BuiltWithNOF

 

 

Counter added Sunday, March 25, 2007 - 11:00 am Pacific Time

Statistics
 

 

newjasbanner7

Photography

March 2010

Home (latest issue) | Recent Photography | Image Archives | Guest Photography | The International Desk | About This Site | Search This Site | Just Above Sunset Commentary

Monday, March 8, 2010 – In Better Times

Enough of Hollywood and the beaches – here's the Spring Street Financial District – the Wall Street of the West. Twenty-three financial structures – elaborate rococo banks and such, including the city's first skyscraper, and three elegant hotels, all located along a stretch of South Spring Street from just north of Fourth and just south of Seventh. The place was hopping from 1900 through 1920 and beyond. And then it wasn't. Everything moved elsewhere. Now it's a historical district, and the beautiful old buildings have gone condo. But in the first half of the Twentieth Century, this stretch of Spring Street was the financial center of Los Angeles.

The street can also claim credit as the birthplace of the motion picture business in Los Angeles, as, in 1898, Thomas Edison filmed a 60-second thing called "South Spring Street Los Angeles California" here – he mounted a giant camera on a wagon to film the action along South Spring Street – streetcars, bicycles and horse-drawn wagons traveling down the street. Perhaps that was the problem. The movie business can ruin everything.

Here's the Hellman Building, housing the Banco Popular – 1902, Alfred F. Rosenheim – 354 South Spring Street –

The Hellman Building, housing the Banco Popular - 1902, Alfred F. Rosenheim - 354 South Spring Street, Los Angeles
The Hellman Building, housing the Banco Popular - 1902, Alfred F. Rosenheim - 354 South Spring Street, Los Angeles
The Hellman Building, housing the Banco Popular - 1902, Alfred F. Rosenheim - 354 South Spring Street, Los Angeles
The Hellman Building, housing the Banco Popular - 1902, Alfred F. Rosenheim - 354 South Spring Street, Los Angeles
The Hellman Building, housing the Banco Popular - 1902, Alfred F. Rosenheim - 354 South Spring Street, Los Angeles
The Hellman Building, housing the Banco Popular - 1902, Alfred F. Rosenheim - 354 South Spring Street, Los Angeles

Next door, the city's first skyscraper, the John H. Braly Building, once the home of Hibernian Savings, now The Continental – 1902, John Parkinson – the southeast corner of Spring Street and Fourth –

The John H. Braly Building, once the home of Hibernian Savings, now The Continental - 1902, John Parkinson - the southeast corner of Spring Street and Fourth, Los Angeles
The John H. Braly Building, once the home of Hibernian Savings, now The Continental - 1902, John Parkinson - the southeast corner of Spring Street and Fourth, Los Angeles
The John H. Braly Building, once the home of Hibernian Savings, now The Continental - 1902, John Parkinson - the southeast corner of Spring Street and Fourth, Los Angeles
The John H. Braly Building, once the home of Hibernian Savings, now The Continental - 1902, John Parkinson - the southeast corner of Spring Street and Fourth, Los Angeles
The John H. Braly Building, once the home of Hibernian Savings, now The Continental - 1902, John Parkinson - the southeast corner of Spring Street and Fourth, Los Angeles

The Hotel El Dorado (originally the Stowell Hotel) – 1913, Frederick Noonan – 416 South Spring Street – and shortly after it opened, Charlie Chaplin lived at the Stowell, which he said was "a middle-rate place but new and comfortable." Yeah, well, whatever - Frederick Noonan seemed to like flowers.

The Hotel El Dorado (originally the Stowell Hotel) - 1913, Frederick Noonan - 416 South Spring Street. Los Angeles
The Hotel El Dorado (originally the Stowell Hotel) - 1913, Frederick Noonan - 416 South Spring Street. Los Angeles
The Hotel El Dorado (originally the Stowell Hotel) - 1913, Frederick Noonan - 416 South Spring Street. Los Angeles
The Hotel El Dorado (originally the Stowell Hotel) - 1913, Frederick Noonan - 416 South Spring Street. Los Angeles
The Hotel El Dorado (originally the Stowell Hotel) - 1913, Frederick Noonan - 416 South Spring Street. Los Angeles

The Alexandria Hotel – 1906, John Parkinson – 210 West Fifth Street at Spring Street – and along with the griffins, it had a Palm Court with a stained glass dome, and it was the most luxurious hotel in Los Angeles, until the Biltmore opened in the twenties. Then it feel apart, But once you might run into Mae West, Humphrey Bogart, Rudolph Valentino, Clark Gable, Greta Garbo, Sarah Bernhardt, Enrico Caruso or Jack Dempsey here. Charlie Chaplin kept a suite here and did improvisations in the lobby, where Tom Mix sometimes rode his horse – and where D. W. Griffith, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks met in 1919 to form United Artists. And Teddy Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson stayed here, as did King Edward VIII. But by the fifties it had become a transient hotel, with the Grand Ballroom used as a training ring for third-rate boxers. Now it's apartments. Ah well.

The Alexandria Hotel - 1906, John Parkinson - 210 West Fifth Street at Spring Street, Los Angeles
The Alexandria Hotel - 1906, John Parkinson - 210 West Fifth Street at Spring Street, Los Angeles
The Alexandria Hotel - 1906, John Parkinson - 210 West Fifth Street at Spring Street, Los Angeles

Other façades in the neighborhood –

Angel façade, Spring Street Financial District, Los Angeles
Angel façade, Spring Street Financial District, Los Angeles
Angel façade, Spring Street Financial District, Los Angeles
Spring Street Financial District, Los Angeles
Spring Street Financial District, Los Angeles

If you wish to use any of these photos for commercial purposes I assume you'll discuss that with me. And should you choose to download any of these images and use them invoking the "fair use" provisions of the Copyright Act of 1976, please provide credit, and, on the web, a link back to this site.

Technical Note:

These photographs were taken with a Nikon D200 – the lenses used were AF-S Nikkor 18-70 mm 1:35-4.5G ED, or AF Nikkor 70-300 mm telephoto. The high-resolution photography here was modified for web posting using Adobe Photoshop 7.0 software.

Home (latest issue) | Recent Photography | Image Archives | Guest Photography | The International Desk | About This Site | Search This Site | Just Above Sunset Commentary

All text and photos unless otherwise noted, Copyright © 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 - Alan M. Pavlik

[March 2010] [Oscar Ready] [Supergraphic] [Hush Now] [Pure Hollywood] [Animal Vehicles] [Hard Times Faces] [Complex Patterns] [Audio Post] [This Other Coast] [Sunset on Sunset] [Alternative Oscars] [Hollywood for Sale] [New Characters] [Crown Imperial] [Some Stickers] [That Rich Man] [Saturday Flowers] [In Better Tiimes] [City Cats] [Documenting Change] [From the Sun] [From the Moon] [Strangely Sinister] [Wake Up] [So Very Hollywood] [Hollywood Past] [Selling Something] [Street Signs] [Hollywood Seville] [An Angry Corner] [A City Girl] [Wilshire Seoul] [Daylight Savings] [Compound Spring] [At MacArthur Park] [City Birds] [All in a Row] [Two Eagles] [Hollywood Negatives] [Old Spaghetti] [The Deserted Beach] [Beach Houses] [American Buffalo] [Hollywood Pauses] [As Seen On] [Just Look Up] [The Old Stuff] [Getting Famous] [On Nutmeg Way] [Echo Park Echoes] [At the Clinic] [El Indio] [Eyes on Sunset] [March Surfers] [At the Pier] [To the Lighthouse] [Whale Watching] [The Overlook] [Hollywood 5000] [Hollywood Frolic] [Shooting Blanks] [Red-Tailed Hawk] [The Sandpiper] [Odd Birds] [Fairey on Melrose] [Face the Faces] [Melrose Zen] [The Hopper Star] [Dennis Hopper] [Party Friday] [LA Sunshine] [Those Two] [Sky Abstracts] [Virgil and Monroe] [Not Fine Art] [Titans in Hollywood] [Hollywood Heads] [The Odd Shots]