Authors on Architecture: Marsak on LA Before the Freeways SAH/SCC Zoom Presentation Sunday, May 04,2025, 01:00 PM
Join me via zoom this Sunday, as I talk the lost architectural landscape of our Victorian downtown. Click here!
LA Before the Freeways—Sunday, May 4, 2025; 1-2:30 PM Pacific; $5. Go to www.sahscc.org and pay via PayPal; or mail in order form on Page 6 with check; Zoom link sent upon registration. NOTE: Included is a link to the recording to view at your leisure.
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The LAPL blog interviewed me all about the process involved in getting Hylen’s book into your hands, and along the way we discuss John Fante, Hunter S. Thompson, the Germs, and children’s book Andrew Henry’s Meadow. Check it out!
Postscript: we had a GREAT turnout! I want to heartily thank the Book Club of California, and the good folks at Pasadena Heritage.
Yammerin’ on about the influence of John Plant Gaynor’s Palace Hotel
My lovely wife, and me, and the incredible Janet Klein, in front of the Blinn’s iridescent glass-tiled fireplace, designed by Orlando Gianinni of Chicago firm Giannini & Hilgart
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.
So you’re flipping through your copy of Los Angeles Before the Freewaysand thinking well, that’sa 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:
Yellow arrow points to the Merced Theater at 420 North Main
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 signpost points east into Ferguson Alley, which is very much no more
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).
Demolished by Benjamin C. Norton, who with his brother Melville ran Norton Bros. clothing manufacturers
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.
Want to know something embarrassing? In Freeways, the Cohen Block has no architect listed. Well, you read it here first: its architect was Harvey Reid Leonard. Guess that’ll have to go into the second edition!
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.
Note the same streetlamp in each shot. That’s one of Union Metal’s Model 1906 “Downtown Double,” installed in the late 1920s
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 massive electric billboard for Camel cigarettes, designed by famed advertising executive Douglas Leigh, included a small steam plant that blew “smoke rings” from the man’s mouth.While there are plenty of photos of the “smoking” Camel man in Times Square, I’d give anything to see this guy exhaling at Fifth and Hill
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.
Note the same 1948 Dual-Lamp Teardrop CD-913 Electrolier with GE Form 81 globes in each shot. Look closely and you’ll see its original 1919 Keystone Broadway Rose base!
At far right, the eight-story Merchants Bank and Trust (Dennis & Farwell, 1905) with the “Water & Power” neon still stands today, though it was reclad with a modern façade in 1968, designed by William Hirsch Architects + Associates. At left, note the towering Million Dollar Theater down Broadway. Between the two, we’ve lost the Romanesque-facaded Potomac Block (Curlett & Eisen, 1890), demolished for surface parking in 1953, and Bicknell Block (Morgan & Walls, 1892), demolished for surface parking in 1958. Both the Boston Dry Goods building (Eisen & Hunt, 1895), and the Newmark Block, (Abram Edelman, 1898) — the two structures seen at left in this image — are still with us, sort of, having been cut down to one story and fitted with new fronts.
The Black Building, left, was demolished by the Community Redevelopment Agency in January 1967. The domed Strong Block was taken for a parking lot in July 1956. The Grant Block was taken down to two stories in the summer of 1987.
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 was demolished by Howard Fox and Harry Quinn. Who were they? They opened Henn’s Restaurant on Sepulveda in 1957, which became Dinah’s in 1959.
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:
The sign was fabricated by Leon Neon on East Fourth Street, and installed at Third & Spring in April 1958. (Before 1958, Paraiso had been at 400 W Sunset, in what became the space for La Colima)
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!
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!
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 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 signedto 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:
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 Hillbook 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.
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So, how does this new edition differ from the 1981 original? A few standouts—
It’s larger!
Which means the images are bigger…a LOT bigger
And because I scanned the original negatives, there’s greater visual information included in the images
Recognize these images? No you do not! There’s a bunch of Hylen shots, not included in the original, that you’ve never seen before
Including a biography of the man
And an essay about the architectural styles you’ll encounter in the book (and yep, you’ve never seen that shot of Reeve’s Phillips Block before now [not to be confused with Reeve’s other, far more famous Phillips Block one block west])
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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!
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One last thing — I asked Pumpkin Patch what her favorite image was, and she turned to this one:
