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1950s Video of Bunker Hill in Downtown LA

This 17-minute film by Kent MacKenzie shows the Bunker Hill area of Downtown LA in 1956. It’s an interesting film to watch for the footage of those original houses of those native downtowners before the city demolished the homes to make way for modern apartments and offices of a new downtown. The film follows some pensioners who, for obvious reasons, are not looking forward to the demolition of their neighborhood, once the “finest residential area in Los Angeles.”

There’s also some great footage of some really cool Victorian homes, as well as the original Angels flight and Grand Central Market.

h/t LA Observed for the video

Video Removed: Sorry guys, the awesome video was removed on August 3, 2010. The Vimeo Site sates “Vimeo has removed or disabled access to the following material as a result of a third-party notification by Milestone Film & Video claiming that this material is infringing: Bunker Hill 1956. We have no more information about it on our mainframe or elsewhere.”

I will repost the video if we find another online copy. Thanks!

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A Gay Eden in Echo Park – The Tom of Finland Foundation

Durk Dehner has lived in Echo Park for 30 years. For most of that time he’s inhabited a gorgeous 100-year-old craftsman house that sits high up on Laveta Terrace, and is filled to the rafters with dirty drawings. Important dirty drawings. Dirty drawings worthy of preservation and display.

The Tom of Finland Foundation was established in 1984 by Dehner, the creator of these drawings being Touko Laaksonen a.k.a. Tom of Finland. Over the years the foundation’s mission has expanded from preserving and protecting Tom’s art to promoting erotic art in general. Today, its goal is “to offer a safe haven for all erotic art in response to rampant discrimination against art that portray[s] sexual behavior” and to educate “the public as to the cultural merits of erotic art.”

When I went to visit the Tom of Finland Foundation at 1421 Laveta Terrace last Thursday, I half expected this serious attitude toward Tom’s art to be manifested physically in the form of older men in suits showing me around white-washed galleries hung with pictures of men getting it on. What I found instead is what Vice President of the foundation Sharp calls “a living museum.” This is Dehner and Sharp’s home. They live here, along with a rotating group of other foundation members and volunteers, surrounded by Tom’s work and other erotic art that he has inspired. A room at the back of the house serves as both a dining area and a small store where one can purchase items such as Tom of Finland’s sketches and Tom of Finland action figures (featuring two interchangeable phalluses!). Decades-old cracks in the wall have been covered in custom-made erotic drawings that resemble frescoes. Their toilet (her name is Gloria) has been featured in art shows.

This serious appreciation for the art itself but casual and relaxed attitude towards its subject matter is reflective of Tom of Finland’s work and one of the reasons why it is so important. Tom created fun, light-hearted images of strong, muscular gay men in a time when homosexuals were generally considered to be weak, sad and probably suffering from a psychological disorder. Beginning in 1957, Tom’s work was featured prominently in “beefcake” magazines such as Physique Pictorial. His work gained an underground following over the years, and in the early 1970s, he quite his job at an advertising firm to focus on his drawings.

Tom re-appropriate a number of traditionally heterosexual male archetypes for use in homo-erotic imagery. His art featured policemen, sailors, bikers and lumberjacks as proud gay men. These images inspired an underground movement in gayculture that surfaced in the 1970s and influenced mainstream culture. Without Tom we would not have leathermen, The Village People or Freddy Mercury’s mustache.

Tom’s art helped to change the way that gay men saw themselves. As Dehner states, “I discovered through his work that I was as much of a man as any of my heterosexual counterparts.” Dehner was Tom’s business partner, friend and occasional muse. Beginning in the early 1980s (after his partner of 28 years passed away) Tom would spend half the year in Helsinki and half the year living in the house on Laveta Terrace. He passed away in 1991 at the age of 71.

Today, the Tom of Finland Foundation is hard at work cataloging its rather large collection of erotic media. This includes a whole library of books on erotic art and gay culture that may just turn out to be an invaluable resource based on its size and the rarity of some of the literature. The foundation raises money by hosting events and collecting royalties from Tom’s artwork, which will soon be on display for a year in Finland.

Last year Taschen released a 700-page, 15 pound book featuring almost 1,000 of Tom’ drawings. But the guys at the Tom of Finland Foundation seem most proud of the Emerging Erotic Artist Contest that they host. When I talked about it with Sharp, he created an image that sticks in my mind. There are many young gay artists throughout the world whose thoughts and desires are either unacceptable or outright illegal. The Tom of Finland Foundation exists to offer acceptance to these artists and their creations.

To learn more about the Tom of Finland Foundation, click here.

To buy stuff, click here, scroll down and click on the “Tom The Store” icon. PLEASE PAY ATTENTION TO THE FINE PRINT AT THE PORTAL. I do not want anyone having a heart attack on my watch.

The foundation welcomes anyone who would like to come visit and take a tour of the house. The best way to reach them is to give them a call at (213) 250-1685.

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Flashback Fridays – Room 8

All this talk about the oil spill and approval ratings is turning me prematurely gray. Let’s discuss something lighthearted and fun this Friday, shall we?

Once upon a time, way back in the early 1950s, there lived a cat called Room 8. He was a stray tabby that wandered into Elysian Heights Elementary School one day in 1952. He lived there throughout the school year only leaving when the children did at the beginning of the summer. And every year for over fifteen years he would return in September in time for the start of class.

The children of Elysian Heights loved him dearly as did people across the country. He is said to have received thousands of fan letters in his lifetime and was featured in both Time and Look magazine. Leo Kottke even wrote a song about him. Wait. Really?! Leo Kottke is awesome!

According to the Wikipedia entry (yes, he even has his own Wikipedia page), “as he got older, he was injured in a cat fight and suffered from pneumonia, so a family near the school volunteered to take him in. The school’s janitor would find him at the end of the school day and carry him across the street.”

Room 8 passed away in 1968. He received a lengthy obituary in the Los Angeles Times and in publications as far away as Connecticut.  Today, a mural outside of the school still bears his likeness. And every new class is read the book A Cat Called Room 8 by Virginia Finley and Beverly Mason.

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Flashback Fridays – The Fate of Echo Park

Dial Torgerson, Los Angeles Times, Sept. 19, 1971

Both Kelly and I (on separate occasions) dug up a rather interesting article from the L.A. Times circa 1971. The article, entitled “Which Way for Echo Park – Inner City Oasis or Slum?”, describes Echo Park at the dawn of the ’70s as:

…the hilly, multiracial, multiethnic home of both the poor and better off. Echo Park is becoming a near slum and a much-in-demand middle-class community at the same time. It is going up and down simultaneously. Newcomers from from poorer areas are crowding into substandard housing and youth gangs have become active. At the same time, there is a different influx: that of the middle class. Older couples who sold homes in distant suburbs and young marrieds with college degrees are seeking homes and rentals in the hills.

From what I’ve learned about Echo Park, it seems that it’s always been home to a mixture of different cultures and incomes. It’s interesting to see proof of this and to see an argument similar to the one happening today, taking place almost forty years ago. The same racial tensions that bubble beneath the surface of today’s arguments were there in the ’70s as well and, presumably, the ’60s. For example:

‘The rapidly changing ethnic composition of the Silver Lake-Echo Park communities will soon transform Echo Park into a Mexican-American barrio,’ said a UCLA study for the city’s new general plan. ‘We strongly urge that, via the process of community organizations and related efforts, steps be taken to avoid further ghettoization.’ Many long-time residents of Echo Park, members of its Latin community, object to experts’ blaming Latins as the bringers of the slum.

Eek! Yeah, I think an objection to that study is justified. The article also brings up some interesting bits about the cultural differences between certain residents of Echo Park. Some of these descriptions sound vaguely familiar…

The Hip community calls it “The Other End,” the other end of Sunset Blvd. from the Strip. Barefoot hippies buy food with food stamps in the same supermarket lines with young deputy public defenders with mod clothes and lavish mustaches. Chicano street types dress in a uniform of neat jeans (or overalls) and clean white T-shirts; they haven’t learned, as have their Anglo contemporaries in the suburbs, to believe that dirt is somehow revolutionary.

Read the full article here (PDF download).

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Historic Echo Park Home Tours Returns

Flickr Photo by LA Addict (2006 Home Tour)

The Echo Park Historical Society will be reviving its Historic Echo Park Home Tours in November with “Eco Echo Park: Urban Sustainable Living.” The tour will feature properties that utilize “gray water systems, solar power, natural light and circulation as ways to reduce dependency on public utilities.” They will also be showcasing properties that use native and drought-tolerant plants, no-dig gardens and urban farmers that raise livestock and/or crops for personal consumption.

Holly Hampton, the Home Tour Chairperson, is currently looking for people to volunteer their time as project coordinators and researchers. They are still in the process of selecting homes and gardens for the tour, so they need some help scheduling site visits. They are also looking for individuals to do some research on the properties and take notes from the City Records. If you are interested in lending Holly a helping hand, you can email her at hhampton@mac.com.

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A hundred-year-old murder in Elysian Heights

This week’s Flashback Friday comes to us courtesy of L.A. Creek Freak, an incredibly informative and unique blog that addresses both the ancient and the modern history of Los Angeles’ rios and arroyos, many of which are currently “degraded and forgotten.” The writers speak out and seek to educate readers on L.A.’s ecology, believing that “our rivers and creeks are vital to our communities and our planet.”

A few months ago, Jessica Hall of the Creek Freak website posted a fantastically creepy story about a murder that occurred in Elysian Heights over one hundred years ago. The story came from an old L.A. Times article, found by reader David Kimbrough. Here’s the story, as summarized by Jessica:

On the evening of December 27, 1904, Columbus C. Champion, 67, committed fratricide, shooting down his brother Thomas in a “deadly fusillade…in front of the Elysian Springs bottling plant,” for whom Thomas worked as a water delivery man. Columbus, called “Lum,” lived on property next to the bottling company.

Lum had already been abandoned by his wife, son and father several months previously, and neighbors believed it was “worth almost any effort to keep on good terms. It is said he has terrorized the neighborhood on numerous occasions…” Earlier in the day, he fired BB shot at his niece, threatening to kill the entire family, which precipitated the deadly confrontation with his brother.

Thomas, returning to the Elysian Springs Bottling Company, rode his wagon with his son Sam past Lum’s property:

“At once the old man rushed out of the house and began to abuse his brother. Sam Champion, fearing for his father’s safety, secured a revolver from the home, and started up to where his father and uncle were quarreling.  The younger brother (Thomas) was trying to ward off the attacks of Lum, and just as Sam arrived his father told Lum to go back into his own lot and leave him alone, or he would knock him down.  With an oath, Lum started toward the cottage, crying out that he would kill the whole outfit. He quickly reappeared with his gun, and when within twenty feet of this brother fired the load of shot into his breast. Thomas sank to the ground and expired almost immediately.”

The villain was unrepentant and actually joking with the police who carried him away.

Creepy! So if you’re ever wondering about possible hauntings in Elsyian Heights, this might be a good place to start.

Also, how cool is it that there was a bottling plant in Elysian Heights?

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SurveyLA and the History of Barlow Respiratory Hospital

Barlow Hospital in 1910

This Thursday, June 24 at 7:00 pm, SurveyLA and the Los Angeles City Historical Society are teaming up to raise awareness of their mission and to give a talk on the history of Barlow Respiratory Hospital.

Funded by a grant from the J. Paul Getty Trust, SurveyLA’s goal is to more thoroughly identify and document Los Angeles’ historic landmarks. At the end of its six-year survey (the second year of research includes Echo Park), the organization will present its findings to the city, homeowners, preservation groups and neighborhood groups so that both developers and property owners are not “surprised or exasperated by eleventh-hour preservation efforts.”

On Thursday, Flora Chou from the Los Angeles Conservancy will be giving a brief talk on the history of Barlow before Janet Hansen discusses the SurveyLA project (“what it is, where it’s happening and how all of us can contribute“).

The talk will be at Williams Hall at Barlow Respiratory Hospital (2000 Stadium Way) at 7:00 pm. Parking is free. Light refreshments will be served.

Click here to download the flyer.

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Flashback Fridays – Echo Park Lake

"Echo Park in Midwinter" (Postcard for sale through EPHS)

Echo Park Lake began its life as Los Angeles Reservoir No. 4. It was built in 1868 by a private company called The Los Angeles Canal and Reservoir Company. Water flowed to the reservoir from the L.A. River in Los Feliz. Legend has it that the name Echo Park comes from the fact that the builders of the reservoir could hear their voices echoing off the surrounding canyon walls. The water collected in a damn near Bellevue Avenue and from there it traveled to a mill near 5th and Figueroa.

The property surrounding Echo Park Lake was purchased in the 1880s by a carriage-maker named Thomas Kelley and several other speculators.  Kelley and his partners wanted to divide up the land and sell it to individuals to build homes and businesses. However, the city wanted to reserve the right to overflow the damn if needed, which would have made those plots useless.

After several years of arguing, they came to an agreement. Kelley and his partners gave up 33 acres of land around the reservoir to be used as a park. In exchange, “the city agreed not to overflow the reservoir land, making the remaining land held by Kelley and his associates – including the street that would soon become Sunset Boulevard – far more valuable.” Landscaping on the park began in 1892, and by 1895 the park and its boathouses were completed.

Thanks to the Echo Park Historical Society for all the info! For a more thorough rundown of the history of Echo Park Lake, you can visit its website.

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Flashback Fridays: Communists in Echo Park!

I've only found two pictures of Manewitz and they are both slightly creepy.

Big news! A suspected communist was arrested at his apartment at 1420 Echo Park Ave. and charged with “teaching and advocating overthrow of the U.S. government by violence”… on September 17, 1952.

Echo Park was home to a lot of communists and socialists during the couple of decades after the first Red Scare (in the 1920’s) and before the second Red Scare (in the 1950’s). However, it’s difficult to find information on the group’s activities as it is (understandably) not widely published. Most of the information we have are personal accounts and newspaper articles. That’s where the handy-dandy Los Angeles Times archive at the L.A. Public Library comes in!

I found an interesting little nugget of an article about a man named Robert Manewitz who was picked up by the FBI at his apartment in Echo Park. A long-time Communist Party member and the son of Russian immigrants, Manewitz first started organizing laborers and protests in the Midwest in the 1930’s. According to the article, he came to Los Angeles from Missouri in order to “take over the duties of some of California Communist Party leaders who had been arrested on similar charges of Smith Act violations.”

The Smith Act is a statute that basically says it’s illegal to do or say anything that could be seen as an attempt to overthrow the U.S. government. And you wanna know the really fun part? Although most of the cases under it were thrown out as unconstitutional, it’s still on the books today.

And what did Manewitz say to the press? “He refused to comment on the charges against him, saying only: ‘I don’t know what it is all about.'” Good man.

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Flashback Friday Photos: Red Car Line

Photo via Metro Library Flickr: Red Car headed up Glendale Blvd., circa 1940s

Photo via Photo via Metro Library Flickr: Red Car travels up Echo Park Ave.

We’ve been so fascinated with the Red Car line history as of late, and thought we’d share a couple of old photographs of the Red Cars that passed through Echo Park on the way to Glendale and back. The last Red Car passenger was in 1955.

It’s Memorial weekend, you might want to take a nice walk/hike along the old Red Car property near Corralitas Drive. Click here for directions and more information.

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Flashback Fridays: Francis Boggs

A few weeks back, I wrote a post about movie pioneer William Selig. If there’s one thing that history has taught me it’s that behind every pioneer is some guy (or gal) that was an integral part of their success. That person often goes unrecognized… and then dies tragically. The invisible man to William Selig’s pioneer was Francis Boggs.

Boggs met Selig while working in theaters in Chicago during the nineteen-aughts. He began writing and directing films for the Selig Polyscope Company in 1907. One really cool thing that he was involved in was the Fairylogue and Radio-Plays: a presentation of L. Frank Baum’s Oz books using live actors, magic lantern slides and film!!  Around this time Boggs began to travel to different locations in the U.S. to shoot scenes for his films. He made the trip to California (his home state) a couple of times to shoot films including The Count of Monte Cristo and In the Sultan’s Power (one of the first dramatic films to be shot entirely in Los Angeles).

In the fall of 1909, Boggs set up a satellite office in a rented bungalow on Allesandro Street in Edendale (now Glendale Blvd in Echo Park). Soon after, Selig joined him out here and this location became the permanent home of the Selig Polyscope Company, the west coast’s first major motion picture studio.

On October 27, 1911, one of the studio’s janitors, Frank Minematsu, went postal and shot Boggs four times. Selig himself tried to grab the gun away from Minematsu and was shot in the arm. Boggs died instantly. He was one of the fathers of Los Angeles’ film industry and created almost 200 short films, but he is remembered mostly for his death. It was one of the first scandals in an industry that was just beginning to take shape.

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Flashback Fridays – The Ukrainian Orthodox Church on Sutherland

It’s probably caught your eye at some point while strolling around the neighborhood: a golden rooftop situated near the top of that one hill, elusive, not visible from just anywhere. Well, I hate to spoil the mystery for you, but it’s the St. Andrew Ukrainian Orthodox Church, and it’s located at 1456 Sutherland Street. Sutherland is one of the steeper streets in Echo Park, but I recommend walking up it in order to see this fine piece of religious architecture. Or you can just sneak a peak at it from that grassy area at the top of Douglas and Quintero (see photo above).

Echo Park seems like an odd place for a Ukrainian Orthodox church to be located until you realize that Echo Park has always been a haven for outsiders, free-thinkers, artists, bohemians and even refugees from other countries. Below is some of the text from a Los Angeles Times* article that I found from December 16, 1957 commemorating the dedication of the church.

On an Echo Park district hill in a converted mansion yesterday people jammed tightly into a 20 x 20 foot room and stood for two hours. The ceremonies were performed in the little St. Andrew’s Church of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church at 1456 Sutherland St. Its membership includes only 85 families.

This one had escaped from Siberia through China. That one and his wife had fled to the West. The next one had seen his parents shot. This teen-ager had been baptized in the Ukraine at the risk of his parents’ lives. Still another was the last member of a large family – the only one to live through both Communist and Nazi persecution. The church was started principally with refugee members seven years ago in a rented hall. Four years ago the congregation bought the outdated mansion for $20,000, and since then has rebuilt it into a church.

The church’s website also contains lots of information on Ukrainian culture and history. I recommend checking it out if you’re interested in world history. I had never heard of the Holodomor before.

*All Los Angeles Times newspapers from 1881 to 1986 have been scanned and are searchable, viewable and printable from any computer at the LA Public Library!

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Photo: Then and Now

Kansas Sebastian Flickr photo

The caption for this photo reads:

In the early part the of the previous century, the Los Angeles Red Car Line was extended to Glendale. The “Glendale Line” made a path from downtown Los Angeles to Glendale through “Edendale,” now known as Silver Lake, Echo Park, and Elysian Heights. To create the line they had to blast through the hills, creating what was then known as the Edendale Cut. The Edendale Cut was the portion located between the Key Stone Station at Max Sennett’s studio to the India Street Station. All that remains of the Glendale/Edendale Line is the unused right of way.

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Flashback Fridays – William Selig

Don't you just wanna sit on his lap and have him tell you stories about being a vaudeville performer?

In the first couple decades of the 20th century, Echo Park was the center of the West Coast film industry. Called Edendale at the time, it was the location of several major silent film studios including Keystone Studios, Pathe West Coast and Selig-Polyscope. Even Fox Studios was located here before William Fox changed its location to Sunset and Western in 1917. The studios were located along what is now Glendale Blvd. (called Allesandro Street at the time) near the 2 freeway terminus.

Selig-Polyscope was the first motion picture studio in Edendale and, in fact, the first motion picture studio to be located on the west coast. Its founder, William Selig, moved it here from its original location in Chicago in 1909. Selig’s story is a fascinating one as he was truly a visionary and a pioneer in the early days of film making. He developed his own way of making a motion picture camera in order to not have to pay a patent fee to Thomas Edison’s company. He was the first motion picture producer to move his studio to Los Angeles. He made almost a thousand films in his studio in Edendale before moving its location to Lincoln Heights (East Los Angeles) in 1917. He also opened up a zoo in Lincoln Park in 1915 and had plans to turn it into a big ol’ amusement park with rides and everything.

However, Selig-Polyscope was unable to survive the transition to full-length films and closed in 1918. As for the zoo, “only a single carousel was ever built and the crowds never came” (Thanks to Wikipedia for the hear-wrenching imagery), and it finally shut down in the 1930s. Selig lost almost everything else he had in the Great Depression and spent the last few years of his life working as a literary agent. He died in 1948, but his memory lives on through Los Angeles history nerds (like me). Think of him every time you see that big empty lot on Glendale and Clifford.

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Echo Park Lake Walking Tour Tomorrow

The Echo Park Historical Society is hosting its Echo Park Lake Walking Tour tomorrow, Saturday, April 24 at 10:00 am.

According to the EPHS website, the tour will include “some of the neighborhood’s most prominent landmarks, such as Jensen’s Recreation Center, Angelus Temple and, of course, the lake. The tour takes about two hours to complete and includes several stairways. Building interiors are not included. Reservations required. The tours are free for EPHS members; we ask a $5 donation of all others.”

Make your reservation by calling (323) 860-8874, or e-mail your name, the number of people in your group, your phone number and the name and date of the tour.

The tour starts at the Echo Park Lake Boathouse, located at 751 Echo Park Ave.

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