Bunker Hill, Los Angeles

Postscript: we had a GREAT turnout! I want to heartily thank the Book Club of California, and the good folks at Pasadena Heritage.

The Book Club of California will host lil’ ol me in Pasadena this Wednesday the 9th!

I’ll be delivering an illustrated lecture about Arnold Hylen, his books, how I came to reprint Freeways, and take you on a visual tour of the architectural styles Hylen encountered on his long walks downtown (not to be confused with William Reagh’s long walks downtown, about which there is a wonderful book, appropriately titled A Long Walk Downtown, coincidentally published by…the Book Club of California).

Anyway, even if you’ve no interest in seeing me ramble excitedly about downtown’s few-that-survived-into-the-1950s Romanesque Revival structures, you should at least attend just to hang out in the Edmund Blinn house — recent article and video about the house, here and here — which is National Register, California Register of Historic Resources, and a Pasadena Cultural Landmark.

And it’s free!

Reception at 5:30; presentation at 6:00. To attend you must register — do so by clicking the link below:

Los Angeles Before the Freeways: Images of an Era 1850-1950

*** See you there! ***

So you’re flipping through your copy of Los Angeles Before the Freeways and thinking well, that’s a great old building, I wonder what’s there now?

So, just for fun (if your idea of fun is a hefty dose of hiraeth) here are ten shots from Freeways, paired with a contemporary view:

ABOVE: Looking north on Main; most prominent is the Ducommon Block (Ezra Kysor, 1874) at Commercial Street. Security First demolished the structure in mid-1951 and replaced it with a modernist bank building by Austin, Field & Fry. That building was demolished in mid-1970, as was this stretch of Commercial Street, wiped away for the Los Angeles Mall. The Mall, best known for its Triforium, was designed by Stanton & Stockwell in 1968 and opened in December 1975.

The torn awning indicates Jerry’s Joynt (home of the world-famous Jade Lounge) — see views toward it by clicking here and here — now wiped away by a freeway entrance. Look closely and you can see how the south end of the Garnier Block was removed for freeway construction.

Looking at the northeast corner of Main and Market streets; the Amestoy Block (Adolph Charles Lutgens, 1888) was made a parking lot by the city in late 1958. Market Street was then wiped away in favor of Stanton and Stockwell’s City Hall East (1972).

Behold the Robarts Block (John Hall, 1888) at the corner of Seventh and Main, in 1950. It was demolished in 1958. Note how its neighbor the Cecil has reworked its sign from “$1.50 Monthly” to “Low Daily.” This is of course the signage that existed for decades before nogoodnik Matthew Baron painted it over.

Center, the 1888 Cohen Block, 334 South Spring. At left, a bit of the Willard Block (Carroll Herkimer Brown, 1893). Both made into a parking lot, 1961. Note a corner of the Ronald Reagan State Office Building (Welton Becket + Associates, 1991) where the Willard Block once stood.

213-221 South Spring Street. At right, the Polaski Block (Abram Edelman, 1895); at center, the Brode Block (Robert Brown Young, 1891); and at far left a Romanesque Revival commercial structure (architect unknown, 1889). Image shot in 1954; the Times-Mirror Company demolished the buildings for surface parking in early 1956, eventually building this parking garage in 1988. Note the Tony Sheets bas relief. The structure was designed by Conrad Associates, who are best known for its 1975 World Trade Center at 350 South Figueroa — which ALSO has monumental Tony Sheets bas reliefs.

The Bath Block (Robert Brown Young, 1898), at the southeast corner of Fifth and Hill streets, was developed by Albert Leander Bath, vice president of the Stowell Cement Pipe Company. The structure, with its nifty Venetian Gothic ogee arches, lasted all the way through the spring of 1980.

For a site called “BunkerHillLosAngeles” this post hasn’t had much Bunker Hill in it, so, here y’all are! At left, the gleaming-white Black Building (as seen in the book Bunker Hill, Los Angeles on page 133), a 1913 office building by Edelman & Barnett, for George and Julius Black, at 361 South Hill Street. Across Hill, the late-Victorian Strong Block (also known as the Stanford Hotel and the Brighton Hotel), Frederick Rice Dorn, 1895. Further on is the backside of the Grant Block (seen here with painted signage Grant Building), at Fourth and Broadway, which looked like this; it was originally a three-story structure (Frank Sawyer van Trees, 1898) until enlarged with four more stories (John Parkinson, 1902).

The Stimson Block was an outrageously important structure, designed in skyscraper-meets-Romanesque by Carroll Herkimer Brown in 1892. The man who built it, Thomas Douglas Stimson, used Brown to build an incredible Romanesque Revival house, which you likely know. Downtown’s Stimson Block was demolished in 1963, just because. It’s remained a surface lot these past sixty+ years.

Oh, one last thing about the Stimson Block, that neon sign in the Hylen image at left? Take a close look at the modern image on the right, on the wall of the building across Harlem Place. There it is:

If you liked these ten old images of vanished downtown, be sure to pick up a copy of the book—it has another 130!

If this post does well, I’ll do another; shoot me a note (see “contact” at upper right of this page) with the building of which you most want to see a then-n-now!

Fresh on the heels of this Instagram post, a nifty KCRW piece hit the airwaves this morning:

https://www.kcrw.com/news/shows/kcrw-features/before-freeways

Check it out!

And while I have you here—

—I want to thank everyone who came out last Saturday to the book launch! We had a time!

Los Angeles Before the Freeways is officially out-and-in-stores as of this morning. Go grab yours! And if you do not as yet own Bunker Hill, Los Angeles, grab that too!

And if you want to know more about Bunker Hill — specifically, its less savory aspects — might I suggest you pick up the quaint and colorful compendium of crime that is Bunker Noir!

And should you wish to know what structures exist on the Hill at this very moment, I heartily advise you pick up Marsak’s Guide to Bunker Hill!

To buy Bunker Noir! please click here

To buy Marsak’s Guide to Bunker Hill please click here

If you want to buy both? Get both for $40. That’s like a $10 savings! And remember, if you send me money through Venmo, be sure to include your mailing address.

*********

There’s a terrific review of the book by Local News Pasadena‘s Robert Savino Oventile—

—which you may read by clicking here:

https://localnewspasadena.com/2025/picturing-history-in-las-architecture/

********

Then, in HeySoCal! —

Click →→ https://heysocal.com/2025/03/10/book-los-angeles-before-the-freeways-captures-images-of-lost-architectural-gems/ ←← here!

********

And check out this article in The Eastsider by clicking here!

As detailed in my last post, there’s a new book about old LA coming to stores near you (does it have Bunker Hill in it? Of course!)…

And to celebrate, this Saturday March 22nd, we’re having a party! Why should you come to this party? I’ll give you five reasons!

It’s at the Central Library. LAPL Central is a breathtaking structure with some of the most sublime interior spaces in the world. Perhaps you’re yet to see the Leo Politi exhibit, or the No Prior Art show (which features patent models and quack medical devices, and if that isn’t a good time, I don’t know what is).

There will be snacks! The invite reads “light refreshments” (I have no idea what that means, though I assume LAPL has rejected my suggestion of étouffée paired with a good Spätlese) so you won’t go hungry.

Be the first to get the book, fresh out of the shrinkwrap and signed to you no less. (And if you need to pick up a copy of the Bunker Hill book, there are signed copies at the library gift shop.)

Parking is easy and cheap. I’m sure you’re thinking ugh, if I go downtown I’ll have to pay $18 to stackpark in some surface lot but no! Parking in the structure under the library is a snap, and Saturday parking is a one dollar flat rate. (Provided you have a library card, which, of course, you do. But if not, go here; you’ve got two weeks.)

Last but not least, there will be me, presenting a nifty slideshow all about Hylen, his book, and the architectural styles contained therein, which you may watch from the plush confines of the Mark Taper Auditorium.

…and if there were a sixth reason, it would be that you could make a day of it downtown, taking in the area’s other wonders, like Angels Flight, Grand Central Market, the Bradbury Building, the Beaux-Arts marvels of Spring and Broadway, etc. Heck, bring along your copy of Before the Freeways as some sort of phantom Thomas Guide of lost L.A.! Then go have drinks in the revolving Bonaventure bar—you know the drill.

At this point you exclaim where do I sign?! Right here, is where:

That’s right, register above or click the Eventbrite link here.

See you there!

Greetings, friends!

I began this blog in advance of the 2020 publication of Bunker Hill, Los Angeles. Since then I’ve self-published a couple more books about Bunker Hill — Bunker Noir! and Marsak’s Guide to Bunker Hill — and now it’s time to announce the new book from Angel City Press! (And believe it or not, it’s not about Bunker Hill! …though y’know, it does have vintage Bunker Hill in it…)

Announcing Los Angeles Before the Freeways!

Though strictly speaking it’s not my book: it was written by a fellow named Arnold Hylen. Hylen had taken a lot of pictures downtown in the 1950s and 60s, compiling his images and research into his 1976 Bunker Hill, A Los Angeles Landmark and 1981’s Los Angeles Before the Freeways: 1850-1950 Images of an Era, both published by Dawson’s Books.

Bunker Hill and Freeways had very limited press runs — 500 and 600 copies, respectively — so finding them can be tough and paying for them even worse:

So I thought it would be a cool idea to ferret out Hylen’s remaining family, acquire the negatives and publishing rights, and get these books in the hands of hungry historians. The Bunker Hill book turned into something larger, of course, but Freeways…that is being republished now as a standalone, and I won’t be modest on this point: this new version is amazing.

********

So, how does this new edition differ from the 1981 original? A few standouts—

********

The book will be out, officially, on March 25th. We’re having a big launch party at Central Library on March 22nd, so….COME TO THE LAUNCH PARTY! There will be books there, and snacks, and presentations, and it’s free! Click here!

In the meantime, should you wish to preorder the book, please do so here!

********

One last thing — I asked Pumpkin Patch what her favorite image was, and she turned to this one:

Everyone loves the boom-era mansions of Bunker Hill, which we know primarily through images shot as they neared their demolition, photographed in the 1950s and 60s by the likes of Hylen, Reagh, Conner, et al.

More rare and important are those images captured of a house in its early years. Luckily, many of the most important homes were photographed soon after completion, e.g. these shots of the Crocker, Rose, Melrose, Castle, and Bradbury—

But those shots have been in the public view a long time; many were used in 1977’s Bunker Hill: Last of the Lofty Mansions, and a lot of the shot-within-a-few-years-of-their-completion house pictures, captured from 1888-1900, were some of the first “old Bunker Hill” images to be put online in the mid-1990s. (I should mention as well all the above shots were indeed used in Bunker Hill, Los Angeles.)

So, when a new-to-us image of an early Bunker Hill house is uncovered, it’s big news.

The other day I was contacted by a descendant of Samuel Weller, founding president of Occidental College. Said descendant wondered if I knew about Weller’s house on Bunker Hill, and, was it in my book? I said that no, 211 South Bunker Hill Avenue, built by Weller in 1886, was an important house, but, no decent images of it existed.

At which point she sent me this:

And my jaw dropped. That’s an incredible image of an important house!

The descendant said that the original of this image lay with Occidental, whom I contacted, and they said no, they had received it from the family, when they included it in this, ten-something years ago:

So the family says Occidental has the original and Occidental says the family has it, and while I still have no idea who is in actual physical possession of the original, I did get this (decent-sized, but I wish it were much larger) scan:

Which has on its verso—

Great information here, but, much of it a bit off. It was certainly not the “first house on Bunker Hill.” Samuel’s father was not named John (you’ll note someone scribbled “Tobias” in pencil to correct this). And it refers to “Samuel Higgins Weller” when his middle name was Harold (understandable, since Samuel’s mother’s maiden name was Higgins). “Octave” Morgan would refer to Octavius Morgan—of the firm Kysor & Morgan (becoming Kysor, Morgan & Walls in late-October 1886)—who certainly may have designed this house, but I do not believe designed “Occidental College’s first building,” which by all evidence was product of the Newsom boys. Of Morgan it goes on to say his “daughter Julia Morgan” designed Hearst Castle, which is a nice thought, but Julia Morgan’s father was Charles Bill Morgan, no relation.

Note, in pencil, “his fathers anniversary birthday” in pencil across: as June 18, 1886 was Tobias Weller’s 85th birthday, it’s not unreasonable to conjecture that that was the day of this photograph.

A bit about the Weller house construction—the house may have been built/owned not by Samuel Weller, but by the Rev. Oliver Clinton Weller (Samuel’s younger brother), or at least, that’s what the 1886-87 City Directory would indicate:

Nevertheless, come the 1887 directory, we have Samuel H. Weller in residence:

And in the 1887-88 Maxwells’ Directory:

But with the 1888 directory, Weller has already moved to Boyle Heights, site of his new school:

And the Weller house, thereafter, became rented rooms:

Let’s get you acquainted as to where 211 South Bunker Hill was—which gets tricky because of course it doesn’t retain “211” as its address for very long. Los Angeles went through street renumbering in December 1889, and 211 became 309.

Here’s a shot looking east at Bunker Hill from Figueroa—

Now let’s look at the house again, and see what we see:

Two-story wraparound porches! Now that’s California living. That most of the detailing is reserved for the porch scrollwork and balustrade panels gives it a Folk Victorian flair, albeit not of the “gablefront and wing” configuration most commonly seen in the Folk styles of pre-Queen Anne Bunker Hill. Despite all its picturesque elements — a scrollwork’d balcony and a shed dormer and bicolor variegated shingle, this is a transitional house; had it been built two years later, we’d have seen a proliferation of gables and dormers and likely a turret. Instead, our massing is more sedate, but the Dutch Gable-Jerkinhead roofline is still pretty nutty. Note the stained glass window on the porch, flanked by the matching entrance stairs.

How rare is this image of the Weller house? Exceedingly; it’s basically the only decent image of the house we have. By comparison, we have well-known shots of the Castle near both its birth and death:

And yet virtually none of 309 South Bunker Hill (a scant three doors down from the Castle at 325). For example:

Note, though, a significant difference: the house as originally built was, at street level, one story (two, if you count the marvelous roof-balcony). Some time later, either the grade was lowered on Bunker Hill Avenue, or the house was raised to bring its lower floor up to the street.

I don’t have to tell you what happened to the house—but I will anyway—it gets eminent domain’d by the CRA and receives its bye-bye papers in October 1964.

And in case you’re wondering about the former site of Weller’s house: since Bunker Hill Avenue between Third and Fourth has been wiped out, and the hill on which it ran was shaved down about forty feel, next time you’re at the Wells Fargo Center, picture the Weller house as floating over the north side of the Halo foodcourt, or thereabouts…

Happy Washington’s Birthday! Washington’s birthday is, of course, on the 22nd, but has, since 1971, been celebrated the third Monday of February. (Which is today, so happy Washington’s Birthday, and before you say “don’t you mean Presidents’ Day?” be advised I do not, because there is no such thing as Presidents’ Day.)

What does George Washington have to do with Bunker Hill? He never set foot in the Bunker Hill area (unlike President Hayes), and heck, George Washington wasn’t even at Massachusetts’ battle at that other Bunker Hill.

I bring up the subject because, until quite recently, there was a monumental statue of George Washington on Bunker Hill, and this being his day…

I. A Few Words about Washington

It is evident to all we should revere Washington. He led the American forces against Britain, securing victory over tyranny. He presided over the Constitutional Convention, and was the first to sign that founding document. Though elected unanimously twice, he refused to abuse his power, and stepped down after two terms. He was referred to as “The Father of Our Country” as early as 1778 and he remains known so today.

Of course, some people will discount all of this because Washington owned slaves; I suggest those people make a close reading of Winkfield Twyman’s essay on the matter, here.

II. The Houdon Washington

Our story begins with the late 18th century sculpture of Washington by Jean-Antoine Houdon.

Houdon’s Washington gained so much popularity, that many copies were made in bronze and plaster. 19th century copies include those placed at the Virginia Military Institute, St. Louis’ Lafayette Park, and the North Carolina State Capitol.

Gorham made a cast in 1909 that resulted in a number of bronze copies, including those in Springfield, Mass. (cast 1911) and at Philadephia’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier (cast 1922).

Reproductions of the Houdon Washington ramped up with the 1932 bicentennial of Washington’s birth, including the statue at Valley Forge, at George Washington University, and at the Redwood Library in Newport.

III. Washington Comes to Los Angeles

Los Angeles was a bit late to the party, but began work to get a bronze Houdon Washington of its own, in 1935.

As chair of Civic Beautification, Bernice decided what Los Angeles needed was a monumental Washington statue.

Prominent women across Los Angeles (Bernice, past-president of the Ebell Club, was a mover and shaker) began a citywide movement to sell “certificates of honor” in an effort to raise funds for the statue.

Patriots and art lovers bought certificates, and in 1937 the statue was fully funded, in time for Washington’s Birthday, 1938. The ceremony was held at 10:30am, Tuesday February 22nd 1938, on the grounds of the recently-demolished courthouse. Virginia Law Hodge, State Regent-Elect, Daughters of the American Revolution, delivered the dedication address to over one thousand attendees. Speeches were made, poems were read, and the Works Progress Administration Band played patriotic songs, accompanied by the Belmont High School choir.

Note in the image above the triangular plot left-center: in June 1947 Washington was moved from the old courthouse site to that Spring Street location, near the Hall of Records entrance and directly across from City Hall —

IV. George Comes to Bunker Hill

As you are undoubtedly aware, the area of Bunker Hill north of First Street — sometimes referred to as Court Hill, given its proximity to the Courthouse (hence the former site of Court Flight) — was, once, a large hill, covered with homes and businesses. That is, until the County decided to buy all the land, kick out all the people, demolish everything (including the hill itself), and redevelop the area with a County Courthouse and Hall of Administration. Like so:

In late 1960, County Board of Supervisors member Kenneth Hahn had an idea: let’s move the Washington statue from that funny old Hall of Records building to the bright, gleaming new Hall of Administration, which had opened in October.

Washington had to be moved again, as the strip of grass on which he sat was lost to the development of the Civic Center Mall, known officially as El Paseo de Los Pobladores de Los Angeles, dedicated in May 1966.

Washington wasn’t moved far; about twenty feet west, and turned to face the park rather than Hill Street.

And there he stood for almost sixty years —

– until…

V. The Summer of 2020

You doubtlessly recall the spate of fifty-some Confederate statues removed by municipalities/toppled by protestors after Charlottesville’s 2017 Unite the Right rally, which accelerated into the removal or destruction of another 150+ monuments during the George Floyd protests post-May 2020. (For example, this, this, this, this and this.)

And some people said hold up, you start erasing history without some measure of thought first, next thing you know they’re gonna come for statues of the Founding Fathers! But, were you to query “…what’s next? They’ll come for Washington and Jefferson?” you would be roundly denounced and soundly mocked with a chorus of no-one is going to fall for your lies and divisive hyperbole! no-one is coming for statues of real Americans and no-one will! (Trump himself was taken to task for suggesting such a thing could occur.)

But they did indeed come for Washington, and Jefferson, and many more. For example:

Jefferson, Jefferson, Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, etc. (They almost got Andrew Jackson, but failed in that endeavor.)

Things did not go well either for the likes of John Sutter, the Pioneer and Pioneer Mother, the Texas Ranger, more pioneers, George Rogers Clark, Francis Scott Key, Harvey W. Scott, Lewis and Clark, Thomas Fallon, Hans Christian Heg (an abolitionist, and Union Army), a memorial to Emancipation, a monument to the Union Army, Walt Whitman, Pete Wilson, plus a beautiful and very non-racist elk.

And of course there’s the hundreds of statues, monuments, and memorials that were not removed or pulled down but “only” vandalized, like the statue of Quaker abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier, or African-American volunteer infantry regiment the 54th Massachusetts, or Tadeusz Kościuszko.

But we’re here to talk about statues of George Washington. We should note the Houdon Washington toppled in Minneapolis; the 1927 Coppini statue toppled in Portland; the 1858 Bartholomew statue of Washington defaced in Baltimore; the 1876 marble statue by the Fratelli Gianfranchi vandalized in Trenton; Stanford White’s 1891 Washington Square Arch, also hit by paint; and so on (New Orleans, Seattle), and so on.

I mention all this statue defilement to give you an idea where the cultural milieu stood in the summer of 2020 (although Washington continues to be disrespected, like the recent stories about the Houdon Washington that offended the Mayor of Chicago, and the Houdon Washington at its namesake university that spent three solid weeks as the focal point of pro-Hamas activists).

So: it’s Los Angeles, summer of 2020. We’re under stay-at-home orders and the odd curfew so as to halt the spread of the deadly COVID pandemic — your shared sacrifice will slow the virus and protect those most vulnerable! Businesses were closed. Restaurants, salons, churches, all forced to shutter. Loved ones died alone and isolated in hospitals. A trip to the store in the hope of finding toilet paper required waiting in a long line in some parking lot, a socially-distanced six feet apart from one another. Nevertheless, there was a massive upsurge in infections. Why? We don’t know, but don’t worry, we were assured it was absolutely and positively not because of stuff like this, so, go out and protest to your heart’s content.

Thus:

August 13th, and folks show up at City Hall to reclaim their #landback (since it was mostly white folks, I wonder if they got their land back).

And then it was on to the main event:

At 6:30, the statue was set upon by the marchers. Six individuals—Christopher Woodard, 33, of Los Angeles; Anna Asher, 28, of North Hollywood; Emma Juncosa, 23, of Los Angeles; Andrew Johnson, 22, of Glendale; Elizabeth Brookey, 19, of Burbank; and Barham Lashley, 30, of North Hollywood—pulled the statue down and spray painted it, but when they saw law enforcement ran into the bushes.

This guy thought it was pretty funny —

Since the perps were nabbed red-handed, they paid dearly for their actions! After all, they were guilty not only of felony vandalism (California Penal Code § 594 PC) but were subject to being charged under the recently-enacted Executive Order 13933—Protecting American Monuments, Memorials, and Statues and Combating Recent Criminal Violence.

Ha ha! Got you. Did they face consequences? Of course not.

Was there so much as a finger wag? Were they given a stern talking to? Did they at least have to compose a neatly-typed five-paragraph essay titled “Why I Shouldn’t Destroy Monuments to the Father of Our Country?”

No, not in the least. Just let go, and that was that—these were, after all, the glory days of District Attorney George Gascón, who insisted it was a courageous leap toward social justice to embolden criminals, encourage lawlessness, and discomfit victims.

Therefore, the perps had all charges dropped, and didn’t even have to fork out legal fees. Emma Juncosa set up a GoFundMe to pay her lawyer and cover representation of the “Statue Six” — as ponied up by their LEO-hating comrades.

After which, the County cleaned up the statue, replaced it on its pedestal in Grand Park, and we all moved on with our lives like nothing happened, right?

Nahhhh. The County was too afraid of hurting Emma Juncosa’s feelings. (Show us where the bad statue touched you!) Instead of returning the Father of our Country to the Civic Center where it had stood for over eighty years, they hid it, in a second floor conference room at Patriotic Hall.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Patriotic Hall, and I’m glad that when people go up to said second floor conference room, they may enjoy and be inspired by Washington, surrounded by all sorts of cool GAR memorabilia.

I wanted to know more about the reasoning behind the move, so I reached out to the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture to ask about the decision making process, and what went into the statue’s restoration and relocation. I got a nice, but short, email back from their Director of Communications, stating that conservation included repairing a fracture and its attachment bolts, and went on to say

After careful consideration, the LA County Department of Arts and Culture identified Bob Hope Patriotic Hall, which houses the County’s Department of Military and Veterans Affairs, as an ideal location for the statue. This location is thematically fitting for the statue of the first Commander in Chief of the United States, sitting in proximity with the various artworks and ephemera relating to military history, figures, and events housed at the Patriotic Hall.

I’m of two minds about this. On the one hand, I’m irked and saddened that we have caved to mobs of America-hating totalitarians who dictate what public statues the public can and can’t see.

On the other hand, because we allow and encourage such behavior, Washington’s statue is no longer safe among people; we can certainly expect another unhinged mob of contemptible “Statue Six” ignorami to again attempt its destruction, hence our need to remove it from view. Thus I begrudgingly admit I am glad L.A.’s Houdon Washington is now safe.

And that’s how George Washington—prominent in the Civic Center for eighty-two years, fifty-nine of those on Bunker Hill—was whisked away for fear the ludicrous-but-violent philistines shall return to finish the job, another step along the path in our charmless descent into barbarism.

*************

And that, my friends, is today’s tale for Washington’s Birthday. Yes, it’s a bit depressing. Might I suggest you now partake in some more upbeat activity, e.g., go internet-visit Mount Vernon, read Washington’s farewell address, and make yourself a cherry pie or some Washington Cake.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all movies with Bunker Hill in them are better than others, that they are endowed by their creators to have lots of Bunker Hill in them, that among these include Angels Flight, Bunker Hill Avenue, and some pretty rare stuff once in a while.

************

Let’s look at one of those “rare Bunker stuff in ’em” pictures, specifically, one I had no idea about — it is not, for example, in Jim Dawson’s book — heck, I’d never even heard of this film before Richard Schave sent me a link to it and asked hey, do you know the location of that place about an hour in? Boy, do I…

The movie is The Shadow on the Window.

It’s a 1957 picture about young thugs who kidnap a woman and traumatize Jerry Mathers in the process. You may watch the entirety of the movie by clicking here.

For our purposes, go to about fifty-six minutes in. Corey Allen (whom you remember as the gang leader in Rebel Without a Cause) has gone to his mother’s frowzy apartment to snag a gun and a car, but the cops are on his tail. They arrive:

And where is it they arrive, you ask?

Why it’s the Stanley Apartments, at the southeast corner of Flower and Second streets!

A bit about the Stanley: it began life as the La-Nel Apartments, built in 1913. Designed by Edward John Borgmeyer, it was a project of the Julius R. Smith’s Apartment House Building Company. Borgmeyer specialized in apartment houses, but was known to produce theaters as well (e.g., the Forum).

It was renamed The Stanley in 1921, after being purchased by Fullerton’s Charles Stanley Chapman (son of Charles Clarke Chapman, “Orange King of California” and founder of Chapman College). Charles Stanley Chapman kept his newly-monikered Stanley for just two years, giving it away in partial trade for the Commodore; nevertheless, the Stanley name stuck.

So anyway, it’s 1957 and someone on the Columbia lot says “go find us a down-at-heels tenement house to shoot at” and voilà—

Okay, THEN. Then something absolutely cuckoo-bonkers happens. Corey Allen drops off the fire escape and makes his way into the pedestrian passageway into the Second Street Tunnel. I have never seen a shot of this entrance.

I mean, I knew the railing was there—and I could see the entrance on aerials—

—but I despaired at ever seeing what the heck the tunnel looked like from the sidewalk. Until now. Not only that, they go through the passage where it turns, and emerges into the tunnel, and there’s gunplay! Plus lots of that famed shimmery-white Second Street Tunnel subway tile (imported from Germany, which caused a bit of consternation since we had just battled the Hun to end a War Against Mankind).

There’s even action on the south façade fire escape:

So much to see! When during the rooftop shootout, you’ll certainly wonder, what are those blinking neon lights in the distance?

And what became of the Stanley? The Community Redevelopment Agency got its demo permit in March 1966, and that was the end of the Stanley.

During the development of the Bunker Hill Towers, Flower Street north of Third was rerouted east toward Hope Street, and the Second Street Tunnel was extended west of Flower, almost to Figueroa; it can therefore be difficult to grasp just where the Stanley, at 210 South Flower Street, once stood…

The Stanley was perhaps not the most exciting structure on the hill, so I’m thrilled to give it and its little-considered architect E. J. Borgmeyer some notice.

Enjoy The Shadow on the Window! (Spoiler alert: the Stanley is the best part of the picture.)

*****

An addition: