Downtown Los Angeles was no stranger to adaptive reuse. Dr. Walter Lindley built California Hospital at 315 W. Sixth Street in 1887. Years later, you could yourself buy a hat for $2.00, or rent a room for 50 cents at “The Lindley.”

The year was 1912.

Photo from the USC Digital Library

Halloween. Celebrated with free carnivals for kids at all Los Angeles City Recreations and Parks Department Playgrounds.

The year was 1961.

Photo from the USC Digital Library

Sixth and Hope was the birthplace of Biola University. Back then, it was still called the Bible Institute of Los Angeles.

The year was 1926.

Photo from the USC Digital Library

Couldn’t resist detouring on the bike ride to work this morning for a chance to behold an amazing piece of history in the form of sections of the Berlin Wall  on Wilshire Boulevard across from LACMA (map), courtesy the Wende Museum. Upon arrival I found 8 of what will ultimately be 10 panels, and I was pleased to find them readily accessible instead of roped off and removed from close contact.

Once all 10 are up it will reportedly be the world’s longest length of the wall outside of Berlin, and it’s available for viewing through November 14.

Flickr photoset is here.

Bob Hope Patriotic Hall is one of those odd, old downtown buildings south of the 10 Freeway that seem to belong to an era that never quite happened. It ’s one of a scattering of big  structures, pioneers of some long ago developmental lunge preempted in the `50s by the I-10’s construction. Its ornate top story, with pitched roof and classical details, surmounts an overdecorated, underutilized 10-floor stub of 1926 masonry. It has a great arched lobby, like something our of a Venetian palace.  Its grabber detail, though, is its north-facing outside mural of  the “Spirit of 1776″– you know:  the drummer, the fifer and the other Revolutionary War guy, all in a perpetual stalled march up Figueroa Street toward Staples Center.

A few weeks ago, Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina announced a $45 million renovation of this memorial to the nearly-extinct doughboy veterans of WW I. (God bless them all–my own late father-in-law included.) I’d hoped her plans would include some suggestions for more and better use of this handsome but obsolete facility, but not so…. (more…)

With the threat of a heavy rains putting STROMWARTCH ‘09 back in full effect and  the U.S. Geological Survey coming out with an interactive neighborhood mudslide risk map for the communities that reside along the base of the San Gabriels so thoroughly denuded by the Station Fire last month, I reckon it might not be a bad time to go back to a post I made in April as part of LA Metblogs “Songs About Los Angeles” compendium, focusing on Woody Guthrie’s ballad “The New Year’s Flood,” which chronicled the disasterous deluge of January 1, 1934 (also preceded and aided by a wildfire) that sent debris flows through the communities of Tujunga, La Crescenta, Montrose, Glendale, Burbank and more destroying an estimated 600 homes and killing anywhere from 25 to 100 people (or more), depending on the source.

Here’s hoping hard that history doesn’t repeat itself.

Today would have been John Lennon’s 69th birthday. His time spent in Los Angeles in the early 1970s is well-documented:

In June 1973 in New York, his wife, Yoko Ono, pushed for a separation and said he should take May Pang, their personal assistant, as his boy-toy while they reassessed their marriage.

Lennon and Pang in LA, 1974

In quick order, Lennon moved to LA with Pang and flung himself into what has become known as his “Lost Weekend,” an eighteen-month period during which he caroused, recorded some middling material, caroused, reconnected with Paul and Ringo, caroused– you get the picture.

From a rented home in the Hollywood Hills, Lennon lived out loud and large in public places in Los Angeles, making a drunken, coke-fueled spectacle of himself with stars and players of the day. When confronted by the press with criticism, he said, “So it was a mistake, but Hell, I’m human.”

Shortly thereafter, Lennon cleaned up his act.  He and Yoko reunited (in NYC, backstage after Lennon’s cameo during an Elton John concert) into renewed matrimonial bliss, had a son together, Sean, and lived a happy family life in relative seclusion at the Dakota until that fateful, sad night in December 1980 when Lennon’s fame tragically caught up with him.

From where we are with sexual politics in the early 21st century, maybe some wisdom can be gleaned from the way the Lennons openly navigated their relationship in the 1970s and the way it was received. Little public pillorying of John, no tearful media statements from Yoko, no desperate extortion attempts from lurking opportunists due to needlessly keeping secrets about the bumps in a relationship’s road, no knee-jerk accusations about employer/employee dalliances from self-appointed know-it-all scolds.

Just honesty about how a particular marriage of interest was going; forthrightness about monogamy and the lack thereof occasionally as a reality check; and not a speck of shame, contrived or otherwise, from anyone involved.

Imagine.

Hotel President Herman B. Sarno was joined by film starlets Heidi Heidemann, Beverly Anderson, and Kathy Marlowe, comedian Jack Carson, film Actress Connie Towers, and singing star Byron Palmer for the ceremonial groundbreaking of the luxurious Hollywood Knickerbocker Hotel.

The year was 1955.

Photo from the USC Digital Library

When you hailed a 1929 Fiveborough Paramount Cab from the Yellow Cab Company, you were never charged for extra passenger or traffic delays.

The city was Los Angeles. The year was 1934.

Photo from the USC Digital Library

It was a special kind of streetcar. One whose sole purpose was to ferry passengers between the Maryland hotel in Pasadena, and Virginia hotel in Long Beach. It was the fastest car in the Pacific Electric fleet, clocking in at 109mph.

It was the Maryland Special. The year was 1900.

Photo from the USC Digital Library