famous apartments – IAMNOTASTALKER

August 12, 2020August 11, 2020

Dave’s Apartment from “Alvin and the Chipmunks”

My mom often calls me “DB” for Dumb Blonde. I can’t be offended as I’ve certainly earned the nickname thanks to countless airheaded antics over the years. Case in point – I recently got a request from @nic_fury on Instagram to dedicate a blog post to the apartment complex where David Seville (Jason Lee) lived in Alvin and the Chipmunks. As fate would have it, I stalked the locale years ago, but somehow never wrote about it. I decided to amend that and, since I had never actually seen the 2007 film, promptly streamed it. The only trouble was, I rented Garfield, another live-action/computer-animated flick from around the same time, instead. It took about twenty minutes of watching before I realized my mistake. Thankfully though, while I had the wrong movie, I had the right location. In Alvin and the Chipmunks, Dave lives at St. Andrews Bungalow Court in Hollywood, a charming complex that I stalked way back in 2009.

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The U-shaped site, consisting of 15 bungalows built around a lush courtyard hidden away from the street, was commissioned in 1919 by Fay Sudrow as an investment property. Per a National Register of Historic Places registration form compiled by the United States Department of the Interior, “The court is an example of an ‘owner/builder’ construction, a common practice in early Hollywood. Builder-built (as opposed to architect-designed) housing employs standard, inexpensive, wood-frame construction with minimal architectural and decorative refinements. The ‘agent’ employed to construct the complex is identified as W. Jones, and the eight-room duplex in the back was built by a contractor identified as Frank Pece. No architect was identified, which suggests that Frank Pece may have purchased architectural plans from a design service.”

That design service must have been top-notch because, “minimal decorative refinements” notwithstanding, the complex is nothing short of idyllic! Each of the 14 standalone bungalows, as well as the duplex units, originally boasted one bedroom and one bath, but many have since been transformed via the installation of an interior wall into two-bedroom spaces. According to the NRHP registration form, the Colonial Revival-style cottages feature coved ceilings, crown moldings, built-in buffets with glass-fronted cabinets, and front porches with “nine unique gable treatments.”

Due to shifts in the neighborhood and severe negligence, St. Andrews Bungalow Court fell upon hard times in the 1980s. It hit the auction block in 1987 and was set to be razed the following year. Demolition permits were even filed and, though they were fortunately revoked, the site was abandoned in 1989. Vandals soon descended, hurling the place into further disrepair. A guardian angel came in the form of the Hollywood Housing Community, which acquired the complex in 1992 and completely restored it, transforming the 700-square-foot bungalows into residences for those with special needs. The new and improved St. Andrews Bungalow Court opened for occupancy in December 1995. It remains in the hands of the Hollywood Housing Community today.

Per the NRHP registration form, the complex is an “outstanding example” of a bungalow court and is “unusual for its size and for the attention to individual detail bestowed upon each unit by its anonymous designers.” Situated just steps off Sunset Boulevard and across from a strip mall with a Burger King and a 7-Eleven, it is a bucolic little sanctuary, hidden away behind a white picket gate and arched hedges. One could easily pass right by without realizing the tiny oasis is even there. It reminds me quite a bit of the apartments where David Silver (Brian Austin Green) lived during the later years of Beverly Hills, 90210, which can be found less than half a mile away at 1547 North Serrano Avenue.

St. Andrews Bungalow Court pops up countless times throughout Alvin and the Chipmunks and, in fact, is a focal point of the movie.

Though the front gate was swapped out for the shoot . . .

. . . little else was altered.

The complex is just as adorable in real life as it appeared onscreen!

In the movie, David lives on the southern side of the complex, towards the rear. In real life, his unit is numbered 1520.

It is denoted with a white arrow in the Bing aerial below.

Onscreen though, the cottage is addressed 1958, which is a nod to Chipmunks creator, singer-songwriter Ross Bagdasarian Sr. His son, Ross Bagdasarian Jr., served as executive producer on the film and threw in many tributes to his father, 1958 being the year that two of his big hits, “Witch Doctor” and “The Chipmunk Song,” first reached number 1. (Side note – David Seville is actually Bagdasarian Sr.’s stage name. Figuring his full moniker was too long to fit on a 45, he went with a pseudonym, one that paid homage to the city in Spain where he was stationed during WWII.)

Only the exterior of St. Andrews Bungalow Court appeared in Alvin and the Chipmunks. The inside of Dave’s home was a soundstage-built set. Per Brian Carroll, assistant to the film’s Animation Supervisor, Chris Bailey, “The entire interior and walkway in front of the house was built on a soundstage at Sunset Gower Studios in Hollywood. The director, Tim Hill, did a great job of mixing the exteriors shot at the apartment complex with the footage shot on stage.” The fact that a set was used is quite apparent while watching, though, as Dave’s residence is obviously larger than 700 square feet.

You can check out what a portion of one of the real bungalow interiors looks like here. The production team incorporated some of the actual design elements into the set, namely the built-ins, glass-fronted cabinets, and checkered kitchen floor.

St. Andrews Bungalow Court was also featured in 2009’s Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel, though the footage, featured solely in establishing shots, looks to have been re-used from the first movie. It doesn’t appear that any actual filming of the follow-up took place on the premises.

In an odd twist, at one point in the “squeakquel,” Toby Seville (Zachary Levi) is shown walking to his car, supposedly parked outside of St. Andrews Bungalow Court. The vehicle is actually a good three miles away on the 1300 block of North Ogden Drive, though. (Parking in Dave’s neighborhood must really suck!) I recognized the spot where filming took place immediately thanks to the house visible behind Toby, which is one of my favorite movie residences of all time! Long time readers of the site should recognize it, as well – it’s Stu’s (Ed Helms) home from The Hangover!

The interior of Dave’s apartment in Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel was also a set, albeit slightly altered and enlarged from the one in the original movie, but no less charming.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: St. Andrews Bungalow Court, aka Dave’s apartment complex from Alvin and the Chipmunks, is located at 1514 –1544 North St. Andrews Place in Hollywood.

January 21, 2011January 20, 2011

David’s Bungalow from “Beverly Hills, 90210”

This past Tuesday night, Geoff, from the 90210locations website, asked for my help in tracking down the blue and white bungalow where Carly Reynolds (aka Hilary Swank) – and in later years David Silver (aka Brian Austin Green), Dylan McKay (aka Luke Perry), and Noah Hunter (aka Vincent Young) – lived during Season 8 of fave show Beverly Hills, 90210. Now as I have mentioned a few times before on this site, I stopped watching 90210 after Season 4 when my girl Shannen Doherty left the series, but Geoff sent me a screen capture of the bungalow in the hopes that I could track the place down anyway. Randomly enough, Mike, from MovieShotsLA, had just loaned me several of his DVDs of the older seasons of the show with the instruction that I should start watching the series over again from the beginning. One of the seasons he loaned me just happened to be Season 8, so after I received Geoff’s email, I immediately popped in the first DVD and started scanning through it looking for clues to the location of Carly’s bungalow. And, thanks to a little help from Mike, I was able to find the place almost immediately.

Mike clued me into the fact that every shot of the bungalow shown on the series seemed to have been taken at an odd, sideways angle. And scanning through the Season 8 episodes, I realized that I could literally not find one single establishing shot that had been taken of the house head on.

That paired with the fact that the home seemed to be situated at an angle perpendicular to that of its front gate led Mike to believe that the property did not actually face the street.

He had also noticed that in both the episodes “Pride and Prejudice” and “Toil and Trouble” there was a house that looked like a mirror image of Carly’s located in very close proximity and directly across the street from it. All of these little “clues” added together led him to believe that Carly’s residence was not actually a house at all, but what is commonly referred to in Los Angeles as a “bungalow court” apartment complex. So, armed with that information from Mike and after scanning through quite a few Season 8 episodes of the show, I immediately starting searching through Google for addresses of different bungalow court apartments. And thankfully quite a few came up, almost all of which were in the Hollywood area. I then looked at all of those addresses using Bing aerial views. Because Carly’s house had a very unique roofline I thought it would be fairly easy to spot from above and, thankfully, it was! One of the addresses that had come up on Google was for a bungalow court located at 1554 North Serrano Avenue. And while that complex wasn’t where Carly lived on 90210, I did notice that there were quite a few other bungalow courts located on that very same street. And, magically, one was Carly’s! YAY! So, I immediately dragged my dad out to stalk the place yesterday afternoon.

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Carly and David’s bungalow court apartment complex is actually something of a historic property and was designed by architect A.B. Crist in 1919. It is a SUPER cute and picturesque little grouping of homes and it is not at all hard to see why producers chose to use it on Beverly Hills, 90210.

Unfortunately, there is a large tree that is now situated in front of Carly’s bungalow which considerably blocks the view of it from the street.

But the bungalow located directly across from it is very visible and, as you can see in the above photographs, looks exactly like Carly and David’s home. Like Geoff said to me after I told him I had found the place, I guess I am going to have to start watching all of the later seasons of the show now. Smile

On a side note – I just wanted to let all of my fellow stalkers know that Bing Maps has recently added a “Streetside” feature to its site and it is A-MA-ZING! In fact, I think it is safe to say that I am absolutely in love with it! The imaging is one hundred times better than that of Google Street View, not to mention one hundred times faster. If you are trying to track a location down, I honestly cannot recommend using it enough!

Big THANK YO U to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for helping me find this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: David Silver’s bungalow – aka Carly Reynold’s bungalow – from the later seasons of Beverly Hills, 90210 is located at 1547 North Serrano Avenue in Hollywood.

June 18, 2010June 17, 2010

Nick’s (Almost) Apartment from “The Crush”

Just a mile and a half away from the Forrester mansion, which appeared in the 1993 thriller The Crush and which I blogged about yesterday, is the supposed Seattle-area apartment house where Nick Eliot (aka Cary Elwes) tried to rent a unit after discovering that his current landlords’ 14-year old daughter Adrian (aka Alicia Silverstone) had developed a highly-inappropriate and psychotically-obsessive crush on him. I found this location, yet again, thanks to master stalker Owen, who had managed to track down one of the movie’s crew members who happened to remember the general vicinity where the apartment house was located. From there, Owen once again employed Google Street View to pinpoint the property’s exact location. And even though the building only showed up in two very brief scenes in The Crush, because of my Alicia Silverstone connection, I just had to stalk the place.

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I am very happy to report that Nick’s apartment house looks much the same in person as it did onscreen in The Crush, except for one pretty glaring difference – the building is now located in a different place.

Yes, you read that right – according to this Flikr website, Nick’s apartment house was formerly located just a bit north of where it is now, adjacent to a vacant lot, and was numbered 2132 (as you can see in the above screen capture). When the neighboring Reeve house, a historic property, was moved for preservation purposes in 1999, the Crush apartment also had to be moved a few hundred feet to the south to accommodate it. The Crush building’s address number was subsequently changed to 2156 and, because it had to be built into the side of a hill, appears to be a bit lower to the ground now than it was previously. Isn’t that incredible? I mean, I’ve heard of filming locations being torn down entirely, but I’ve never heard of one being moved from one plot of land to another! I’m so, so glad that the property was preserved, though, for all of us stalkers to continue to appreciate. You can see some great interior photographs of the building’s super-cute little front unit on a former real estate listing from 2008 here. I absolutely LOVE the built-in bookshelves next to the fireplace!! So darn cute! I am a little upset, though, that the real estate agent failed to make mention of the property’s cinematic history on the listing. Hmph!

On an interesting side note – While doing research on The Crush for yesterday’s blog post, I came across some information on IMDB which stated that the flick’s screenwriter/director Alan Shapiro based his screenplay on actual events from his life that took place while he was living in a guesthouse on the property of a wealthy Beverly Hills family back in 1982. And while I don’t know how much of the movie was actually based on fact and how much was embellished for dramatic effect, apparently Shapiro touted his production as being inspired by “real-life events”. Quite a bit of the story must have been factual, though, because after the movie premiered in April of 1993, Shapiro was sued by his former landlords over the fact that he had named his lead character “Darian” – the actual name of his former landlords’ daughter. The lawsuit was eventually settled and producers agreed to dub the name “Adrian” in for “Darian” in all future airings and DVD/VHS copies of the flick.

Big THANK YOU to Owen for finding this location! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The apartment Nick unsuccessfully tries to rent towards the end of The Crush is located at 2156 Cypress Street in Vancouver, British Columbia.

April 30, 2010April 29, 2010

Carol Burnett’s Childhood Home

A few weeks ago, fellow stalker Lavonna gifted me with a copy of one of her all-time favorite books, Carol Burnett’s autobiography entitled One More Time: A Memoir. I finished reading the tome this past week and, let me tell you, I absolutely loved it! Even though I’ve never been a huge Carol Burnett fan – not that I had anything against the comedienne, I just didn’t really know all that much about her – I literally couldn’t put the book down. It’s a fascinating, and somewhat heartbreaking, story about growing up in Depression-era Hollywood with an alcoholic mother and an alcoholic father and a very loving, if at times off-beat, grandmother. One of the things I liked best about the book was the fact that in it Carol dolled out quite a few addresses, one of which being the Hollywood apartment building where the actress lived for over a decade during her formative years. Carol was actually born in Texas and spent the first few years of her life with her grandmother “Nanny” and her great-grandmother “Groggy” in a home located at 2803 West Commerce Street in San Antonio. Her parents, Louise “Lou” Burnett and Joseph “Jody” Burnett, had moved to Los Angeles in the early 1930s in order to make it in the movie industry, leaving their infant daughter behind in the Lone Star State. Lou and Jody ended up divorcing a few years later and didn’t send for Carol until she was seven, at which point she and her grandmother said goodbye to Texas and headed West where they moved into a one bedroom studio apartment in a building named the Hollywood Arms. So, of course, as soon as I finished the book, I had to run right out and stalk the place.

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Because Carol had been raised pretty much since infancy by her grandmother, she chose to stay with Nanny and not her mother upon moving into the Hollywood Arms. Nanny and Carol settled into Room 102, a studio apartment on the building’s first floor, just a few doors down from Lou. The tiny room, which Carol described as a “12 foot by 16 foot box”, was comprised of a kitchenette, a tiny bathroom, and one single Murphy bed, which is where Nanny slept. Carol bunked on a small couch in a corner of the room and used the shower rod in the bathroom as her closet. During her childhood years, she spent quite a bit of time on the building’s roof, staring up at the Hollywood sign and dreaming of one day becoming a famous actress. She would also often play “movie star” on the roof with her best friend and neighbor, Illomay Sills. Carol and Nanny remained residents of Room 102 for the next fourteen years, until 1954, when the wanna-be actress migrated to New York to pursue a career on Broadway. Nanny stayed behind at the Arms until Lou passed away in 1959, at which point Carol moved her to a bigger apartment a few blocks away on Cherokee Avenue.

With all of the changes in Hollywood in recent years, I wasn’t sure if Carol’s former apartment building would still be standing today. But, thankfully, it is! The 49-unit building, which was originally built in the 1920’s, was purchased by a real estate development company named StarPoint Properties in 2003 and underwent an extensive renovation and restoration process shortly thereafter. And, while the exterior supposedly looks much the same today as it did when Carol lived there back in the ‘40s, the building and surrounding area are much more upscale now than they were then. You can see some current interior photographs of the building here.

And, let me tell you, I just about died when I noticed that one of the hallway windows was open while I was stalking the building yesterday, allowing me a quick glimpse of the interior. I could only just barely see the entrance to Room 104, which I am assuming is located just two doors down from Carol and Nanny’s old studio, which, unfortunately, was not visible. Oh, how I would have loved to have seen the doorway to Room 102! And, believe me, I tried, but my neck just wouldn’t crane that far. 😉

In 1985, long after she had become a star and her beloved grandmother had passed away, Carol returned to the Hollywood Arms and Room 102 to revisit old memories. The new occupants graciously left the premises for an hour, so she could spend a bit of time in her childhood home. Of the experience she said, “You think when you’re gonna go back that it’s going to look different . . . maybe smaller, because you’re taller, I don’t know, but this is just the way I remembered it: the same walls, the same size, the same colors.” The above photograph was taken during her visit in 1985.

She also stipulated that day that “this’ll be the last time I’ll ever see it, I know that . . . ”, but, in fact, she was wrong. In 1998, Carol and her daughter, Carrie Hamilton, began a five year process of co-writing a play based on Carol’s childhood. They named the play “Hollywood Arms” in honor of Carol’s former home. In 2001, while in the midst of the writing process, Carol went back to the Arms building and was shocked to find the place undergoing StarPoints Properties massive renovation. When she discovered that Room 102 was vacant, she immediately rented it to use as her writing office. Prior to moving in, Carol and her daughter burned sage in every corner of the tiny studio in the hopes of removing the bad spirits and sad memories. “Hollywood Arms” went on to become a hit, but sadly Carrie passed away in January of 2002, a few months before the show opened on Broadway. You can read more about the play here.

Big THANK YOU to Lavonna for giving me One More Time: A Memoir, which led me to write this post. 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Hollywood Arms, aka Carol Burnett’s childhood home, is located at 6434 Yucca Street in Hollywood. Carol and her beloved Nanny lived in Room 102.

April 29, 2010April 28, 2010

Charlie’s Apartment Building from “Monster-in-Law”

The third and final Monster-in-Law locale that I set out to find this past weekend was the supposed Venice Beach area apartment building where Charlie Cantilini (aka Jennifer Lopez) lived in the flick. Fellow stalker Nick had already determined that the Spanish-style building was located somewhere in Hollywood, so from there I set out on a Google search using the terms “Mediterranean”, “apartments”, and “Hollywood”. And I have to say that I got REALLY lucky on this one, because the first thing that popped up was this link to a complex named “Mediterranean Apartments” on North Sycamore Avenue. After looking at an aerial view of the building, I quickly determined that it was not, in fact, the Monster-in-Law locale that I had been searching for, but I did notice another apartment complex just a few doors down that looked an awful lot like Charlie’s. And sure enough, it was! The stalking gods were definitely smiling on me during this search, because, honestly, what are the odds of tracking the building down so easily??? And, let me tell you, I almost fell over when I realized that not only had I already stalked Charlie’s apartment a few years prior, but I had even blogged about it! More on that later, though.

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In real life, Charlie’s apartment building is known as the El Cadiz and it is located in the heart of Hollywood, a good fifteen miles away from Venice Beach, it’s purported location in Monster-in-Law. The building was constructed during the height of the Great Depression in 1936 by architect Milton J. Black and was named after the province of El Cadiz in the south of Spain. According to the book Courtyard Housing in Los Angeles: A Typological Analysis, the complex has the distinction of being the very last Spanish Revival-style courtyard apartment building to be constructed in L.A. In 2005, the Church of Scientology purchased the El Cadiz, and thanks to the community’s fear that the place would subsequently be torn down, just a few months later the City of Los Angeles declared it a Cultural Historic Monument, preserving its beauty for future generations to appreciate. The El Cadiz is an absolutely gorgeous dwelling that boasts numerous Andalusian decorative elements including a red-tiled roof, covered balconies scattered throughout, large water fountains, arched doorways and windows, and a multitude of courtyards. Sadly, though, none of those elements is visible from the street and what is visible is fairly non-descript, as you can see above.

Even more unfortunate is that fact that not even Google maps can give us a very good view of the building. 🙁 But you can read a more in-depth history of the property and see a picture of its interior courtyard here.

Charlie’s apartment building is only featured at the very beginning of Monster-in-Law, in the scenes which take place before she moves in with new-fiancé Kevin Fields (aka Michael Vartan).

Because of the way some scenes were filmed and because, according to the movie’s production notes, all of the apartments in the El Cadiz building were vacant and undergoing extensive renovations at the time of the filming, I am fairly certain that the real life interior of one of the units was used in the movie, too.

Coincidentally, the El Cadiz was also featured each week during the first two seasons of the immensely popular television series Alias, where it stood in for Sydney Bristow’s apartment. (An even further coincidence is that both productions starred actor Michael Vartan!) As I mentioned above, I actually stalked the place – and blogged about it! – back in February of ‘08, but because only the exterior of the complex was featured in Alias, while only the interior courtyard was featured in Monster-in-Law, I didn’t recognize that they were actually the same place.

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Nick for helping me find this location! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: El Cadiz, aka Charlie’s apartment building from Monster-in-Law and Sydney Bristow’s apartment building from Alias, is located at 1721-1731 North Sycamore Avenue in Hollywood.