First Supermarket, December 17, 1927

At 43rd and Western, Isadore M. Hattem built a store so grand we needed to coin a new word to describe it: Supermarket. These pictures show the grand opening. The store featured a fountain out front and a deli, cigar counter, flower mart, and coffee shop inside, with lavish offices on the second floor. Cost to build? $30,000. And it was open day and night!

Walter Roland Hagedohm was the architect, and he also built Hattem's Shopping Center on Vermont and 80th Street about four years later. In between, he designed the Balboa Inn of Newport Beach, which became a trendy getaway of Hollywood movie stars in the 1930s.

Look at those cans! No one stacks cans like that anymore!

Isadore M. Hattem (originally spelled Hatem, but he changed it during the WWI years) was a Sephardic Jew and founding member of what is now the Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel. Before opening his supermarket, Hattem was one of the early merchants in the Grand Central Market, which opened in 1917.

Back in those days, apparently, customers asked for merchandise at a counter, and it was the clerk's job to fetch items and put the order together. Around the time that Grand Central Market opened, though, self-service markets were becoming popular. Self-service simply meant that the customer strolled along aisles and picked up items, instead of sending a store clerk off to get things. Piggly-Wiggly in Tennessee was the first self-service market, but the trend spread west.

Wikipedia cites the Smithsonian as saying that King Kullen Markets, started in 1930 in New York, was the first supermarket. Hah! Dumb ol' Smithsonian! Hattem's Market beat King Kullen by three years!

What made a store a supermarket? As near as I can tell, it was the concept of selling canned goods, produce, and meat in the same shop. Before the supermarket, meat was something you bought from a butcher.

The Los Angeles Library has lots more pictures of the Hattem grand opening--close-ups of the produce section, the bakery department, the deli, the floral displays...and allowing for black and white and old signage, most of the pictures look pretty much like what you see when you walk into a store today. The cigar counter was rather unique, though. Like today's cigarette displays, most of the merchandise was behind locked glass display cases. I think that's the cigar counter in the lower right.

Mosaic Monday: Olde City Hall, Torrance

The original Torrance City Hall on Cravens Avenue was designed by architects Walker & Eisen and built with WPA funds in 1936. The City Hall was an efficient, standard moderne building that served for 25+ years--with no mosaic. That came later.

Walker & Eisen were a well-known and successful firm by the 1930s. They actually helped construct the Oviatt Building in on 6th and Olive in Los Angeles--now the Cicada Restaurant. According to PublicArtInLA, they were "primarily responsible for the shell of the building and the Olive Street facade. Percy Augustus Eisen (1885-1946) and Albert Raymond Walker (1881-1958) were in partnership from 1919 to 194-. . . . Their later works were mostly government buildings, theaters, and branch facilities carried out in the moderne style. Major commissions included the Fine Arts Building (1925), United Artists Building (1927), Title Insurance Building (1928), National Bank of Commerce (1929), Fruit Growers Exchange (1934), Beverly-Wilshire Hotel (1926), El Cortez Hotel (San Diego, 1927), El Mirador Hotel (Palm Springs 1927), Mar Monte Hotel (Santa Barbara 1927), Torrance City Hall, Jail, and Municipal Building (1936), . . . " (text prepared by Martin Eli Weil, A. I. A., Restoration Architect, for Ratkovich, Bowers Incorporated, October 1982, for nomination of the building to the National Register of Historic Places.)

Well, that confirms a story I've heard from people who grew up in Old Torrance--that the basement served as a jail. Children who walked by the City Hall on their way to school in the 1950s and early 60s remember that the prisoners would call to them from small, sidewalk-level windows: "Hey, kids! Let us out of here!"

By the 1970s, a new, bigger-by-a-factor-of-maybe-twenty City Hall complex was built and the old building became a Home Savings. That's when this mosaic was added. I have not been able to confirm that the work is Millard Sheets'--the Torrance Historical Society and the main library weren't sure, and the local newspapers are not indexed or online.

However, I'd put five bucks on it being Sheets' handiwork. In fact, I believe there were once more mosaics, but this is the only one that remains on the outside. Home Savings moved away in the 80s, and the building is now the local office of Time Warner Cable.

Perry Mason and the Hall of Justice

Harkening back to that building with the loaded mice, our own somewhat empty Hall o' Justice. . .

Gunnar and Sherry of the Eccentric Roadside blog remind us that the Hall of Justice served as the backdrop for many TV shows, most notably Perry Mason. In fact, the Wiki site PerryMasonTVSeries.com has a page showing shots of the Hall of Justice as it appeared in various episodes! I like this one (from episode #269) with the big ol' cars.

What other TV shows has it been in? Get Smart and Dragnet. I'd be interested in finding more movie and TV location trivia. Pursuing that, I came across Armand's Rancho del Cielo blog, with this post showing the basement of the Hall of Justice this year. Cool!

Main Street 1899

Another great picture courtesy of Shorpy!

If this doesn't enlarge by clicking, you can go to the Shorpy link (above) and click. The Vienna Buffet--which served beer and appears in quite a few stories of disorderly conduct and petty crime in the 1890s--is shown in the lower left corner-- the leftiest bit of actual street in the picture. St. Vibiana's bell tower is identifiable--it's a bit right and above center.

But if you're craving twenty-two minutes of 1890's Los Angeles with musical accompaniment, you can't beat this:

UCLA History of Mathematics Mosaic

In 1968, artist Joseph Louis Young installed a 16-panel mosaic illustrating the History of Mathematics at UCLA. This pictures shows a small portion of that on the Math Science Building.

Young died in 2007. Much of his work was done back east, though he and his wife lived in LA and West Hollywood for decades. He lectured in Europe, and his murals adorn buildings in Chicago, Boston, and his hometown, Pittsburgh. Here's a tribute to Young from the Mosaic and Glass Art blog.

This picture--which really shows the work up close--is from the Los Angeles Murals Project website. I hope they don't mind me using it as more of a tease than a real representation of the work. To see more of the Mural Projects' pictures of Young's work, click here.

Los Angeles County Hall of Justice

This building on primo real estate (Temple and Broadway ) has been closed for fifteen years now--ever since the 1994 Northridge quake. Damaged to the point that hundreds of millions of dollars are required to fix it. Maybe.

According to USC's Geography page, the 1925 Hall of Justice is undergoing a $200 million renovation even as we blog. According to a Los Angeles Times' story this week, our Board of Supervisors has just ordered a report on the feasibility of repairing and reusing the building. The LA County Sheriff wants to move back in, since this building was their home for many years.

This picture is from the USC site, but here's an even better one from you-are-here.com, which claims the building went up in 1922, not 1925. And the Los Angeles Conservancy calls it a "1926 Beaux Arts Building." The top five floors were once a jail and housed Sirhan Sirhan, Charles Manson, and other dark souls; Marilyn Monroe's autopsy was done at this address. Wonder if it's haunted?

On a lighter note, a November 5, 1963 Times story implied that mice in the building were getting high on marijuana stored in the county clerk's narcotics locker. "Those mice are addicts," complained Peter J. Talmachoff, chief criminal division deputy. "They run riot all night, then stagger off to their nest leaving the floor littered with marijuana."

I did not make a word of that up; it's taken verbatim from the news story. The room held several hundred pounds of weed for use as evidence in pending trials. Talmachoff said an exterminator and a plasterer had been called in and went to work, but "The next day the mice were back in the marijuana just the same." and "We have trapped about 50 of them, but the mice multiply faster than we can catch them."

That was 55 years ago! What if the real reason the building's been shut down for so long is not earthquake damage but drug-crazed mutant rodents? Just wondering. With Flash Forward and other dramas showing reruns this month, wouldn't it be cool to watch a series about mutant mice in the Hall of Justice plotting the overthrow of democracy?

Mosaic Monday--Claremont

I'm cheating; these pictures were taken a couple of years ago and went with another blog post about Millard Sheets' Centennial. But as I have made the jump from Penniless-Writer to Working-and-Writing-When-I-Can, time is short.

This mosaic of Cleopatra and Isis is one of several Shakespeare scenes that decorate the Garrison Theater in Claremont, now owned by Scripps College. It was built in 1963, but refurbished, enlarged, and tricked out with fabulous acoustics less than ten years ago. Sheets created the mosaics for the original building in his Claremont Studio.

Here's another of the mosaics--the duel between Tybalt and Romeo. That's the sky and surrounding trees reflected off the Italian marble facade and the mosaic. Claremont, after all, is the city of trees & PhD's, or so they say, and the theater's in a beautiful area, with a patio roof that shades the building and frames the reflection.

Scripps, btw, is still the Women's College of Claremont. How quaint! It was founded in the 1920s by a woman--Ellen Browning Scripps--and shares facilities and classes with the other Claremont Colleges.

Mosaic Mondays

WELL, why not?

Mosaics are beautiful, though most fall into two categories: religious art, and Millard Sheets's work. There are some exceptions, and I'll try to find them. Every Monday. . . unless I forget.

This picture is found on the facade of St. Lawrence Martyr School in Redondo Beach. The parish dates back to 1956, I think, and the church was dedicated in 1957. The school followed shortly after, and I believe this mosaic was part of the original construction. It shows St. Lawrence, a third century martyr who died during the persecution of Roman Emperor Valerian, distributing alms to the poor.

Sometimes Vintage Bars Really ARE Vintage

Marbella, JazzMatazz, Bar Chloe, The Kress. . . these and other retro bars were featured in a Friday the 13th article in the Los Angeles Times about . . . well, retro bars. Specifically, pre-WWII retro bars, as well as bars that have theme nights--like the upcoming December 5th Repeal Day. Lots of lounges will celebrate the 76th anniversary of the end of Prohibition on that day with costumes and vintage drinks.

Some of these retro venues, though, have a legitimate claim to history. One that caught my attention--mainly because of the Times' gorgeous photographs--is the Marbella, which was once the Montmartre Cafe on Hollywood Blvd. between Highland and McCadden. The picture to the right is not dated, but the one below, showing the interior, was taken in 1930. (both were found at the LA Library's online collection).

Eddie Brandstatter opened the Montmartre Cafe in early 1923, and a year later celebrated its first anniversary with a gala event and over 150 film and stage stars. Vince Rose led the Montmartre Band in those days (Mel Pedesky filled in when Vince and the band toured), and every Wednesday was Bohemian night--all the artistes, musicians, and actors visited to see vaudeville dance acts. "Flapper Night" on Fridays brought the tourists in--later, Friday nights were dedicated to screenwriters. Brandstatter even printed in his ads: "SEE--colorful Hollywood nite life with the movie stars at play."

Here's a July 25 list of the films stars who'd made reservations for the cafe that night (yes, they announced them in advance): Dorothy Devore, Vola Vale, Shannon Day, June Marlowe, Lois Wilson, Helen Lynch, Viola Dana, Lefty Flynn, Rex Lease, Alice Day, Edna Mae Cooper, Cocille Evans, William Eugene and Tom Moore. Alice Calhoun was to give away the dance trophy to the contest winners.

Only a few weeks later, though, the police raided the Montmartre and other watering holes of the film set--remember, this was during Prohibition. The police found no liquor and only two people were arrested. Pola Negri and Ernst Lubitsch were honored guests a few nights later.

It really was the hot spot of the day, but by 1932, Eddie Brandstetter hit hard times. The Montmartre Cafe was auctioned off to pay his bills, and he stood trial for grand theft--accused of making off with the drapes, artwork, and even a marble nude statue that had once adorned his cafe. He was found guilty on some (not all) counts of theft and was given two years' probation. He ended his own life a few years later (1940) and his obituary credits him as being the owner of Sardi's in New York at one point!

His beautiful and storied club became the "New Montmartre Cafe." A November 28, 1935 article in the Times announces the OPENING of the new, new Montmartre Cocktail Lounge and Restaurant soon. Don't know what happened then, but the Montmartre has resurfaced as the Marbella, restored to glory and available for events.

Fretting in '42

Here's a "this day in non-history" featurette:

The November 8, 1942 edition of the Los Angeles Times ran the headline:

"Children's Lessened Library Use Deplored"

(I know it's juvenile, but certain words make me snicker. Deplore, whilst, appall--I guess I heard the nuns use them in fits of righteous anger once too often.)

This story fretted that children were visiting Los Angeles' libraries less frequently than the previous year. Yes, there was a war going on, the article acknowledges, but Miss Gladys English of the library felt that now, more than ever, children needed the diversion of reading! She was "considerably concerned."

Under new rulings made by the public schools, children must now go directly home from school. Before Pearl Harbor, many of them dropped into the nearest branch immediately after school and spent an hour or so in reading... Another rule makes it impossible for them to now come in classes or groups" to the library--on field trips, to hear stories or see exhibits.

OK, snickering aside, that really is deplorable. Were there really such rules? Gas was on the verge of being rationed, the article points out, but I was not able to learn anything more about these restrictions. Were the school authorities worried about bombs? Air raids? Were libraries considered unsafe?

Here are some of the restricted little darlings, a picture I found at today's Los Angeles Public Library photo collection of a first grade class at Joaquin Miller School in Burbank...cause what's a post without a picture?