Millard Sheets Mosaic and Tour

Huzzah! The LA Conservancy is presenting another Millard Sheets tour; this one covers Claremont and Pomona. The tour will feature some of the murals and mosaics that I know so well, since I once lived in Claremont (more to the point, so did Sheets--for years and years.)

The Conservancy's tour is Sunday, March 18th, from 11:30 am till 4 pm, and tickets are $30--cheaper if you're a member. Get more info and make reservations here.

The picture above right is the Garrison Theater and proves once again that in spite of the building's beauty, it is well nigh impossible to get a good picture of the place. Believe me, I've tried. The sun and reflectivity of the marble fights you at every hour. Here is evidence: an earlier Mosaic Monday post about the theater, which is part of Scripps College.

The Garrison Theater is on the LA Conservancy tour, of course, as is Sheets' studio, now a medical building on Foothill Blvd.

The other tour highlights are listed at the Conservancy site, but the one I'd like to feature for Mosaic Monday is the former Home Savings and Loan Tower in Pomona, which once anchored the open-air mall in the early 1960s.

The mall celebrated Pomona's 75th anniversary, and was the first pedestrian mall west of the Mississippi. Business leaders in Pomona asked Sheets to help them build it, and Sheets asked the owner of Home Saving, Howard Ahmanson, to build a bank there, saying, “I want you to buy me the best block in the center of town and develop it…I know you don’t have any special reason to come to Pomona—except you’re my friend and I need your help.”

The mall flourished...briefly. By the 1970s, businesses had started to close up, and much of mall was reopened to automobiles (but not all).

Here is the beautiful mosaic. When the bank tower first opened, the second floor, which overlooked the atrium, functioned as an art gallery, with changing exhibits.

The bank is six stories, and last I heard Chase --who owns it now--is still deciding on the feasibility of repairing and preserving the mosaic.

Re-imagined Movie Posters

Peter Stults and Sean Hartter designed these movie posters, which are showing up on a lot of ad blogs. Mediabistro pointed me toward one, but you can google the artists' names and find many more. Here, I reproduce only those that celebrate movies with a Los Angeles setting--like Pulp Fiction.

Pulp Fiction used the old Hawthorne Grill for its beginning and ending scenes. That place is long gone, demolished, even--but the movie's success prompted someone to reopen it briefly and run it as a coffee shop once more.

Wonder what role Stults and Hartter had in mind for Yul Brynner?

Now how about The Big Lebowski? I understand the bowling alley is history, but the scene where the Nihilists order pigs in a blanket was filmed at Dinah's in Culver City.

Andy Warhol as Mr. Lebowski...now that's a funny thought.

They also re-imagine The Hangover starring the Rat Pack, Avatar with William Shatner and Natalie Wood in blueface--and Yul Brynner again, probably taking over Wes Studi's role. And John Wayne, of course, leading earth's troops.

Here's another--can you see Leonard Nimoy reinvented as an action here? Me neither. Or Spock saying "Yippee Yih Oh, mf?"

More realistic to picture Nimoy playing Alan Rickman's character, but that probably wouldn't have make a good poster.

Die Hard was filmed in a West Los Angeles Tower... I forget which one.

What else do they have? Inception with Judy Garland as the Architect and Bela Lugosi as Mr. Saito. That poster is beautiful.

How about John Wayne as Superman?  X-Men, Star Wars, and Sidney Poitier and Pam Grier in The Matrix.

You can see more posters and read about the artists at the This is Not Advertising blog,  AdWeek, and even the Daily Mail/UK--where the original movie posters are also displayed.

Just one more...there are posters for Terminator and Terminator II: Judgement Day. Both had scenes shot in Los Angeles, like that great chase through the concrete LA river. I chose the latter because...because Danny Bonadeuce as John Conner is about as good as it gets in Bizarro World.

An Early 60s Tiki Mosaic

Argghhh! Can't believe I forgot Mosaic Monday!

And there is no holiday to blame it on. Well, I did get called before noon to pick up a sick grandchild from school which necessitated picking up a car seat in the pouring rain, blah, blah, blah. Bottom line--that took a couple hours and broke up my day. SO I'll blame my forgetfulness on that. If I need to blame it on something. 'Cause I sure don't want to cop to just being forgetful.

This mosaic is found on the Clubhouse Building of New Horizons in Torrance, a senior "area." It's not closed or gated, so I don't want to call it a complex. It's just a subdivision full of apartments, recreation areas, parking lots and streets that rents exclusively to those over 55.

I could live there. Gulp.

I grow old . . . I grow old . . .

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Hmph. Do they still teach Prufrock in Junior High?

Anyway, this subdivision-for-seniors opened in October 1964.

This is a mosaic. I know from the street it looks like a woven piece, maybe even burlap, but here is a close up that shows the tile work.

The Clubhouse sits on Maple Ave., and New Horizons spreads around it on Nadine Circle. I discovered the place (well, sort of. I knew it was there but never had to pay attention) when I canvased for my candidate in 2008. The addresses made no sense and drove me nuts, but my candidate won anyway. Yay!

Finally, here is a newspaper photo from the 60s showing the clubhouse--a gigantic Polynesian A-Frame.  Tiki Architecture, where I found this picture, and a lot more information, says that it's an 80-acre development and the architect was Ray Watt of Southland Builders. There are also tons of pictures.

Ray Watt built over 100,000 homes and 50 shopping centers in the Southland from 1947 into the 90s. He had a huge influence, even served as Assistant Secretary of Housing & Urban Development in the Nixon administration, and lived to be 90 years old. Here's his obituary, posted by USC.

The mosaic was there from the start. Scroll down on the Tiki Architecture link, and you'll find a sketch of the clubhouse entrance and mosaic by the designer, Selected Interiors (drab name; what were they thinking?), and a description of the place. It's 10,000 square feet with a 10-foot high fireplace.

I found a lot more about this clubhouse than I thought I would, but nothing about the mosaic designer. Oh, well.

Vintage Los Angeles Photos

Wow...old pictures of Farmer's Market and Wilshire Blvd. in the early 1950s. Hollywood in the 40s, and even earlier. Then of course, they featured this video of Angels Flight back in the day. Where? Vintage Los Angeles on Facebook!

Recreations of Long Beach

This incredible mosaic adorned the Long Beach Municipal Auditorium, where it was installed in 1938. Today, it's on the Long Beach Plaza parking structure, which troubles many people. Is that a safe home for the WPA-funded work of art? An appropriate home?

Forty artists work on  this piece, titled "Recreations of Long Beach." It's 38 feet high and 22 ft wide--obviously, meant to be seen from a distance. The supervising artists were Albert Henry King, Stanton MacDonald-Wright, and Henry Nord. Their signatures are woven into the border. Nord was apparently the original designer, while King and MacDonald Wright supervised the creation.

Construction began in 1936 and went on for over a year. The tesserae tiles were laid out and cut in a big room in Los Angeles. In a unique twist, different patterns and textures were used for each design element. That was MacDonald-Wright's idea, and he used it in other mosaics--though none were as large as this artwork. After it was cut, each section was sent to Long Beach where another group of artists cemented the section to the wall.

The 2nd Municipal Auditorium was built in 1932 on 20 acres of landfill, just south of Ocean and Long Beach Blvd (which was called American Avenue then). It was torn down in 1975 to make way for the big convention and entertainment center--the Terrace Theater sits just south of its space now, I think.

Here's a shot of the mosaic in its current position near 3rd street, where it has been since 1982. If you want to see old postcards of what the Municipal Auditorium looked like inside and out, go to this site for some great photos and stories--including shots of Elvis, Judy Garland, and other stars who appeared at the Auditorium.

And here's a picture from the National Archives of the installation of the mosaic back in 1937.

The Municipal Auditorium jutted into the ocean, and a big breakwater was built around it, called the Rainbow Pier. It wasn't a pier, but it was shaped like an arch--hence the rainbow name. More landfill went on in the 1950s and 1960s, so a lot of where the Long Beach Convention Center and Shoreline Village etc. are located was once beach and water.

As for the mosaic, efforts have been made over the last ten years to find it a better home...but it's just so big. And everyone agrees that it should remain accessible to the public. It was the largest WPA artwork done in its day.

The WPA Art Project website posted this photo of the Municipal Auditorium under demolition, and it looks like the mosaic is still there.

I guess we're all lucky it survives to this day.

The Tattooed Rabbi

I'm plugging a book and a book signing.

You're welcome.

Marvin J. Wolf will be signing copies of his new book, the first in the Rabbi Ben series, next Sunday (January 22, 2012) at Venice' Temple Mishkon Tephilo, 206 Main Street. at 11 am in the Social Hall.

This book gets featured on the HistoryLosAngeles Blog because I found wonderful tidbits of LA history hidden among the mystery's clues and threads: the tangled ownership and operation of Jewish cemeteries, including Hillside; the cache of stolen law books, untended dynamite and grenades that forced the evacuation of the Arco Towers downtown (remember that? 1986--here's the Los Angeles Times story); the kosher restaurants; much more.

What the LA Times piece doesn't say, and what is only hinted at in the book, is that the criminal who hid the dynamite and grenades under the Arco Towers actually lived by stealing books from law libraries and reselling them to law students. Wolf turns the story into a fascinating anecdote in person, but I was unable to find it via Google.

The Tattooed Rabbi is one of those great mysteries that leaves no real lose ends, even though it's the first in a series, yet hints at a bigger story to be revealed in the fullness of time.

Best of all, it wraps you up in an exotic subculture that most of us know little about.

I'll be posting a review on Amazon soon.

UCLA's Mosaics--Modern and Not

Over two years ago I blogged about Joseph Young's History of Mathematics mosaic panels (16 in all) on the Math Building at UCLA. Here's a link, with a great close-up picture. This photo is not so close up, but I did stand on a wall to get it, risking life and limb (well, risking my dignity). The mosaics were installed in 1968.

And rather than repeat what I have said before about Joseph Young's work (although I have, a little), I'd like to exhibit other, completely different mosaics from a nearby building, Moore Hall.

Moore Hall was designed by George W. Kelham (who also designed Powell Library) and raised in 1930--the 5th building at the school. Everyone knows UCLA started with 4 buildings around a quad, right?

Here's a close-up of the stonework. I believe that can be legitimately called mosaic, right?

Moore Hall been refurbished twice--first in the 1950s by Kemper Nomland (a USC grad...hmph), and then again in 1993, but I don't think this stonework has been changed at all. The building is named after Ernest Moore, provost of the school when it was still the State Normal School on Vermont, and during its move to Westwood.

And that's it, that's all I can find. The style is Italian Romanesque, but I see nothing on the stonework, ornamentation, or decoration, all of which I call mosaic.

If anyone can add to paltry information here, I'll thank you profusely.

BTW, since this is Mosaic Monday and the post is about Westwood, here's another little mystery: I came across a mention in the Times in June of 1967--that on the 21st floor of a building at 1100 Glendon, the Westwood Tower Club boasted a mosaic by Millard Sheets. Never read anything else about that, and the current resident of that address and floor did not answer my call for information. Would be nice to find another unknown mosaic, huh?

Pico House Haunted?

Those fun-loving folks of the Los Angeles Paranormal Association will be investigating Pico House again this January (they did it last year too). What do they hope to find?

The event starts at 8 pm on Saturday, January 28 and goes to 2 am Sunday morning. Cost? $85, which if you divide by six hours is probably not too bad.

Participants will be divided into four teams and will be prowling in and under the Pico House (there are tunnels) and the Masonic Temple and Merced Theater nearby. Here is description and details.

Their blog is lots of fun--they've held investigations in Virginia City, Tonopah, and Goldfield, NV, Northern California and down here at Linda Vista Hospital in Boyle Heights and the Queen Mary.

And they've done the Pico House before, in January of 2011. Lots of pictures and the information is here, including a description of the Chinese Massacre of 1871, which happened just outside. But besides taking pictures, it doesn't sound like much happened.

Ghost Adventures also locked themselves into the Pico House for an investigation, and had enough for a TV show on the night--shadows, mysterious voices, cold spots, etc. Here's the show on YouTube.

This last picture shows the Pico House being built, in 1869. I found this at the SkyscraperPage--if you scroll about half-way down the page, there are several old pictures of the Plaza and Pico House and the Merced Theater, which opened on New Years Day, 1870.

The theater, LA's first indoor stage theater, was built by an undertaker and named for the man's wife, Mercedes.

Pio Pico, the last governor of Mexican California, built the Pico House Hotel in 1870, and lost it (financially speaking) ten year later. The place had indoor plumbing, gas lighting, and a French restaurant--quite elegant and state-of-the-art. I believe it was renovated about a dozen years ago.

Pico was an interesting guy, a mixed race man who seemed to love life and had a generous disposition. He was born at the Mission San Gabriel, so he was a true native Californian. Can't really imagine him haunting the place, but the ghost could be a disgruntled resident, I suppose. Or someone killed in that massacre.

Pasadena Roses Mosaic

One week before the Rose Parade, this seems appropriate.

The rose mosaic at the Garfield Promenade of Paseo Colorado -- as well as the smaller pictures above the circular benches -- were installed ten years ago in 2001.Since there's a lot of traffic there, minor damage has been done, according to the City of Pasadena's website . Conservation is in progress.  The work is being repaired, pieces of the Venetian glass will be regrouted, andit will all be cleaned.

The artist is Margaret Nielsen and she is standing on the mosaic in the picture. Her work is titled Pasadena Panorama. Trizec Hahn development installed the piece, and the city's Public Arts program paid for it. Beyond the large rose mosiac, the pictures along the curved benches were also designed by Nielsen.

Margaret Nielsen is from Canada, but all of her training has been here in SoCal: Chouinard Arts School, Cal Arts in Valencia, and Loyola Marymount in Westchester.

One of her paintings, called LA Dialogs, is in the Metro Headquarters Building, and another is somewhere at the Union Station Gateway. A set of mosaics designed for the Motion Picture Association of America building on Ventura Blvd in Encino is in storage, sadly. The 21 Venetian glass mosaics show scenes from famous movies. Or so says LA Magazine's website, but I hope there are plans to restore them somewhere.

The Los Angeles Times reviewed her work recently.

The Jaws House

If you think the name is creepy, wait'll you hear that one resident was a suspect in a gruesome murder...but let's start at the beginning.

The Jaws House on Franklin Ave. in the Los Feliz area is actually the John Sowden House. Sowden hired his friend Lloyd Wright (son of Frank) to design and build his home in 1926. Using patterned concrete blocks and a Mayan style as his father did in the Ennis House, Lloyd Wright created the showplace that Sowden wanted.

Today, it's still used as a showplace. Owner Xorin Balbes renovated it in 2001 and in 2009, and the house has been used for fundraisers for gay causes, according to the caption on this LA Library photo. Which probably has nothing to do with the gardener who got caught in the photograph.

Balbes put the unique house on the market earlier this year. The L.A. Times did a write-up in its Home of the Week column, pointing out all the features and changes over the years.

And Curbed LA (and probably a few other sites) ran incredible pictures of the place inside and out.

In between Sowden and Balbes, though, another owner just after World War II brought a more sinister cachet to the residence. A doctor named George Hodel lived there with his family, and his son believes the Black Dahlia--Elizabeth Short--was tortured, murdered, and dismembered there.

Son Steve Hodel wrote the book Black Dahlia Avenger
about his father and the years at the house.

Recent owner Balbes got flack for installing a pool when he renovated, according to this Wikipedia article.  Which is interesting, because a woman who used to visit the home as a child remembers a pool there originally.

Beverley Jackson remembers being sent to the house to visit a retired Shakesperian actor, Guy Bates Post, when she was a little kid. Why? Jackson's mother decided she mumbled, and wished to nip that in the bud.

Jackson blogs: "once inside there was a long narrow courtyard surrounded by the long narrow house. And there was a long narrow pool with water lilies just inside the courtyard. I remember it well because once I wasn’t paying attention and I fell into it."

So years later she visits the area, and comes up to the house just as a film shoot is winding up and talks to the property manager, who tells her about the Black Dahlia suspect and that there might be more bodies buried on the property. This had to be before the 2001 redo, because there was no pool. Jackson told the property manager about the pool she remembered, and said that must be where the bodies were.

Did anyone ever check?

Hmmmm