Downtown Building Projects and the Hall of Justice

I was going to blog aboaut a mosaic on Monday but my fingertips melted and got stuck to the keys. I managed to knock over a glass of ice to cool and unstick them, but then the ice and water got into the keyboard and you know how that goes.

Making up a more credible story, or making up anything at all, takes too much effort when it's this hot.

However--I did find a splendid list from LA Downtown  News that updates every downtown project you could think of, and then some. Did you know, for example, that the Hall of Justice, so often pictured in Perry Mason, is about to be reopened, twenty years after red-tagging due to the Northridge earthquake? The ribbon-cutting is in three weeks.

Updates on no less than 93 other projects--from Amp Lofts to the Wilshire Grand replacement--are included in the LA Downtown News list.

Did you know further that the Hall of Justice was made of the same stone, from the same quarry, as our City Hall? It is and the stone is Sierra Granite. That tidbit is from D. J. Waldie, who writes at KCET's website that the "inspiration for the hall's tall base and upper stories of columned walls seems to have been the tomb of King Mausoleus at Halicarnassus."

That tomb was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World--it's the one I never remember. Helicarnassus stood in what is now Turkey, but the tomb was destroyed at least 800 years ago. It's middle third (in terms of height) had 36 columns with statues between them--reportedly--and that's the part that may have inspired the design of our Hall of Justice.

No one really knows what it looked like because it's in ruins now. That's one model at left, but there are many more elaborate portrayals.

To me, the building evokes the 1950s, which is silly since it went up in 1926. Blame Raymond Burr.

The KCET article is a fun read, with pictures and a brief history of the building and its famous, though transitory, residents--like Charles Manson, whose holding cell may be a historical attraction when the Hall reopens. Ghosts are mentioned, as are a local whorehouse, and mice that got high from marijuana held in the evidence room of the Sheriff's offices. If that doesn't pique your curiosity nothing will.

County offices--including the Sheriff and the District Attorney will be moving back into the Hall of Justice around the end of the year.

I'm signing off with my name. I've just learned that when this blog goes out to subscribers, the entire post appears in an email. That's great, but since the email does not include the side column showing me or my book (The Boomer Book of Christmas Memories) or picture, or any of the other features there, I was advised that I should at least sign my name so that people associate the post with me. So until next Monday--Adieu from Vickey Kall.