Friendship Park Mosaic

It's actually the Friendship Pond mosaic, but it's at Friendship Park in San Pedro. On Mother's Day, this place had the best views and the most welcome breezes in town.

So it's not too arty, but it was an unexpected little surprise, just outside the Nature Center in the park--where you can see snakes, toads, tarantulas, lizards, and more (oh, joy!) as well as skeletons and a stuffed owl and raccoon.

The only tricky part of visiting this place is that the access road (just off 9th Street, just west of Western Avenue) is closed off at sunset each night.

Deane Dana was the County Supervisor when the Nature Center was built, and when this mosaic was installed--hence the dedication in the right lower corner. This is actually the Deane Dana Friendship Park and Nature Center.

And the views--of the entire Port of Los Angeles, north to the San Gabriels, and of Rancho Palos Verdes, are beautiful. We watched bunnies and ground squirrels, circling hawks, and noisy finches and crows. Plus saw a lot of couples dancing without music.

My Poor, Neglected Blog...

Running down stories and events about Los Angeles history used to be a nice respite from other activities--but lately, I've been planted in front of the computer doing research all day, so more research no longer qualifies as a break.

Instead, today my break was a walk at Peck Park with the dog, where I listened to a few lonely crows (at least, they sounded lonely), took pictures of lizards that didn't turn out, and one of the port that did.

I can, however, point to some new accomplishments:

• Best review ever (well, the sort I dream of) from the Historical Novel Society for my novel, Death Speaker

• A new Chicken Soup book with one of my stories, coming out May 21: Chicken Soup for the Soul: Inspiration for Writers: 101 Motivational Stories for Writers - Budding or Bestselling - from Books to Blogs

• Entering the design / layout / feverishly-rewrite-and-fill-in-gaps phase of my new book, The Boomers Book of Christmas Memories. That is what's keeping me glued to the internet, running down facts and dates and looking for pictures. 

The release date for the Boomer Book will be in September. And if anyone has a pictures of their bicycle from the 1950s or 1960s--with or without you in it, as long as the pictures is yours to control--I will give you a free book if you let me use it (with thanks and attribution, of course!)

If you're interested in Boomer trivia, check out my newish blog at Boomer Book of Christmas.

USC Tile Mural / Mosaic

The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books was last weekend! And a fat lot of good that announcement does if you missed it. But it explains, at least, why I was at USC on Sunday, where I was able to take this picture.

I'd heard there was a mosaic by Jean Goodwin Ames titled "Youth and Science" in Zumberge Hall, right on Trousdale. And so there is, though I think I'm stretching the definition a bit to call it a mosaic.

But what the heck. It is tile, and it is signed "Jean Goodwin 1937" at the bottom.

If you'd like to know more about Jean Goodwin Ames and her husband, Arthur Ames, who worked on commissions for New Deal agencies during the Depression, and later with Millard Sheets, and who left lots of public art both in Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange County, and other areas, the Smithsonian interviewed them for their Archives of American Art. The transcription is here.

Jean Goodwin Ames was born in Santa Ana, went to UCLA and USC, and taught at Claremont Graduate School and Scripps College from the 1940s. Total California girl! This tile mosaic at Zumberge Hall was her master's thesis.

In the Smithsonian interview, she says that the couple's first mosaic project--two mosaics--was in Santa Ana at Newport Harbor Union High School, before 1936. The school was just six years old then; here's a history.

The two mosaics--one for girls, by Jean, and one for boys, by Arthur--were installed around the Inner Quad. They were removed and reinstalled in a new building a few years ago.

I just went looking for pictures of the high school mosaics and found them at Adam Arenson's site--a familiar name if you follow this blog, or mosaics in Los Angeles. I'm posting only one small picture--the one done by Jean. To see the larger version or the second mosaic, titled "Three Fishermen," visit Adam Arenson's page.

His post about the Ames is very interesting. A particular picture of an outdoor church mosaic was so familiar--and I realized I used to walk by it almost every day when I lived in Claremont.

Parking Garage Mosaics, DPSS

The three mosaic panels on the parking garage of the Department of Public Social Services Building at 813 E. 4th Place represents a community effort. Daniel Dodd, the designer, chief mosaicist, and  the director of Art Share LA (a gallery and artistic space right across the street), worked with students from Roosevelt High School and other volunteers in the area. They created the first mural, shown at left, in 2002.

All these pictures come from the LA County Arts website. So did the following description: 

"Their first mural depicts the City’s diversity by setting the skyline of Los Angeles above an image of the globe which is crisscrossed by LA’s freeways.  Below the globe are the faces of four children, all of different ethnicities."

The second mosaic  is inspired by a Buddhist mandala. The third--below--looks like an Aztec calendar. Both the second and third artworks are nine feet across.

The same group is working on a fourth mosaic based on Japanese designs.

Art Share LA donates time and expertise, and the high school students get involved by studying the design concepts and making choices about how the mosaic will be made and what materials will be used--and Art Share LA donates those as well.

Other examples of Dodd's artwork are the mosaic tile palm trees and other figures on the pillars supporting the pedestrian overpass over Long Beach Blvd. at 53rd Street.

All of the above is just a regurgitation of the data presented on the LA County Art page, but I cannot find out more! Daniel Dodd seems to be the only artist around who does not have his own web page . . or facebook page . . .(actually, there are dozens of Daniel Dodds on FB, but none in California), and there are no mentions of him in the Los Angeles Times.

So this is all I got, but at least it is posted while there are still 40 minutes left on Mosaic Monday!

Vintage Paperback Book Sale!

This Sunday, April 7, from 9 am to 5:30 pm--

At the Valley Inn in Mission Hills--

The 34th Annual Vintage Paperback Book Sale will take place.

And all day long, authors will take turns signing their work. Authors like Larry Niven, Harry Turtledove, James C. Glass, Earl Hamner, James Blaylock, and dozens more--check the website for times and names.

And it all costs a big five dollars.

This image comes from the Idaho Falls Public Library Friends of the Library Book Sale Page.

Finches in Torrance

My question:

Are these purple finches or house finches?

And how do you tell?

Former Home S&L in Compton

Did Millard Sheets create the ten mosaic panels on the facade of what was once the Home Savings and Loan building on Long Beach Blvd. in Compton? I thought so, but...

Wrong!  Artist Tom Van Sant lists these panels, titled "Sources of Knowledge," on his resume.

The Pacific Coast Architecture Database confirms that Millard Sheets worked with David Underwood to design and oversee the building which was finished in 1962. But it credits Mr. Van Sant with the mosaics.

Adam Arenson and Lillian Sizemore are working on this, and Prof. A has blogged about the building here, dating it to 1958. As he points out in his post, the mosaics are in sad shape.

Two of the panels are shown at right. To see a very good shot of the entire mosaic, go to Adam Arenson's blog post.

The exact address is 1801 N. Long Beach Blvd, north of Rosecrans. THEE Sound Shop is there now. Not sure if they own the building; Loopnet (where this picture is from) says the property is off the market.
Mr. Van Sant has created over 60 public murals, mosaics, and sculptures, according to the LA County Arts Commission. I've blogged about the Bell Library mosaic here, and included a picture of a vibrant, striking mosaic done for the Otis Art Institute in that post--it's very different from his library and Home Savings work. I think he's best known for the soaring, graceful lines of his sculpture.

And of course, "The Earth From Space," which is also a mosaic made of more than 2000 photos, and which took around four years to construct in the 1980s. It's part of the Geosphere Project.

20th Century Los Angeles on Display at the Getty

The Getty is opening two new exhibits on our fair city, one called Overdrive: L.A. Constructs the Future, and the second on the photography of Ed Ruscha.

Starts April 9, as you can see from the graphic. Here's a paragraph from the description:

"This groundbreaking exhibition provides an engaging view of the region's diverse urban landscape, including its ambitious freeway network, sleek corporate towers, whimsical coffee shops, popular shopping malls, refined steel-and-glass residences, and eclectic cultural institutions. Drawings, photographs, models, films, animations, oral histories, and ephemera illustrate the complex dimensions of L.A.'s rich and often underappreciated built environment, revealing this metropolis's global impact."

Man, why do museums have to talk that way--like they're writing a thesis?

I think that all means there will be huge, wall-mounted pictures, as well as videos and scaled-down models of buildings and/or neighborhoods, and other things...maybe posters, ads, souvenirs, etc., all showing us how fast and furiously Los Angeles grew over fifty years. Big big buildings and Googie-style funky places. Fun, cool, exciting stuff.

If you're like me and you remember when the Westin Bonaventure cylinders went up, or the Library Tower, or even when the Music Center was built, you'll probably really love this.

The Ed Ruscha photography is called In Focus, and it also starts April 9 and runs through September. Mid-century gas stations, apartment buildings, the Sunset Strip and Pacific Coast Highway--again, for us Boomers, this is cool. Check the site; there are some special Wednesday afternoon "Curator's Talks" scheduled.

It's all a part of Pacific Standard Time Presents Modern Architecture in L.A., which has exhibits in several other museums as well, including the County Museum of Art, the Hammer, the Museum of Contemporary Art, and several others.

Lost Mosaic & Lost Mosaicist

The Wilshire Grand Hotel at Wilshire and Figueroa is no more, and in its place we'll have a 73-story office tower, a new "tallest" building-blah-blah.

That's not news.

But when auctioning off the art and fixtures of the 60-year-old hotel, mosaics were found!

One 15-foot wide mosaic--and the efforts to identify the artist--is the subject of this story in Mosaic Art Now, written by Lillian Sizemore (who in this case has the title of Chief Investigator).

The found mosaic shows oil refineries, the Port of Los Angeles, and tall buildings. Lillian Sizemore is a noted mosaicist herself who has taught classes and lectured all over the world.

"The glass tiles were covered with layers of cigarette smoke and years of yellowed funk," Sizemore writes. Not only that, but the mosaic was not grouted. Instead, the artist just used glue to affix the pieces of tile to plywood--so while the artist, as an artist, was clearly talented and trained, he/she didn't know much about mosaic construction

The story's called "Black Gold: There's Oil in Them Thar Walls" because the mosaic was found behind a wall in a conference room that once housed the Los Angeles Petroleum Club, and is clearly focused on the oil industry.

Sizemore's article puts it all in context, with a bit of history about the oil business, the hotel, and mid-century mosaics.  Go read it!

Gregory Johnson bought the mosaic; figuring out how to get it out of the hotel and clean it up presented many puzzles. And who created it? Johnson eventually found a signature, but that just brought up more mysteries.

These pictures were taken by Gregory Johnson and used in Lillian Sizemore's piece; via MosaicArtNow.com.

The article has many more photos,  including shots showing the state of the mosaic when it was uncovered, how it was put together, removed, etc--there's even a 9-minute video of 1985 panels and walls being removed to (hopefully) reveal more mosaics in the lobby. Did they find any? Did Geraldo find Al Capone's loot? (a running joke in the video)

A gentleman named Tom Barnes has also put a couple of photos of the mosaic up on Flicker. He apparently went to the Wilshire Grand liquidation sale and snapped pictures before the mosaic was sold.

And there were also huge abstract mosaics on the hotel lobby walls--Sizemore's article has a 1950s newspaper photo showing them in black-and-white.

In 1960, the Statler-Hilton was the one of the hotels housing delegates of the Democratic National Convention. Not the main venue, of course--that was the Biltmore and the Sports Arena. The Herald Examiner newspaper printed this graphic showing the location in July 1960, and the pictures comes from the Los Angeles Public Library's photo collection.

The Statler Hotel opened in 1952, was the Statler-Hilton by 1960, then the Omni, and Wilshire Grand.

BlogDowntown has a synopsis of its history, written in 2009, here. And if you want to know about the Statler Hotels in general--the major hotel chain of the early 1900s, check out Wikipedia.

Here's another photo I can't resist, dated October 28, 1957, also from the  Herald Examiner via the library, of a "Welcome Dodgers" party. Among the sampling of 1100 guests in this photo are Mayor Poulson and Branch Rickey.

Every time I see one of these old photo's, full of civic pride, I think, "Hey, where are all the women? And people of color?" Which is a measure of how we've changed, and that's all to the good.

I'm not sure, but I think a bit of the abstract mosaic may be visible on the left wall, which is the real reason for putting the photo up here.

Just a guess; who knows how many mosaics were in the place, when they were removed, or where they ended up? There is a law in place now, giving an artist first dibs on her/his work when a building owner decides to remove art, but that law wasn't in place in the 1970s and early 1980s.

Alexandria Hotel, News on Her Second Century

The 107-year-old Alexandria Hotel holds some secrets. I've written about the hotel's history--a rich tale, because this is a place where Charlie Chaplin once lived, Gloria Swanson married, presidents and world leaders stayed, and early Hollywood moguls struck deals, etc. And it has a ghost, rumored to be no less than Rudolf Valentino.

That's all in the first century, of course. What is unique about the Alexandria is that it enjoys a second century--in Los Angeles, that's an anomaly.

(picture at left and below are from Wikipedia, btw. For some neat "then and now" pictures, go to Bryanat Arnett's site.)

In its second century, The Alexandria Hotel has been a film location for the Spiderman movies (because it does look like New York, which has many old hotels) and has been subdivided into micro lofts (learn about that here) (I guess that means it's no longer a hotel, since ALL usable rooms have been converted).

But did you know there's another unused wing of The Alexandria, a seven-story wing that was shut up in 1934 and has sat abandoned ever since? And that wing has a new owner who is planning to bring it back to life.

The picture above is of the Palm Court, dating back to the glory days of the hotel. It's amazing, isn't it, that the stained glass survived? But as the hotel got run down, this became a room that no one used, so it was pretty much left alone--except for boxing matches.

Seriously. There's an incredibly detailed and well-cited article on the Palm Court, including a list of the notable events that took place there, on Wiki.

Anyway, back to the new owner of the boarded-up section:

The owners are an investment group represented by Nick Hadim. He is not an investor, though. Hadim will be renovating an unused, abandoned wing of the Alexandria. A flurry of articles just before and after last Halloween (2012) reported on this. You can read about it in:

• Los Angeles Times (and there's a photo spread there too)

• LA Curbed

• Los Angeles Downtown News

• KPCC (NPR)  This piece goes into the history of the abandoned wing a little more, and has a picture of the whole hotel where the wing is circled so you can see it in context. "Wing" is a misnomer.

Basically, Hadim's investors bought the wing for $2 million and plan to create luxury apartments in it. (The original Alexandria are micro-lofts, remember? Teensy. Only the very largest have a bedroom!) And he wants to add a two-floor subterranean nightclub.

My snide comment that I can't stop myself from typing: Everyone who can afford at least $1700 a month for a small apartment and wants to live on top of a noisy, trendy night club and look out the window to see people puking, raise their hand!

The new wing will be called the Chelsea Building, and Hadim is planning to spend $3 million on it. He'll have to add elevators and stairs, because none exist in this wing--which is actually an annex, added to the hotel in 1910.

Seven floors and no stairs means that Hadim's investors bought the joint more-than-half sight unseen. The first, second, and seventh floors are the only ones he could access.

The picture above at right, from our LA library's collection, shows the hotel in 1950. The wing/annex/slice in question is out of sight--it would be about 20 feet to the right or the right edge, I think.

The 35 new apartments planned will all be under 700 feet, and Hadim announced a rental price of $2.50 per square foot. All pending permits, of course. So even though the PR refers to them as luxury units, the luxury is not in space.

I really want to see how this all turns out; the renovations are supposed to be done by the end of this year.