwarning system. the light remains red until thesensor on the street feels the pressure of a car. and then the street lightwill eventually change. it's like, oh, there'sa car there.
it'll turn green. audience: there are somethat are still-- eric lynxwiler: there are somethat are still there. if you look-- instead of having a metalplate, which scares the heck out of me. when i was growing up and i'dsee these horizontal metal plates in front of the car, itliterally looked like a spring track mechanism, like the wallwas going to shoot up in front
of the car and youcan run into it. instead of having the metalthat does the clink, clink when you roll over it, now theyhave these round circle sensor systems thatare actually embedded in the asphalt. and at some intersectionsyou can just look down. and you can see the circleand circle cut into the intersection, cutinto the lane. and that senses not just thefront tire, but the back.
or it can sense the approach ofthe car, the speed of the car, as it hits oneto the other. that is the new wayof doing it. but yeah, you're pretty smartto catch those things. audience: do you know wherethose old ones are that are still working? eric lynxwiler: they'reall over the place. i can't tell you whereto look for them. but they're justso ubiquitous.
you run over them, and i don'teven see them anymore. audience: so here'smaybe more a historical research question. i found this, and i tried todo searches on the web and stuff like that. what is your you modus operandifor doing research on obscure, weird-- like the bird that youdid research on? is it just simply a brute forcefor a lot of this stuff?
eric lynxwiler: yeah,i was insatiable. i just couldn't get enough. i had to prove these things asbeing true because i didn't want to put him in the bookif they were fiction. the book had to stand onits own over time. because in the history ofwilshire boulevard, there are so many tall tales and fictionsthat we had to put some at rest. one of the biggest fictions--
and i've actually had someonewalk up to me once and ask this question-- that wilshire boulevard wasoriginally a dinosaur trail leading from this areato the ocean. and i'm like, ok, howdo i prove or disprove a dinosaur trail? i'm just going to say, no,you're an idiot, and move on. no, i just couldn'tpull that off. there was an encampment indowntown for native americans.
because there was a bodyof water there. but they also used the tar atthe tar pits to pitch their roofs of their homes. i can't remember what they'recalled, though. there was a trail going fromdowntown to the tar pits. or what we know as downtownto the tar pits. we could prove that. that actually makes thehistorical record. the bird?
the? bird was a tall tale,but i seen photographs of the bird baths. i knew that they existed and hadto be a story behind it. i don't know how i could say-- i don't know how to say it. i just couldn't get enoughof los angeles history. so every time i found oneparticular photograph that led me to another story, i hadto go and investigate it.
one of the other things thatwe found out was helen matthewson. helen matthewson was a fantasticentrepreneur in early los angeles history. and it was a little late todiscover it, but we realized after hitting the records of thelos angeles times and the la library that at the verysame time in los angeles, there were two helenmatthewsons, both doing their own separate thing.
and, of course, the los angelestimes didn't give a damn about spelling. so matthewson with two t's andmathewson with one t kind of went back and forth. so while one was buildinghotels in hollywood and downtown, the other one wasdonating her inheritance to what would become ucla. the hard part was pullingthose two women apart. the only way we could actuallytake these two characters and
separate them was i went intoevery white pages from the teens and '20s and '30s trackingthese two women and where they lived in order figureout where they were at one point in history. and from that we were actuallyable to pull out where this person was living inthese articles associated with this address. we were able to note, thisis this helen and this is this helen.
for some, that researchmight be mind-numbing. for me, it's catnip. i absolutely adore thehunt, the chase. and if you could go through thebook with me sometime, i could go photo by photo byphoto and tell you every single story behind everysingle picture. because some of those picturesmade me scream like a little girl when i found them insome obscure archive. and i have to tell you onemore story if you're not
through with me yet. the best archive thatwe had access to was the los angeles times. because the book was begun bythe la times press before they closed their offices and thebook went to angel city press, we had access to the losangeles times archives. so many of those photographs,like the mastodon, were printed once, and then they werejust never seen again. they put them into manilafolders and put them in a dead
file and buried them away,perhaps for later reference. sometimes they were used, againbut not really often. they treated the stufflike garbage. the pictures were notjust folded in half. they were sometimes cut in half,or sometimes misfiled, or sometimes just tornand shredded. the photographs werein bad shape. i did a lot of photoshop,just to let you know. but in those archives, which weonly had access to during
the graveyard shift, when nolibrarians were there for us to disturb, we would dig fileby file by file in order to find anything on wilshire. and it was almost easy todiscover wilshire, because those lanterns were in everyshot, practically. and sometimes it just came tothe point of, gosh, that looks like the backgroundof this building. a little research, yes it is. that archive was sucha mess that--
well, let me giveyou an example. they filed their photographsunder things like cities, los angeles, historical,hotel, ambassador. or ambassador hotel. or coconut grove. or eating, los angeles,historical, ambassador hotel, coconut grove. you could take these things inevery circuitous route because there was a file dedicatedto that strange system.
in order to hope that i couldpossibly find a photograph of the old alpine outdoor 365 daysa year ice skating rink-- it sounds ridiculous, butit's in the book-- i actually was able to find aphotograph of sonja henie's outdoor alpine themed 365 daysa year ice skating rink in westwood village. and i found that photographunder a file called ice skates. i looked under ice.
i looked under skating rinks. and looked under sonja henie. and i finally found itunder ice whatever. that was how thorough i was. as sickening as thatmight sound to some people, it was a joy. because just finding that goldennugget, that jewel, made spending three nights frommidnight to 6:00 am worth it, because that photowound up in the book.
i'm sure that answers far toomuch of your question. but they're great storiesand great photos. audience: [inaudible] eric lynxwiler: i couldn't hearall of what you said. could you repeat that, please? eric lynxwiler: wilshire7,000 x? audience: index. eric lynxwiler: index. no, no.
to my knowledge, thereis no connection. but there's only onegaylord wilshire. and there aren't manywilshires left. i wouldn't be surprised if wayback somebody was inspired and named it after wilshire. but i don't know thatconnection. there's a wilshire avenue inlong beach, a wilshire avenue in fullerton, a wilshireavenue in-- what is it, 10,000 palmsor something?
well, 29 palms? yes. i'm thinking thousand oaks and29 palms. i don't know. there's wilshire nameseverywhere. and i think one of the craziestwilshire names that we found was someone wasvacationing in china. and while they were on anexpressway, they found a new community developmentnamed wilshire. the name spread.
and what makes it so hilariousfor me is that the man was-- he was inspirational. but he was a charlatan, a cad,a liar, and a cheat, and a socialist who tried to conniveeverybody out of a few bucks. and we named so much stuff afterhim, including churches. he was an atheist. that'spart of the thrill of the wilshire story. sure, it's the street itself. but the man is also--
he's quite an icon. anything else i cananswer for you? no? well, thank you all so much. i hope you learned a fewthings about wilshire.