famous architecture – Page 5

January 20, 2012January 20, 2012

The “L.A. Story” Gas Station

Last week, while doing research for my post on L’Orangerie, aka Chez Quis restaurant from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, I came across some information on The Worldwide Guide to Movie Locations website about the Gilmore Gasoline Service Station on Highland Avenue in Hollywood – a very cool-looking, old-time gas station that appeared in the 1991 movie L.A. Story. Thanks to the place’s unique, Art Deco architecture and historic feel, I became just a wee-bit obsessed with it and immediately added the address to my ever-growing “To-Stalk” list.

I think part of the reason that I became so enamored with the Gilmore Gasoline Service Station is that it reminded me of the circular, 50s-style drive-in restaurant that was used in Britney Spears’ “For Those Who Think Young” Pepsi commercial – which was sadly just a set that was built inside of a soundstage. For reasons that are beyond my comprehension, I have long been obsessed with all of the Pepsi ads featuring Britney. I honestly cannot get enough of ‘em. In fact, I just watched about twelve different versions of both “The Joy of Pepsi” and “For Those Who Thing Young” videos. But I digress. Anyway, because he has an affinity for all things historic, I figured that the Gilmore Gasoline Service Station was one location that the Grim Cheaper would actually not mind being dragged to. Sadly though, when we arrived, we found the structure to be in a pretty pitiful state. Such a shame!

The Gilmore Gasoline Service Station has an absolutely fascinating backstory. The structure was originally built for the Gilmore Oil Company, which was founded by one of the most influential and prominent families in Los Angeles history. Arthur Freemont “A.F.” Gilmore, a dairy business owner from Illinois who migrated to Southern California during the 1880s, found fortune in 1903 when he accidentally struck oil while drilling a water well on some property that he owned in the Rancho La Brea area. In 1919, after A.F. had passed away, his son, Earl, founded the Gilmore Petroleum Company, which later became the Gilmore Oil Company. Their Red Line service stations, which bore the motto “Someday you will own a horseless carriage. Our gasoline will run it.”, soon became common fixtures across all of Los Angeles. The Gilmore family is most famous, though, for founding the Gilmore Bank and the world-famous Farmers Market at 3rd & Fairfax, and for building Gilmore Field – the now-defunct minor league baseball park that was once home to the Hollywood Stars baseball team.

The double-canopied Gilmore Gasoline Service Station was designed in 1935 by an engineer named R.J. Kadow. It was one of the first Gilmore stations to be constructed and is now, sadly, one of the last remaining of its kind. After the Gilmore Oil Company was sold in 1945, the station went through a succession of different owners and, in early 1990, after the then-tenant decided not to renew his lease, there was talk of possibly tearing the structure down. Thankfully, the Melrose Neighborhood Association stepped in and, on March 23rd, 1992, the building was declared a Los Angeles Historic Cultural Monument. Despite the station’s historic status, though, it has somehow been allowed to fall into disarray in recent years. According to a November 1990 Los Angeles Times article, there were once plans to restore the building and open a snack shop/gas station/classic car rental on the site, but I am not sure if those plans ever came to fruition and, as you can see above, the place is currently in dire straights. You can check out some photographs of the station taken during better days here.

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In L.A. Story, Harris K. Telemacher (Steve Martin) and Sara McDowel (Victoria Tennant) stop at the Gilmore Gasoline Service Station, where they ask for a “full service” treatment – their tank filled, car washed, and all four tires removed and exchanged LOL – before heading to a fund-raising dinner. As you can see in the screen captures pictured above, at the time that the movie was filmed in 1991, the gas station was an incredibly cool little place. I cannot express how disheartening it was to discover that a unique piece of Southern California’s history – one with historic cultural status, no less – has been allowed to deteriorate in such a way. As I said earlier, what a shame!

Fellow stalker Chas, of the It’sFilmedThere website, also let me know that the station was featured in the 1982 movie 48 Hours as the supposed San-Francisco-area gas station where parolee Reggie Hammond (Eddie Murphy) told detective Jack Cates (Nick Nolte) where he had hidden the stolen money.

On an L.A. Story side-note – I would so love to find the supposed-Santa-Barbara-area El Pollo del Mar (the Chicken of the Sea – LOL) motel that appeared in the flick. I know that the interior scenes were filmed at the since-demolished Ambassador Hotel, but I am interested in tracking down the exterior. Does anyone happen to know where it is?

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The former Gilmore Gasoline Service Station, from L.A. Story, is located at 859 North Highland Avenue in Hollywood.

January 5, 2012January 4, 2012

The Reno Main US Post Office from “Sister Act”

While visiting my grandmother in Sparks, Nevada over Christmas, I dragged her, along with my parents, out to stalk the Reno Main US Post Office, which masqueraded as the Reno Police Station in the 1992 movie Sister Act. I first found out about this location from fave book Shot on This Site: A Traveler’s Guide to the Places and Locations Used to Film Famous Movies and TV Shows (which was gifted to me by fellow stalker Lavonna Smile ) while doing research on the area in preparation for my July trip out to the Silver State. For some reason, though, while I had managed to stalk the Washoe County Courthouse from The Misfits during my visit, I had somehow forgotten all about the post office – which is a pretty incredible feat being that the two buildings are located directly across the street from each other! As I have said countless times before on this blog, I am such a blonde! So during this recent visit, I made it a point to trek the family out to Downtown Reno once again so that I could finally do some Sister Act stalking.

The Reno Main US Post Office was originally constructed in 1932 by Frederic DeLongchamps, the prolific Nevada-area architect who also designed the Washoe Country Courthouse, the Riverside Hotel, and countless other noteworthy buildings across the Silver State. The structure was built on the site of what was formerly Reno’s very first public library. When the library was moved to a new location in 1931, DeLongchamps set to work on building the post office, which did not officially open for business until 1934. The Reno Main US Post Office, which also houses several Federal agency offices, is considered to be one of the finest examples of Zigzag Moderne architecture – a highly decorative style of Art Deco design that employs sunken vertical panel windows, flat roofs, geometric ornamentation, repetitive angular patterns, and astrological imagery – in all of Nevada. The structure was added to the National Register of Historic Places on February 28th, 1990.

The interior of the Reno Main US Post Office is nothing short of breathtaking and not at all what I had been expecting when I first walked in. I mean, the Pasadena Post Office is quite beautiful as well, but nothing like this!

The detail in the design of the interior was absolutely astounding! There are ornate cast aluminum fixtures, like the one pictured above, fastened to the corner of every single marble tile which covers the lobby walls.

And each bank of mailboxes is adorned with an elaborately-carved border. Every time I turned around, I found myself discovering some new miniscule detail that I had not previously noticed. Simply amazing!

The original blue prints for the Reno Main US Post Office were even on display in the lobby, which I thought was so incredibly cool! Smile

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The Reno Main US Post Office shows up twice in Sister Act. It first appears very briefly in the beginning of the movie, in the scene in which Deloris Van Cartier (aka Whoopi Goldberg) reports to the police that her boyfriend, Vince LaRocca (aka Harvey Keitel), has just killed his limo driver. According to the IMBD Sister Act trivia page, producers decided to film at the post office because they did not think that the actual Downtown Reno police station looked like a police station. LOL Ah, Hollywood!

The post office next shows up in the scene in which Vince leaves the police station with his lawyers after having been interrogated for six hours.

And while I had originally assumed that the interior of the Reno Main US Post Office had been used as the interior of the police station in Sister Act, as you can see above, that does not appear to have been the case. The interior does not look to have been a set, though, either, so I guess I am going to have to do a bit of digging to track down where filming actually took place.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Reno Main US Post Office, aka the police station from Sister Act, is located at 50 South Virginia Street in Reno, Nevada. The Washoe County Courthouse, from The Misfits, is located across the street at 117 South Virginia Street.

December 23, 2011December 22, 2011

The Brass Monkey Bar from “Bad Santa”

Another Christmas-themed location that I stalked recently was the Brass Elephant bar – the Monrovia-area watering hole that stood in for the similarly-named “Brass Monkey” bar where Sue (aka Lauren Graham) worked in my least-favorite holiday movie of all time, 2003’s Bad Santa. Fellow stalker Chas, from the It’sFilmedThere website, had tracked down the establishment a while back and once I learned that it was located inside of the Aztec Hotel, an extremely unique structure that had intrigued me ever since I first moved to the San Gabriel Valley over eleven years ago, I decided that I just had to stalk the place. And this past Tuesday morning, I finally did just that.

The Aztec Hotel was originally built in 1925, on what was then the historic Route 66, by Robert Stacy-Judd, the English-born architect who also designed the Masonic Temple in North Hollywood, the First Baptist Church in Ventura, and the incredible Atwater Bungalows in Echo Park. The hotel was Stacy-Judd’s first commercial design job in the United States and he credited his inspiration for the project to John L. Stephen’s 1841 tome Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan. Although technically Mayan in design, the architect named the property the “Aztec Hotel” because, as he is quoted as saying in the 1993 book Robert Stacy-Judd: Maya Architecture and the Creation of a New Style, “When the hotel project was first announced, the word Maya was unknown to the layman. The subject of Maya culture was only of archaeological importance, and, at that, concerned but a few exponents. As the word Aztec was fairly well-known, I baptized the hotel with that name, although all the decorative motifs are Maya.”

And while the Aztec Hotel enjoyed immense success and was one of the most exclusive lodgings in the area for a brief period, it fell upon hard times due to both the Great Depression and the realignment of Route 66 and was forced to shutter its doors in 1935, less than a decade after opening. It was sold, by auction, shortly thereafter for $50,000. The new owners renovated the place and it once again became a popular retreat thanks to the proximity of the newly-opened Santa Anita Park race track. Such luminaries as Bing Crosby, Mickey Rooney, Clark Gable, and my girl Marilyn Monroe were all reportedly counted as guests at one time or another. Sadly though, the property fell, once again, into disrepair in the years following and served as everything from a drug den to a brothel. The 44-room, two-story hotel, which was named a National Historic Landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, was just recently purchased by new owners who have set about restoring the historic site to its former glory. Amazingly, numerous elements of Stacy-Judd’s original design remain in place to this day, including the tile floor in the lobby, ceiling light fixtures, stained glass windows, several murals, and a fireplace.

Sadly, the Brass Elephant bar, which is located just off of the Aztec Hotel’s lobby, was closed when I showed up to stalk it, but I did manage to snap the above pictures through an open window.

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In Bad Santa, the Brass Elephant stood in for the Brass Monkey – the supposed-Phoenix, Arizona-area mall bar where disgruntled Santa Willie (aka Billy Bob Thornton) first met bartender Sue. It popped up in two scenes in the movie – first in the scene in which Willie successfully hits on Sue before getting into a fist-fight with a fellow patron.

And later in the scene in which Gin (aka Bernie Mac) tries to blackmail Willie and his partner-in-crime, Marcus (aka Tony Cox). As you can see in the screen captures above, the Brass Elephant was dressed heavily for the filming, with special booths brought in, walls retouched, and bright lighting installed, and is virtually unrecognizable from its appearance onscreen.

Because the Brass Monkey was supposed to be located adjacent to a mall in Bad Santa, the real life exterior of the Aztec Hotel did not appear in the flick. A fake exterior for the bar was instead created at the Del Amo Fashion Center in Torrance, where the vast majority of the movie was lensed.

The Aztec Hotel was also featured extensively in the 2009 movie Spooner, as the place where Rose Conlin (aka the adorable Nora Zehetner), the object of Herman Spooner’s (aka the even more adorable Matthew Lillard’s) affection, stays for a few days after her car breaks down.

Quite a bit of the hotel appeared in the movie, including the front entrance;

the lobby;

several hallways;

the Aztec Barber Shop, which is an actual place;

one of (what I believe is) the hotel’s real life rooms;

and the Brass Elephant bar. And while I only scanned through Spooner in order to make screen captures for this post, I have to say that it looks like an incredibly cute movie that I definitely need to watch in its entirety in the very near future.

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Chas, of the It’sFilmedThere website, for finding this location. Smile You can check out Chas’ extensive Bad Santa filming locations page here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Brass Elephant, aka the Brass Monkey from Bad Santa, is located at 311 West Foothill Boulevard, inside of the Aztec Hotel, in Monrovia. You can visit the hotel’s official website here and you can visit the bar’s official Facebook page here.

December 21, 2011December 20, 2011

The Ohara House – aka Miles’ House from “The Holiday”

One location that my good friend/fellow stalker Lavonna suggested that I blog about during my Christmas-themed stalking week was the modernist abode where Miles (aka Jack Black) lived in the 2006 Nancy-Meyers-directed flick The Holiday. Ironically enough, just a few days after my conversation with Lavonna, my mom and I happened to catch The Holiday on TV and when a scene showing Miles’ residence popped up onscreen, she said, “Oh my gosh, what a cool house! Lindsay, you have got to find it!” Talk about synchronicity! So I started doing some research and quickly stumbled upon the flick’s production notes, which, amazingly enough, spelled out the property’s exact location. Whoo-hoo! I so love it when that happens! So I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out there to stalk the place this past weekend.

The Holiday’s incredibly informative production notes stated, “Miles’ house was designed by Richard Neutra, the Vienna-born master of Southern California modernism and is situated on Neutra Place in L.A.’s Silverlake [sic] area, near downtown.” As it turns out, in the 1950s and 60s, the legendary Neutra, who also designed the famous Kauffman house in Palm Springs which I blogged about last December, constructed ten residences on Silver Lake Boulevard and an adjoining cul-de-sac that is now known as Neutra Place. All ten dwellings were built in the Pavilion style – a design characterized by box-shapes, horizontal planes, open floor plans, and large plate glass windows. And towards the very end of that short Pavilion-home-lined cul-de-sac sits the property where Miles lived in The Holiday. In real life, it is known as the Ohara house and it was originally built in 1961 for June and Hitoshi Ohara and their two daughters. Sadly though, as you can see above, not much of it is visible from the street.

Because I was absolutely itching to see the property in person, I just had to climb up the front steps a tiny bit to catch a better peek. And I am very happy to report that the residence did not disappoint! As you can see above, it is absolutely spectacular in person! Even the Grim Cheaper, who is not fazed by much of anything, was impressed with it. In real life, the Ohara house boasts 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, 1,564 square feet of living space, and a .23-acre plot of land, and was last sold in December of 2003 for a cool $1.2 million.

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The exterior of Miles’ house showed up only once, and very briefly at that, in The Holiday. I absolutely LOVE how it appeared in the movie, with its expansive front yard and cantilevered roofline all lit up. Sigh! What I would not give to live in a house like that!

The interior of the property, which is also quite spectacular, was featured a few times in the movie, as well.

On a celebrity side-note – While out doing some Christmas shopping in Beverly Hills this past weekend, the GC and I stopped into Madame Chocolat, which I blogged about back in January of this year, and who should be there but Madame Chocolat herself, Hasty Torres. I had met Hasty once before at the shop and did not ask her for a photograph, which I have always regretted. Well, believe you me, I was not going to make the same mistake twice and I am very happy to report that Hasty seemed seriously flattered when I approached her and could not have been more excited to pose with me. Love it! For those not in the know, Hasty is the proprietor of the ever-popular Madame Chocolat and has appeared in such shows as The Girls Next Door and The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Ohara house, aka Miles’ house from The Holiday, is located at 2210 Neutra Place in the Silver Lake area of Los Angeles.

December 8, 2011December 8, 2011

The Chaplin Court Apartment Complex

While doing research on the Sierra Bonita apartments from the 2001 thriller Mulholland Drive, which I blogged about back in October, I came across a mention of an absolutely adorable courtyard apartment complex in Hollywood about which legends abound. The complex is known by quite a few different monikers across the web, including Chaplin Court, the Hansel and Gretel Cottages, and the Charlie Chaplin Apartments, but for the purposes of this post I will refer to the cluster of tiny dwellings as Chaplin Court. While not a filming location, the four-bungalow complex is rumored to have been lived in by countless stars over the years, but it was actually the charmingly unique storybook architecture that lured me, Grim Cheaper in tow, out to go stalk the place back in mid-November.

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The main rumor which persists about Chaplin Court is that the property was commissioned by the Little Tramp himself to be used as everything from dressing rooms during filming to studio housing for his stars to a movie set for his film A Woman of Paris. But Allan R. Ellenberger, of the Hollywoodland blog, watched the 1923 flick for an April 2009 post he wrote about the complex and did not notice anything resembling it popping up onscreen. So I think it is safe to put the A Woman of Paris rumor to rest. And after conducting much online research myself yesterday, I think it is also safe to say that Chaplin likely never had any sort of connection to the place. But because the property is located a scant two and a half blocks from the former Charlie Chaplin Studios/now Jim Henson Company Lot and bears a striking resemblance to it, it is not very hard to see why there has been some confusion over the years. And the legends do not stop there. According to a September 2009 write-up on fave website CurbedLA, an old real-estate listing for the property purported that Douglas Fairbanks Sr., Rudolph Valentino, John Barrymore Sr., Judy Garland, and Patrick Dempsy all lived at Chaplin Court at one time or another. The listing even goes so far as to claim that Drew Barrymore was born on the premises!! As does the John Robert Marlow website, which further speculates that Drew’s father, John Drew Barrymore, also once lived onsite. But thanks to my friend/Drew Barrymore aficionado Ashley, of The Drewseum website, I can at least put part of that rumor to rest. Drew was, in fact, born at Brotman Memorial Hospital in Culver City and not at Chaplin Court. Whether or not she ever spent any time at the complex during her early years is anyone’s guess.

In actuality, Chaplin Court was built in 1923 by Arthur and Nina Zwebell, the husband-and-wife architecture team who designed Villa Primavera (the In a Lonely Place apartment building) and El Cabrillo (the ‘Til There Was You apartment building). According to a commenter named “MHP”’ on he CurbedLA article, the complex was only the second multi-unit project that the Zwebell’s attempted and is currently the oldest surviving of their designs.

As luck would have it, when we showed up to stalk Chaplin Court the front gate was standing open, so the GC and I ventured a few feet inside. One of the residents happened to be standing in the courtyard area and said that the two of us were free to poke around. YAY! I so love homeowners who recognize that they live in a unique, photo-worthy spot and do not mind the occasional stalker dropping by. As you can see above, the architecture of Chaplin Court is nothing short of incredible! With its miniscule sizing, rounded turrets, swayback roofs, and beveled glass windows, it is not very hard to see why the place is rumored to have once been a movie set. The property looks like it came straight out of the pages of a Grimm Brothers Fairytale or the streets of Disney’s Fantasyland! Love it! You can see some great photographs of the interior one of the bungalows here. And while the interior is, for the most part, also adorable, I have to say that the bathroom gives this stalker the heebie-jeebies.

A Chaplin Court resident named Sean who commented on the Hollywoodland blog post mentioned that he does the complex up each year for both Halloween and Christmas. Thankfully, even though it was mid-November at the time, some of the Halloween decorations were still up when we stalked the place. I fell in love with the little “Enter at your Own Risk” sign pictured above. So cute! And I am SO going to have to re-stalk the property later this month to see it decked out in all of its Christmas glory. Pictures to follow, of course.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The so-called Chaplin Court apartment complex is located at 1330 North Formosa Avenue in Hollywood.

December 7, 2011December 11, 2011

Judge Crawford’s House from “Fracture”

After tracking down the hilltop abode Willy Beachum (aka cutie Ryan Gosling) called home in fave movie Fracture, which I blogged about last Tuesday, I became just a wee bit obsessed with finding the large brick mansion where Judge Gardner (aka Bob Gunton) lived in the flick. Even though the dwelling showed up only briefly in the movie, because it was pretty much the only location I had yet to track down, I was absolutely itching to find it. The fabulously extensive Fracture production notes stated that some filming had taken place “at a private residence in Hancock Park” and I assumed that the private residence that was referred to had to be Judge Crawford’s. So I started searching aerial views of the area and after about 45 minutes stumbled upon the right property. YAY! And while out and about running some errands in Santa Monica yesterday, I took a little detour through Hancock Park so that I could stalk the place.

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In Fracture, Willy’s love interest, Nikki Gardner (aka Rosamund Pike), invites him to her parent’s home on Thanksgiving to eat dinner with her family.

Later on in the flick, Willie returns to the house to ask Nikki’s father, who is a judge, to sign a court order prohibiting Ted Crawford (aka Anthony Hopkins) from pulling the plug on his comatose wife, Jennifer Crawford (aka Embeth Davidtz).

In real life, the Georgian-Revival-style mansion, which was originally built in 1914, boasts 6 bedrooms, 5 baths, 6,175 square feet of living space, and almost half an acre of land. The house was designed by Meyer & Holler, the noted Los-Angeles-based architecture firm that was responsible for the Alex Theatre in Glendale, Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, Culver Studios in Culver City, and the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood. Thanks to the fabulous The Houses of Hancock Park and JCB blogs, I discovered that the property is currently owned by famed Los Angeles interior designer Suzanne Rheinstein and her husband, Fred. The Rheinsteins purchased the dwelling over thirty years ago and immediately began an extensive redesign of the interior, a lengthy process that was reported on by several home magazines. The residence is nothing short of GORGEOUS in person and is, ironically enough, exactly the type of spot that my mom and I refer to as a “Thanksgiving House” – an idyllic and picturesque dwelling that makes one think of coming home for the holidays. I mean, the place could not look any more like it came out of a Folgers Coffee Christmas commercial if it tried! Winking smile

The interior of the abode, which is BEAUTIFUL, was featured prominently in Suzanne’s 2010 book At Home: A Style for Today with Things from the Past. (The pictures featured above remain the sole and private property of Suzanne Rheinstein and photographer Pieter Estersohn.)

As you can see above, the photographs featured in Suzanne’s book match up to what appeared onscreen, which means that the real life interior of the home, along with some of the furniture, was also used in the filming.

On a side-note that falls into the obscenely-cool category – yesterday I dropped by my very favorite store, Lula Mae in Old Town Pasadena, and just about died when Marci, the adorable owner who has come to be my good friend, informed me that she had just named me the shop’s very first “Customer of the Month”. Um, LOVE IT! For those who have never been there, LA Weekly recently awarded Lula “Best One-Stop Gift Shopping 2011” and in their write-up said, “You know that friend of yours who always upstages the $10 bottle of wine you pull out of your purse when she shows up at parties with the most adorable, clever little trinket wrapped perfectly in a colorful vintage bag? Well that smug b*tch probably has been shopping at Lula Mae for years now.” LOL Couldn’t have said it better myself! The store is so insanely cute, colorful, and fun that I find myself dropping in at least five times a week. It has become an addiction! Lula Mae is the first place I head whenever I am depressed, have writer’s block, or just need a good giggle! So to be named their Customer of the Month was just about the best honor I could have received! Thank you, Marci, Julia, Alison, and Lula Mae! <3

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Judge Crawford’s house from Fracture is located at 435 South Windsor Boulevard in the Windsor Square section of Hancock Park. Lula Mae is located at 100 North Fair Oaks Avenue in Old Town Pasadena.

December 2, 2011December 2, 2011

Mansion Adena – The “A Haunting in Salem” House

As I mentioned back in October during my Haunted-Hollywood-themed-month, while doing research on the Strode house from Halloween I came across a post on fellow stalker Lisa’s Midnight in the Garden of Evil website about Dick Van Dyke’s annual Halloween extravaganza, which I later had the incredible good fortune to stalk. Lisa’s post also featured some information about a movie named “A Haunting in Salem” that Dick’s grandson Shane had recently directed. I was shocked to discover that the straight-to-DVD horror flick had been filmed almost in its entirety at an 1800s-era Pasadena mansion, that, for whatever reason, I had not been previously aware of. I immediately became intrigued with the gargantuan Queen Anne structure and even though Halloween had long since passed, I just had to drag the Grim Cheaper right on out to stalk it.

In real life, the 3,098-square-foot property is known as Mansion Adena and it is one of Pasadena’s oldest surviving homes. The abode was built sometime during the years 1885 to 1887 for a dentist named Dr. R.K. Janes and was designed by architect Eugene Getschell. At the time, Pasadena had yet to be incorporated, so the mansion has the unique distinction of being older than the city itself! The recently-restored home, which was declared a Pasadena Historical Landmark in 2006 and is currently available as a vacation rental, features four bedrooms, four baths, two parlors, six fireplaces, a quarter-acre gated lot, a cook’s kitchen, a formal rose garden, a spa, two sunrooms, three wrap-around porches, and a three-story mansard tower. In the book At Home: Pasadena, the property is described as one of the city’s “finest homes” and Elizabeth McMillian, a former Architectural Digest editor, called it “the finest example of Victorian architecture in Southern California.” Sadly though, as you can see above, not much of it can be seen from the street.

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In A Haunting in Salem, Mansion Adena stood in for the supposed Salem, Oregon-area haunted abode that new town sheriff Wayne Downs (aka Bill Oberst Jr.) and his family – wife Carrie (aka Courtney Abbiati), daughter Alli (aka Jenna Stone) and son Kyle (aka Nicholas Harsin) – moved into upon arriving to town.

The real life interior of the home (as well as all of the actual furniture!), which you can see photographs of here, here and here, was also used in the flick.

Thanks to fave website OnLocationVacations, I learned that Mansion Adena was also featured in an episode of Parks and Recreation. Since I do not watch the series, I enlisted the help of fellow stalker/Parks-and-Recreation-fan Owen, from the When Write is Wrong website, to discern which episode it had appeared in. As it turns out, Mansion Adena stood in for The Quiet Corn Bed and Breakfast in the Season 3 episode titled “Camping”, in the scene in which the Parks Department gang ditches out on a staff camping trip in order to spend the evening in more comfortable quarters. Both the interior and the exterior of the property were featured in the episode. And Owen even managed to dig up this Wikia article about the fictional Pawnee, Indiana-area inn.

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Lisa, of the Midnight in the Garden of Evil website, for finding this location and to fellow stalker Owen, of the When Write is Wrong website, for letting me know which episode of Parks and Recreation it appeared in.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Mansion Adena, aka the A Haunting in Salem house, aka The Quiet Corn Bed and Breakfast from the “Camping” episode of Parks and Recreation, is located at 341 Adena Street in Pasadena. You can visit the property’s rental website here.

October 28, 2011September 29, 2017

The Sierra Bonita Apartments from “Mulholland Dr.”

Another Haunted-Hollywood-type location that I found thanks to fellow stalker/David Lynch aficionado Brad, from the Brad D Studios website, was the fictionally-named “Sierra Bonita” apartment complex – the fairy-tale-style property that was featured in one of the more intense and terrifying scenes from the surrealist director’s incredibly odd 2001 thriller Mulholland Dr. Brad had posted a brief write-up of the unique Silverlake-area site just last week and, because I had stalked and blogged about Le Borghese, the other apartment building featured in the flick, way back in February of 2009, I immediately added the place to my “To-Stalk” list and dragged the Grim Cheaper out there to see it just a few days later.

The complex, which consists of eight small, wood-shingled bungalows built around a central courtyard, was originally designed by Ben Sherwood in 1931. Ironically enough, as you can see above, in real life there is nothing whatsoever spooky or macabre about the location. On the contrary, the bungalow court is actually quite charming and idyllic in person and seems far more Disney-esque than “Lynchian”, as David Lynch’s movies have come to be described.

Legend has it, in fact, that the bungalows were once occupied by Walt Disney Studios animators and that the storybook-like architecture served as the inspiration for the Seven Dwarf’s cottage in the very first full-length animated feature film, 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. According to the “Ask Chris” column which appeared in the December 2006 issue of Los Angeles Magazine, Walt Disney Archive founder Dave Smith confirmed that director Hamilton Luske and animators Dick Lundy, Lee Morehouse, and Fred Moore all did occupy the complex once upon a time, which makes sense being that the original Walt Disney Studios was located a stone’s throw away on Hyperion Boulevard, where Gelson’s Market now stands. Because the apartments do bear a strong resemblance to the Seven Dwarf’s cottage, Chris suggests that the animators “might have taken their home to work with them”. Winking smile Thanks to the Snow White lore, the bungalows have come to be known as the “Snow White Cottages” or the “Disney Cottages”, although they have no official name.

The fact that David Lynch even thought to transform such a picturesque spot into a place so sinister and foreboding – solely using camera angles, a few set pieces, and some carefully timed bars of music, mind you – speaks volumes about the director’s massive creative genius. He also somehow managed to make the property look huge on film, when, in reality, it is incredibly small and sits on a plot of land that measures less than two-tenths of an acre.

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In Mulholland Dr., the Sierra Bonita Apartments are where budding actress Betty Elms (aka Naomi Watts) and her amnesiac new friend Rita (aka Laura Harring) search for a mysterious stranger named Diane Selwyn. When Betty and Rita first arrive at Sierra Bonita, their taxi drives past the front of the complex, down a side alley located just north of the complex, and then drops them off in the rear of the property where the carports are located.

The carport area is pictured above and, as you can see, even it is picturesque! I can honestly say that was the first time in history I have ever seen a cute carport!

Betty and Rita then walk through the Disney-esque tower located at the back of the complex. A fake wall and apartment directory were set up in that area for the filming, which blocked the rest of the property from view.

That tower is pictured above.

According to the directory, Diane Selwyn lives in Apartment Number 12 in the complex’s West Courtyard. In reality, though, the property only has one courtyard.

Betty and Rita then make their way along meandering pathways and through maze-like foliage to Apartment 12. It was here that David Lynch employed tricky camera work and the magic of Hollywood to make the complex appear to be much larger than it actually is. To borrow a phrase from the British, I was absolutely gobsmacked when I arrived at the property and saw how miniscule it was.

Lynch also had a fake wall and gate installed at the front of the property, along Griffith Park Boulevard, which you can see in the background of the above screen capture.

The fake gate was built behind the complex’s real life gate, which can also be seen in the movie.

When Betty knocks on the door to Apartment 12, she is told that Diane Selwyn has recently moved into Apartment 17.

The bungalow used as Apartment 12 is actually numbered 2912 1/2 in real life and is the complex’s northwestern-most unit. It is located right on Griffith Park Boulevard and can be easily viewed from the street.

When Betty and Rita arrive at Apartment 17, they discover that no one is home and wind up breaking into the unit through a side window.

In real life, Apartment 17 is the bungalow numbered 2910 and it is located at the northeastern-most edge of the complex.

The window that Betty breaks into is pictured above.

I am fairly certain that the interior that was shown in the movie was just a set as the spacing of the windows in the kitchen area does not match up to the spacing of the windows on the exterior of the actual bungalow. You can check out some photographs of one of the actual apartment interiors on fave website CurbedLA here.

In the Season 2 episode of My Name Is Earl titled “Sticks & Stones”, the “Snow White Cottages” were used extensively as “Shady Grove”, where Maggie Lester, aka The Bearded Lady (aka Judy Greer), and her carnival friends lived.

Maggie lived in the bungalow numbered 2906 1/2 in the episode.

That bungalow is pictured above.

I am fairly certain that the real life interior of the unit was also used in the filming. How incredibly cute is Maggie’s place, by the way?!?! Oh, what I wouldn’t give to live there!

On a Mulholland Dr. side-note – Justin Theroux, my girl Jen Aniston’s current boyfriend, played the lead role of director Adam Kesher in the film.

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Brad, from the Brad D Studios website, for finding this location! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The “Sierra Bonita Apartments” from Mulholland Dr. are located at 2900 Griffith Park Boulevard in Silverlake. The units which were used in Mulholland Dr. are denoted with pink arrows in the above aerial view – Apartment #12 is actually the bungalow numbered 2912 1/2 and Apartment #17 is the bungalow numbered 2910. Maggie’s apartment from My Name Is Earl is denoted with a blue arrow in the above aerial view and is numbered 2906 1/2 in real life.

October 24, 2011September 29, 2017

Villa Primavera – The “In a Lonely Place” Apartment Building

While doing research on the Double Indemnity house, which I blogged about a couple of weeks ago, I came across some information about Villa Primavera – a courtyard-style apartment building that was featured in the 1950 film noir classic In a Lonely Place. I immediately became intrigued with the West-Hollywood-area building due to an anecdote that was listed on the movie’s IMDB trivia page. Apparently, In a Lonely Place director Nicholas Ray had lived at Villa Primavera upon first moving to Southern California in the 1940s and was so enamored with the place that he decided to build a replica of the entire complex, courtyard and all, on a soundstage at Columbia Studios (now Sunset-Gower Studios) in Hollywood to be used as Humphrey Bogart’s bachelor pad in the flick. At some point during the shoot, Nicholas walked in on his wife, Gloria Grahame, who also starred in the movie, in bed with his 13-year-old son from a previous marriage. Nicholas immediately moved out of the home he shared with Gloria and into the Villa Primavera apartment set, where he ended up living – in what was essentially an exact replica of his former apartment – until filming wrapped. Because the building was so inextricably linked with both In a Lonely Place and the behind-the-scenes turmoil that marked the shoot, I was absolutely dying to see the place in person and dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to do just that a few days later.

Villa Primavera was constructed by legendary husband and wife architecture team Arthur and Nina Zwebell in 1923 and was the couple’s very first Spanish-Revival-style building. The charming complex features red-tile roofs, white adobe walls, and a central courtyard with a large tiled fountain, an outdoor fireplace, lush foliage, and wandering brick pathways. The individual apartment units boast corner fireplaces, exposed wood ceilings, and tile floors. The Zwebells loved the design so much that they eventually moved into the Hacienda-like property for a time and legend has it that James Dean and Katharine Hepburn also once called the place home. Sadly though, as you can see above, the ten-unit complex is gated and not much of it can be viewed from the street.

I did manage to catch a brief glimpse of the interior courtyard and central fountain through the front gate, though, and they both looked absolutely beautiful.

Amazingly enough, when the GC and I first arrived at Villa Primavera, this little guy ran up to greet us.

And I just about died when I realized that he was a polydactyl cat, aka a “Hemingway cat”, aka a cat with more than five toes on one or more of its paws! I had watched a television special on the unusual felines a little over ten years ago and have been absolutely obsessed with them ever since. I cannot tell you how incredibly fitting it was that we ran into a so-called “Hemingway cat” while visiting an apartment building with such a storied Old Hollywood history! Love it!

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In In a Lonely Place, Villa Primavera stood in for the supposed-Beverly-Hills-area “Beverly Patio” apartments where frustrated Hollywood screenwriter Dixon Steele (aka Humphrey Bogart) and his beautiful new neighbor, Laurel Gray (aka Gloria Grahame), lived.

The location was such an integral part of the murder mystery – which was fabulous by the way – that it led Roger Ebert to write in an August 13th, 2009 review, “The courtyard of the Hollywood building occupied by Humphrey Bogart in In a Lonely Place is one of the most evocative spaces I’ve seen in a movie. Small apartments are lined up around a Spanish-style courtyard with a fountain. Each flat is occupied by a single person. If you look across from your window, you can see into the life of your neighbor.” It is thanks to that interior view of neighboring units that Laurel is able to provide an alibi for Dixon after he is accused of murdering a young woman whom he had been seen with the night before. And while the courtyard area that is pictured above;

and the interior of both Dixon and Laurel’s individual apartments were recreations built at Columbia Studios, some actual filming did take place on location at Villa Primavera.

In the beginning of In a Lonely Place, Dixon returns home from the Beverly Hills police station after being questioned about the murdered woman and walks across the lawn of the real life apartment building. As you can see, a fake sign reading “Beverly Patio Apartments” was installed for that scene.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Villa Primavera, the In a Lonely Place apartment building, is located at 1300-1308 North Harper Avenue in West Hollywood.

October 21, 2011September 29, 2017

Abbey San Encino from “Dexter”

As I have mentioned several times before on this blog, I absolutely cannot watch an episode of fave show Dexter without having my iPad next to me and a web-browser open to the Seeing Stars website’s extensive Dexter filming locations page. And this season has been no different. While watching the episode titled “Once Upon a Time . . . “ two Sundays ago, I became just a wee bit obsessed with the amazing abandoned church where serial killer Professor Gellar (aka Edward James Olmos) and his young protégé, Travis Marshall (aka Colin Hanks), conduct their various crimes. Gary, who runs Seeing Stars, of course, had the location listed on his site. As it turns out, it is a historic building named Abbey San Encino and it is located in the Highland Park area of Los Angeles, just west of South Pasadena. So, figuring it fit in perfectly with my Haunted Hollywood theme, I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out there to stalk the place this past weekend.

Abbey San Encino, a private home which took over a decade to construct, was designed and built by a wealthy printer/typographer named Clyde Browne. Clyde, who originally hailed from Ohio, had moved onto the property, into what was then just a frame building, with his wife Grace Wassum in 1904. In the summer of 1915, he began construction on his dream home which, according to a fabulous Big Orange Landmarks article, he modeled after several different historic properties including the chapel at Holyrod Palace in Scotland, Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo in Carmel-by-the-Sea, and Mission San Francisco de Solano in Sonoma. For his building materials, Clyde used a myriad of artifacts, such as bells, crucifixes, hinges, and lanterns, that colleagues picked up for him from various abandoned edifices across Europe. Browne also salvaged numerous materials from several defunct buildings in the Los Angeles area, most notably the Van Nuys Hotel, which had closed shortly following Prohibition. The 2,627-square-foot Abbey San Encino was finally completed in 1921 and boasted a chapel, a massive cellar, with what looks to be an actual jail cell, a bell tower, and a central courtyard. For whatever reason, Browne and his family did not move into their new home until 1924, three full years after it was completed. When Clyde passed away in 1942, his son moved into the Abbey where he raised Clyde’s two grandsons, songwriter Edward Severin Browne and singer Jackson Browne – yes, that Jackson Browne.

In fact, Jackson actually used a photograph of the Abbey’s inner courtyard on the cover of his second album, “For Everyman”. And, amazingly enough, his brother Edward still lives on the property, along with his wife, to this day.

Abbey San Encino is a true architectural wonder and was declared Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument #106 on November 15, 1972.

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Abbey San Encino first showed up in the Season 6 episode of Dexter titled “Once Upon a Time . . .”, in the scene in which Travis dropped off several bags of mannequins at Professor Gellar’s lair.

The door through which Travis tossed the bags of mannequins is pictured above.

The interior of Professor Gellar’s hideout appears later in that same episode, in the scene in which the Professor reprimands Travis for visiting his sister. And while the interior shown on Dexter does resemble the real life inside of the Abbey, which you can see photographs of here, filming did not actually take place there. I believe that for all of the interior scenes, producers most likely built a set based on the actual inside of the Abbey at Sunset-Gower Studios in Hollywood where the series is lensed.

The interior of the hideout showed up once again at the very end of the “Once Upon a Time . . . “ episode, in the scene in which Travis brought the Professor a jogger named Nathan (aka David Monahan) whom he had kidnapped.

The exterior of the Abbey was also featured in this past Sunday night’s episode of Dexter, which was titled “Smokey and the Bandit”, and I am guessing that it will also be appearing in all of the future episodes of Season 6, as well. And, according to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, the property is going to be used as the new home of Russell Edgington (aka Denis O’Hare) in the upcoming season of True Blood.

Abbey San Encino–Dexter Filming Location

You can check out a video which shows interior photographs of Abbey San Encino by clicking above.

Big THANK YOU to Gary, from the Seeing Stars website, for finding this location! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Abbey San Encino, aka Professor Gellar and Travis Marshall’s hideout from Season 6 of Dexter, is located at 6211 Arroyo Glen Street in Highland Park. You can visit the property’s official website here.