historic buildings – IAMNOTASTALKER

May 10, 2019May 9, 2019

The Western Union Office from “The Sting”

History in Los Angeles hides in the most unsuspecting of places. Back in 2013, I stalked a small edifice at 118 Winston Street in downtown L.A. that portrayed a Western Union office in the 1973 caper classic The Sting. I learned of the non-descript property via The Movie Tourist Blog and was thrilled at the fact that virtually none of it had changed since its cameo more than four decades prior. I had no idea until sitting down to write this post, though, the many stories the building had to tell.

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Built in 1887, 118 Winston Street sits on the northern edge of Skid Row on a tiny five-block road that current occupants Stephen and Jodi Zeigler note “has always been a gritty little stretch of urban real estate.” The couple moved into the building in 2008 and opened These Days LA, an art gallery/boutique/publishing office, on its second floor in 2014. Los Angeles natives and aficionados both, the duo comprehensively chronicle the colorful provenance of their home/workplace in a two-part write-up on their blog, Communiqué. You can check out it out here and here. TL;DR? The CliffsNotes version is below.

Initially owned by music dealer A. G. Gardner, in its early days the building operated as a piano store on its street level and transient lodging on its second and third. Per newspapers ads I was able to dig up, the highly esteemed A. G. Gardner Piano House appears to have remained on the premises through 1907, with the Catholic Knights of America fraternal order utilizing it as a hall after that. Its function in the time that followed was a bit less – ahem – holy. At some point, the property began serving as a brothel, or “disorderly house” as periodicals of the day referred to it. Known as The Yale, the site was shut down in 1911 and its proprietor sentenced to 180 days in jail. From an upscale piano shop to a religious hall to a den of inequity – all in the space of four years. Talk about a whirlwind! If those walls could only talk. And there’s more!

In the 1930s, the Communist organizations International Labor Defense and the Young Pioneers of America moved in. Following that, 118 Winston served as several different rescue missions, including Sister Sylvia’s Soul Patrol run by Sister Sylvia Cresswell, aka the “Angel of Skid Row.’ The building was eventually condemned by the city before being transformed into a labor hall/workers’ dormitory. Then, in 1975, it was acquired by Baba Cooper who established a treatment center for Native Americans known as the United American Indian Involvement (UAII) on the premises. I am unsure of the structure’s occupants in between UAII’s departure in 1999 and the Zeiglers’ arrival nine years later. But whatever its function, 118 Winston has remained an onscreen stalwart all along the way.

The alley that runs adjacent to the building, which looks like it’s straight out of a studio backlot, is also a frequent film star with an interesting history. Named Werdin Place in real life, the stretch is more commonly known to locals as “Indian Alley” thanks to the fact that it became something of a haven for impoverished Native Americans during the ‘80s thanks to its proximity to UAII.

Once an intensely harsh, bleak and gloomy spot (as you can see in images here and here), the alley is now a virtual outdoor art gallery. Deemed “one of the most famous unofficial public spaces in the country” by On the Rez author Ian Frazier, the site is known for the vibrant murals, sketches and sculptures that line it, all of which honor its Native American legacy. The colorful works were actually initiated by Zeigler, who has since become the unofficial steward of the neighborhood. Per a 2014 Los Angeles Times article, Stephen “cleaned the streets when no one else would, wrote positive messages on the walls, and painted the street poles gold. Curiosity about his home’s past has turned him into a sort of historian-in-residence.” A man after my own heart!

The dynamic edginess of both 118 Winston and Indian Alley caught the attention of location scouts early on.

The building’s best-known appearance is in The Sting in which it portrays the downtown Chicago Western Union office that Kid Twist (Harold Gould) and J.J. Singleton (Ray Walston) pretend to paint as part of the set-up to the con on Doyle Lonnegan (Robert Shaw). Though Johnny Hooker (Robert Redford) refers to its location as “110 South Wabash” in the movie, the site’s actual address number of 118 is clearly visible above the front doors throughout the scene.

When the flick was shot in 1973, the property was operating as A-Rent-A-Man labor hall. Amazingly, despite the countless changes in occupancy and the passage of over forty years, it still looks much as it did in The Sting. Yes, the entrance is now gated, the façade painted black and the windows altered, but all in all it is still entirely recognizable.

I am fairly certain that only the building’s exterior appeared in The Sting and that the interior of the Western Union office was just a set.

118 Winston and Indian Alley briefly appear at the beginning of the Season 2 episode of McCloud titled “Encounter with Aries,” which aired in 1971.

In the Season 1 episode of Kojak titled “Requiem for a Cop”, which aired in 1973, a policeman chases a suspect into Indian Alley and is subsequently killed.

The following year, the locale masked as St. Matthew Mission in the Season 4 episode of Columbo titled “Negative Reaction.”

I believe the building’s real life interior also appeared in the episode.

Detective Ken ‘Hutch’ Hutchinson (David Soul) gives a vagrant named Lijah (Douglas Fowley) a dollar outside of 118 Winston in the 1975 Starsky & Hutch pilot.

Later in the episode, Hutch and his partner, Det. Dave Starsky (Paul Michael Glaser), race down Indian Alley while chasing a suspect.

118 Winston also pops up in the Season 2 episode of Starsky & Hutch titled “The Psychic,” which aired in 1977. It it outside of the building that Starsky shoots at a kidnapper’s car causing it to explode.

Mike Roark (Rick Springfield) gets pulled over in Indian Alley in the Season 2 episode of The Incredible Hulk titled “The Disciple,” which aired in 1979.

In the Season 4 episode of Quincy M.E. titled “Dark Angel,” which aired in 1979, an arrest goes wrong and a suspect dies outside of 118 Winston.

Kelly Garrett (Jacklyn Smith) and Jake Barnett (Norman Alden) drive out of Indian Alley and past 118 Winston in the Season 5 episode of Charlie’s Angels titled “Taxi Angels,” which aired in 1981.

Officer John Cooper (Michael Cudlitz) and Officer Ben Sherman (Ben McKenzie) give a homeless man a ticket outside of the building in the Season 2 episode of Southland titled “Phase Three,” which aired in 2010.

118 Winston served double duty in the Season 1 episode of Unsolved: The Murders of Tupac and the Notorious B.I.G. titled “Tupac Amaru Shakur,” which aired in 2018. The building’s front exterior first popped up as the nightclub owned by Eric ‘Zip’ Martin (Garland Whitt), where Keefe D (Lahmard Tate) is sent to try to get information.

Later in the episode, the third floor fire escape area masked as the East Harlem apartment where young Tupac (Christian Isaiah) lived.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Big THANK YOU to The Movie Tourist for finding this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Western Union office from The Sting is located at 118 Winston Street in downtown Los Angeles.

August 21, 2017August 18, 2017

Brand Library from “Scorpion”

I am probably the only person you will ever hear say this, but I absolutely loved working as a background actor in Hollywood. Sure, the hours were long and unpredictable and the work tedious and repetitive, but the opportunities I was afforded to be up-close-and-personal with the inner workings of movie and television production were unparalleled. I reveled in observing everything from the rehearsal process to the stars’ make-up application to the Steadicam operators’ choreographed movements. I also got to learn about and was granted access to some fabulous and unique locales, one of which was the Brand Library & Art Center in Glendale. Though I lived in nearby Pasadena at the time, until I was hired as an extra for the movie Loaded in October 2006, I had never heard of the place, and was struck by its beauty and extraordinary architecture as soon as I arrived on set. For the shoot, the library was transformed into a college campus and my job was to mill about the property’s entrance and sprawling front lawn for a couple of scenes. While Loaded turned out to be an undeniable flop (even just scanning through it to make screen captures for this post was painful), Brand Library left an indelible impression on me. So when I spotted it while watching new fave show Scorpion recently, I figured it was high time I blog about the site.

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Brand Library was originally built as a private residence for Glendale developer Leslie Coombs Brand and his wife, Mary Louise, in 1904.

Known as El Miradero (Spanish for “the lookout”), the property was designed by Brand’s brother-in-law Nathaniel Dryden.

Modeled after the East Indian Pavilion from the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago (which you can see a photograph of here), Dryden employed Saracenic, Moorish and Indo-Islamic elements in his design.

Constructed at a cost of $60,000 (and we’re talking 1904 money!), the lavish 13-room, 5,000-square-foot property boasted towering scalloped archways, intricate beveled glass windows, shaded loggias, a pool, a tennis court, orange groves, a miniature lake, ponds and fountains, kennels for the family’s dogs, an airstrip, a conservatory, a sprawling palm tree-lined drive (pictured below), and even a private clubhouse complete with a bar and pool tables that was open to the local elite.

El Miradero was so opulent and palatial that locals began referring to it as “Brand’s Castle.”

When Leslie passed away in 1925, he deeded the manse, as well as the 488 acres surrounding it, to the city of Glendale with the decree that it should be turned into a library and public park. His one stipulation was that the city could not take over ownership of the property until his wife’s death.

Mary Louise continued to live on the premises for the next 20 years, until eventually passing away in a car accident on October 13th, 1945 while on vacation in Arizona. She was 74. The city of Glendale subsequently began transforming the Brand estate into a library. Not just any library, though. El Miradero was instead turned into a specialty art library, housing a collection of over 110,000 LPs, DVDs, art prints, books, and CDs. It opened to the public in 1956. Sadly, during the transformation, much of the residence’s original interior design, which was Victorian in style, was covered over or removed in order to make the site more functional as a municipal space.

A large gallery and 100-seat recital hall were added to the grounds in 1969, though they bear a much more modern look than El Miradero. (You can see the gallery and recital hall spaces to the left in both of my photos below.)

Thankfully, in 1998, a plan was approved to renovate the library and restore much of its original interior detailing. The project did not get underway until 2012, though, at which time the site closed for 2 years and underwent $10-million worth of work.

The results of the renovation are nothing short of spectacular. Though the exterior of Brand Library is striking, the restored interior is absolutely jaw-dropping. Visitors to the site now enter through the property’s former solarium, reportedly Leslie and Mary Louise’s favorite area of the home. All of El Miradero’s rooms are centered around the bright space, which during the Brands’ tenure was decorated with dark wood, a myriad of foliage, a fountain, and bird cages. You can see photographs of it from that time period here and here.

Just off the solarium is the couple’s former dining room. Painted in a rich blue, the space boasts a magnificent window seat with a carved wood frame. You can check out images of the room in its original form here and here.

El Miradero’s former library room is just as impressive, with an intricately painted ceiling and leaded glass windows. Pictures of it during the Brands’ day can be seen here and here.

From the library room, visitors step into what was originally the home’s reception hall, a grand space boasting a stone, brick and wood fireplace. You can check out photos of what it formerly looked like here and here.

Off the reception hall sits the Brands’ drawing room, which is decorated in soft blue tones and features a hand-painted ceiling. You can view an image of the room in its original state here.

As you can see in comparing the historic photos to my recent images, the restorers did an amazing job of bringing the property back to its original splendor. It honestly looks as if no time has passed since the Brands lived on the premises!

El Miradero’s impressive and unique architecture lends itself quite well to the screen.

In the Season 2 episode of Scorpion titled “Sun of a Gun,” the library played the role of President Desta Rahal’s (Hakeem Kae-Kazim) home in Bahari, North Africa.

Only the exterior of the building was used in the shoot. The interior of Desta’s palace was a mash-up of two different spots – a studio-built set . . .

. . . and the Moroccan Room at The Hollywood Athletic Club in Hollywood.

Scorpion is hardly the first production to feature the library. In fact, during the days that Brand lived on the premises, he rented the home out to film companies regularly, figuring the publicity generated by doing so was good for Glendale, the city he was in the process of developing. As such, El Miradero appeared in numerous silent movies including 1915’s Under the Crescent, 1920’s An Arabian Knight, 1925’s Webs of Steel, and 1919’s The Man Beneath (pictured below).

The site’s popularity as a filming locale only increased after it was turned into a library. In the Season 4 episode of The Six Million Dollar Man titled “The Thunderbird Connection,” which aired in 1976, the property masked as Price Hassad’s (Barry Miller) Burdabi palace.

Brand Library portrayed the Love Truth Temple, aka the headquarters of the cult that Page Connally (Heather Locklear) belonged to, in the Season 2 episode of The Fall Guy titled “Just a Small Circle of Friends,” which aired in 1983.

At the beginning of the 1988 comedy The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!, the library masqueraded as the Beirut palace where terrorists plotted to take down the U.S.

As I mentioned earlier, Brand Library was transformed into a college campus for Loaded. It popped up twice in the 2008 movie – first in the scene in which pre-law student Tristan Price (Jesse Metcalfe) and his friends hang out between class.

It then was featured in the scene in which drug dealer Sebastian (Corey Large) tries to befriend Tristan’s girlfriend, Brooke (Monica Keena).

I was an extra in both scenes, though you can only see me in the latter. There I am denoted with a yellow arrow in the screen cap below.

Brand Library also appeared in The Other Side of Midnight, but I could not find a copy of the 1977 flick anywhere to make screen captures for this post.

From what I have read online, the site also popped up in episodes of The X-Files, Alias, and Mission: Impossible, though I am unsure of which episodes specifically. If anyone happens to know, please fill me in.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Brand Library & Art Center, from the “Sun of a Gun” episode of Scorpion, is located at 1601 West Mountain Street in Glendale. The site is open to the public, but closed on Mondays, so plan accordingly.

July 22, 2016July 21, 2016

The Inspiration for the “Annie” Orphanage

My movie obsession began at a young age. I can pretty much pinpoint it to 1982 when Annie premiered. I was hooked on the musical from the start. I watched it over and over and over, eventually wearing out the VHS copy that my parents bought me. Its locations have also served as a longtime fascination. Ever since taking my second Warner Bros. tour in 2008, I have known that the Hudson St. Home for Girls, aka the orphanage in the film, could be found in the studio’s backlot, on Hennesy Street to be precise. The façade and the area surrounding it were created by Annie production designer Dale Hennesy specifically for the film. What I didn’t know up until a couple of years ago, though, was the fact that Dale based his design of the Hudson St. Home for Girls on two real New York buildings. I learned this bit of information from the Annie Official Movie Souvenir Program which I picked up at the Hollywood Show while meeting Annie herself, Aileen Quinn, in 2012. As you can guess, I immediately started chomping at the bit to track the buildings down.

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Of the orphanage’s inspiration, the Souvenir Program states, “Roughly a year before filming on the street [Hennesy Street at Warner Bros.] actually began, Academy Award-winning production designer Hennesy traveled to New York and combed the Lower East Side for the key structure in the Annie script – the orphanage. He found two he liked. One was on Mott Street, just south of Houston, and was now a four-unit apartment building. The other, near Sixth Street and Avenue B, was actually a former Children’s Aid Society home, built in the late 1880s. Making a movie in that area would have been difficult and expensive, so it was decided to build on the lot rather than film on location. The orphanage would combine elements of both buildings, and would be flanked with copies of typical New York structures in their area.” The studio rendering that Dale created is pictured below.

For all of the trouble he went to creating the Hudson St. Home for Girls, very little of the final product was actually shown onscreen.

As you can see above and below, only very tight shots of the orphanage, mainly focused on the doorway area, were featured in Annie.

Thankfully though, I was extremely familiar with the Hudson St. Home for Girls façade from my many visits to the WB, so I knew exactly what to look for when I started tracking down the New York buildings that served as its inspiration.

The building said to be located near Sixth Street and Avenue B, I pinpointed in a snap. I simply headed over to Google to do some Street Viewing of the area and found exactly what I was looking for at 630 East Sixth Street. The picturesque structure at that site features a distinct peaked roof, four levels of angled bay windows (each flanked by a pair of arched windows), and an entrance with a heavy portico situated to the side, all of which match the Annie orphanage to a T. To top it off, further research informed me that the property did, indeed, used to be a Children’s Aid Society school, as was mentioned in the Souvenir Program. Voilà!

The Sixth Street School, as the locale was originally known, was constructed in 1888. Funding for the site, which was designed by Calvert Vaux (the architect and landscape artist who co-designed Central Park) and George Kent Radford, was provided by Emily Vanderbilt Sloane, daughter of William Henry Vanderbilt. In 1932, the school was transformed into a men’s homeless shelter. It has since gone through several different incarnations including a women and children’s shelter, a church, and a social services facility. Today, it serves as a home for those suffering from AIDS and is known as Pencer House.

In 1999, the building’s handsome exterior underwent a restoration process led by Harden + Van Arnam Architects, the result of which is stunning.

You can read a more in-depth history of the site here.

The second building that served as inspiration for the Hudson St. Home for Girls, which the Souvenir Program described as being “on Mott Street, just south of Houston,” was also a snap to find. I simply headed to Google Street View once again to take a look at the block of Mott Street located immediately south of East Houston Street and spotted the right place within minutes at 256 Mott. As it turns out, the site was also once a Children’s Aid Society school known as the Fourteenth Ward Industrial School.

The Children’s Aid Society actually built twelve such schools in the 1880s and 1890s, all employing the same Victorian Gothic style. Only six remain intact today. Lucky for me, the Annie buildings are two of those extant structures. The purpose of the Children’s Aid Society schools was to teach trades to homeless and poverty-stricken children in the hopes that they would be able to provide for themselves in adulthood.

The Fourteenth Ward Industrial School was also built in 1888 and was also designed by Vaux and Radford. The funding was donated by John Jacob Astor III in honor of his wife, Charlotte, who had passed away the previous year. Today, the structure, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, serves as a residential building.

As you can see, the five-unit, four-story property boasts a peaked roof, angled bay windows flanked by arched windows, and a porticoed door situated off to one side, just like the Hudson St. Home for Girls façade and the Sixth Street School.

Unfortunately, it was undergoing a restoration of some kind while we were there and portions of its façade were covered over with plywood.

You can read a more in-depth history of the building here and here.

I was absolutely thrilled to see, while making screen captures for this post, that Dale Hennesy chose to use 256, the real life address number of the Fourteenth Ward Industrial School, as the address number of the Hudson St. Home for Girls.

Interestingly, not only did the Fourteenth Ward Industrial School serve as inspiration for the Annie orphanage, but it is also a filming location! The building is where Rebecca Bloomwood (Isla Fisher) and Suze (Krysten Ritter) lived in 2009’s Confessions of a Shopaholic.

And it served as Audry’s (Adrienne Shelly) apartment in 1989’s The Unbelievable Truth. (I apologize for the horrible screen captures below which I got off of YouTube.)

On a side-note – I find it surprising that the peaked roofline of the Annie orphanage, which Hennesy took such care to re-create from both of the inspiration buildings and which is so significant to their architecture, never appeared onscreen. The screen capture below shows the closest we get to seeing it in the movie.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Fourteenth Ward Industrial School is located at 256 Mott Street in New York’s Nolita neighborhood. The Sixth Street School is located at 630 East 6th Street in the East Village. The façade of the Hudson St. Home for Girls from Annie can be found on Hennesy Street at Warner Bros. Studio, which is located at 3400 West Riverside Drive in Burbank. Tour information can be found here.

February 10, 2015February 9, 2015

The Cat & Fiddle

We’ll always have the Cat & Fiddle. Or so Angelinos thought. Sadly, the historic restaurant closed its doors this past December. When news of the impending shuttering hit the blogosphere in late October, I became desperate to stalk the eatery – especially once I read via several online news outlets that it had appeared in Casablanca (though, due to the fact that the 1942 classic was filmed pretty much solely at Warner Bros. Studios, I had my doubts as to the authenticity of the claims). I had visited the Cat & Fiddle once many moons prior (the Grim Cheaper’s friends took us there for cocktails on his birthday in 2002), but failed to take any photos. So I ran right back out there for a proper stalk last November while my friends Lavonna, Kim, Melissa and Maria were in town (that’s Melissa and Maria above).

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The Spanish-style courtyard complex that housed the Cat & Fiddle for almost thirty years was originally constructed between 1928 and 1929. The property was known as the “Court of Olive” at the time and had been commissioned by silent film star Fred Thomson and his wife, journalist/screenwriter Frances Marion. In its earliest inception, the two-story site served as a shopping pavilion. It later became known as the “Fred Thompson Building” and went on to house a studio commissary, a studio wardrobe department, professional offices and several restaurants. You can check out some photographs of the place in its early days here. Miraculously, the building still looks exactly the same today as it did then.

Kim and Paula Gardner, proprietors of the Cat & Fiddle, brought their eatery to the Fred Thompson Building in 1985. The couple had originally established the British-style pub/restaurant at 2100 Laurel Canyon in the Hollywood Hills (that space is now Pace) in October 1982, but it became immensely popular in a very short time and neighboring residents soon complained about the noisiness of the patrons, and the Gardners were forced to move.

For the Cat & Fiddle’s new home, Kim and Paula chose a shaded unit with a large patio located at the rear of the Thomson Building.

The Cat & Fiddle remained popular after the move and even celebrities were known to drop by. Such stars as Eric Clapton, Rod Stewart, Paul McCartney, Noel Gallagher, Russell Brand, Shania Twain, Nathan Fillion, Abbie Cornish, Jeremy Piven, David Cross, Ed Helms, Lizzy Caplan, Bill Hader, Seth Green, Rosamund Pike, Dave Grohl, and Chris Evans were all spotted there at one time or another, while Christopher Lloyd, Morrissey and Drew Barrymore were longtime regulars.

Upon Kim’s death in 2001, Paula took over daily operations of the restaurant along with daughter Ashlee. While the place continued to be an extremely popular watering hole among celebs and non-celebs alike, in late 2014 the building’s owner, Jesse Shannon, informed Paula and Ashlee that he had chosen not to renew their lease. (Apparently, they had been paying less than half the market value of the space for quite some time.) The Cat & Fiddle’s last day of business was on December 15th. Paula and Ashlee are currently looking for a new spot to rent and hope to someday reopen their beloved restaurant. As for the historic space that once housed it? Shannon stated that he would be spending millions to restore the building to its 1920s state and that it would then be leased out to what Eater LA called a “familiar” name.

There are differing reports as to where exactly in the Cat & Fiddle space Casablanca was filmed. Obviously, the movie was shot long before the Cat ever came onto the scene, but the flick was supposedly lensed in the unit where the restaurant was later situated). Some claim that the room below, which is named the “Casablanca Room,” appeared in the movie.

While others claim that filming took place on the patio. The patio area truly is picturesque and, while it does bring to mind the atmosphere of Casablanca, I still had serious doubts that any filming of the movie had occurred on the premises.

As it turns out, my suspicions were correct. I recently watched Casablanca – and then later scanned through it a second time – and did not see the Cat & Fiddle pop up anywhere. As I mentioned above, from what I have been able to garner online, it seems that production of the movie never left the studio. Even the countless reports about a scene being lensed at the Van Nuys Airport have been debunked. So then how did the Cat & Fiddle rumors come about? My best guess is that the Thomson Building was featured at some point in either the 1955 television series Casablanca or its 1983 successor. That is just a guess, though. What I can say with absolutely certainty – unless I seriously missed something – is that the 1942 film did not shoot any footage at the Cat & Fiddle property. On a side-note – Casablanca is such a fabulous movie! I’ve seen it several times now and it just never gets old. If you have yet to watch it, I highly recommend that you do.

Thanks to Geoff, from the 90210Locations site, though, I learned that something was filmed at the Cat & Fiddle! In the Season 1 episode of Ray Donovan titled “Road Trip,” Tommy Wheeler (Austin Nichols) got into some trouble at the restaurant and Ray (Live Schreiber) had to remedy things for him.

Only the exterior of the pub was used in the episode, though. Interiors were filmed elsewhere.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Cat & Fiddle was formerly located at 6530 West Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. You can check out the restaurant’s official website, which is is still online, here.

July 8, 2011July 7, 2011

George’s Side Kicks Shoe Factory from “Father of the Bride”

Another Father of the Bride location that fellow stalker Chas, from the ItsFilmedThere website, tracked down recently was the Side Kicks shoe factory owned by George Banks (aka Steve Martin) in the flick. And while I had been absolutely dying to stalk the place for what seemed like ages, I just could not seem to figure out where on earth it was located. Then last month Chas managed to get into contact with several of the movie’s crew members, one of whom not only remembered the exact address of the warehouse (432 South Arroyo Parkway in Pasadena), but also informed him that while the building was vacant at the time of the filming, it was now occupied by Snyder Diamond, a high-end kitchen and bath appliance retailer. And while I was BEYOND excited when Chas told me the news, because a new company had taken over the space, I did not have high hopes that it would be very recognizable from the movie.

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So imagine my surprise when I walked through the doors and discovered that the building looked almost exactly the same as it did when Father of the Bride was filmed over two full decades ago! I just about died of excitement and then proceeded to walk almost every square inch of the place, soaking in the many memories of the movie that came flooding back to me.

As you can see in the above screen captures, the ceiling area, windows, interior pipes and brick walls all still look EXACTLY the same today as they did onscreen in 1991. The only real difference is the fake kitchen and bath set-ups which have since been installed on the main floor.

I was most excited to stalk the warehouse’s upstairs mezzanine, which was used as George’s office in Father of the Bride.

Sadly though, that particular area has been completely gutted and all of the interior walls, doors, and windows removed and now looks entirely different than it did when the movie was filmed.

A view of George’s office area from the ground floor of Snyder Diamond is pictured above.

The circular staircase leading up to George’s office has also, sadly, since been removed.

The exterior of the Snyder Diamond building, which was not shown in Father of the Bride, is quite beautiful. The Tudor-style structure, which was originally constructed in 1922, is currently on the National Register of Historic Places. As I mentioned above, the property was vacant at the time of the filming, which allowed producers to come in and dress it as they pleased. Sometime after the movie was lensed, Thomasville Furniture moved in. They vacated the property in 2005, whereupon it was leased by Snyder Diamond. For whatever reason, when Father of the Bride Part II was filmed in 1995, location scouts found a different Pasadena area building to stand in for the Side Kicks factory.

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Chas, from the ItsFilmedThere website, for finding this location. You can check out Chas’ Father of the Bride filming locations page here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Snyder Diamond, aka George’s Side Kicks shoe factory from Father of the Bride, is located at 432 South Arroyo Parkway in Pasadena.

February 25, 2011February 25, 2011

Burlesque Lounge from “Burlesque”

A couple of months ago, I dragged the Grim Cheaper out to see Burlesque and, because of all of the bad reviews the movie was generating, I did not have very high hopes that either of us would enjoy it much. As it turns out, though, I could NOT have been more wrong! It is a highly entertaining romp which boasts fabulous musical numbers, sparkling and intricately-designed costumes, and incredibly beautiful sets that made me want to hop right into the movie screen. I LOVED, LOVED, LOVED it. And even though the movie is definitely a chick flick, the GC said he thoroughly enjoyed it as well. So when I saw that fellow stalker Gary, of the Seeing Stars website, had just published a page detailing various filming locations from the movie, I just about died. The were two locations that I was most interested in stalking, the first of which was the Mediterranean-style apartment complex where Ali (aka Christina Aguilera) and Jack (aka Cam Gigandet) lived, which come to find out does not, in fact, exist. Fellow stalker Chas, of the ItsFilmedThere website, contacted a few Burlesque crew members on my behalf to find out the location of the apartment building, but they all informed him that it was a set that had been built on the Sony Pictures Studio backlot, which was shocking to me as I had been convinced that the building was a real place. I absolutely cannot wait to get my hands on the DVD of the movie, which is being released on March 1st, so that I can listen to the commentary to learn more about the construction of that set. Anyway, the other location that I was dying to stalk was the exterior of the Burlesque Lounge, which, thanks to Gary I now know, was in actuality the side entrance of the historic Ricardo Montalban Theatre in Hollywood. So, I dragged the GC right on out there to stalk the place this past Monday afternoon.

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The Ricardo Montalban Theatre was first built in 1926 by Myron Hunt, the legendary Los Angeles architect who also designed the Rose Bowl, Occidental College, the California Institute of Technology, the Huntington Hotel (now the Langham), and the Huntington Library, among countless other area buildings. The Beaux Arts-style theatre was originally a live, or a “legitimate”, stage venue known as the Vine Street Theatre, but was transformed into a single-screen movie theatre during the Great Depression. A few years later it was purchased by CBS and became a radio broadcasting venue known as the CBS Playhouse Theatre. It was there that legendary Hollywood producer/director Cecil B. DeMille hosted his Lux Radio Theatre show in which movie stars of the day would act out radio versions of his many films. In 1954, the property once again became a live theatre venue and was renamed the Huntington Hartford. In 2000, the 1200-seat venue was purchased by Nosotros, a non-profit performing arts organization founded by Fantasy Island star Ricardo Montalban. The organization set about renovating the theatre and restoring the property to its former 1927 glory and in May of 2004 reopened the space as the Ricardo Montalban Theatre.

In Burlesque, the Ricardo Montalban Theatre’s side entrance, side exterior stairwell, and parking lot area were all used as the Burlesque Lounge’s main entrance. Amazingly enough, the wrought-iron gate which was featured so prominently in the movie is actually there in real life, which I was BEYOND excited to see! You can check out some pictures of the gate dressed for the filming here. (The theatre was having some sort of a movie screening when we showed up to stalk it, which is why there are people camped out on the sidewalk in all of my photographs).

Sadly, the parking lot area, which was featured in the scene in which Tess (aka Cher) and Nikki (aka Kristen Bell) get into a fight, has been ripped up and is currently under construction. According to the signs posted on the fence which now surrounds the former lot, a parking garage is set to be built in that area.

You can see what the parking lot area used to look like thanks to Bing Streetside in the pictures above and by clicking here.

I literally just about fell over when, while stalking the theatre, I recognized the burger stand located next door as the spot where Lucy (aka Britney Spears), Ben (aka Anson Mount), Kit (aka Zoe Saldana), and Mimi (aka Taryn Manning) signed up for the Slide Records singing audition in the movie Crossroads! I had actually been on the hunt for that location for quite some time and was absolutely FLOORED to have stumbled upon it in such a way. For whatever reason, I always seem to have that sort of luck when it comes to Crossroads locales as I also stumbled upon the gas station which appeared in the movie in a very similar manner.

If you would like to stalk the stand, which is named Molly’s Charbroiler in real life, you should do so soon as, according to fave website CurbedLA, the tiny restaurant may be torn down in the coming months in order to make way for a new office building. Sad smile Have I mentioned how much I love change?

Burlesque Trailer

You can watch the trailer for Burlesque, in which the exterior of the Burlesque Lounge is briefly shown, by clicking above.

Big THANK YOU to Gary, from Seeing Stars, for finding this location and to Chas, from ItsFilmedThere, for contacting Burlesque crew members to find out where Ali and Jack’s apartment building was located! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Ricardo Montalban Theatre, aka Burlesque Lounge from Burlesque, is located at 1615 North Vine Street in Hollywood. The Burlesque Lounge entrance is located on the north side of the property. You can visit the theatre’s official website here. Molly’s Charbroiler, from Crossroads, is located at 1601 North Vine Street. You can visit the burger stand’s official website here.

February 12, 2010February 11, 2010

The Firehouse from “Ghostbusters”

This past weekend while doing some stalking in Downtown L.A. I dragged my fiancé out to see an oft-used filming location that has long been at the top of my “To-Stalk” list. That location is known as Fire Station #23, a real life former working fire house that served as the offices of Dr. Raymond Stantz (aka Dan Aykroyd), Dr. Peter Venkman (aka Bill Murray), Dr. Egon Spengler (aka Harold Ramis), and Winston Zeddmore (aka Ernie Hudson) in the 1984 movie Ghostbusters. And as fate would have it, when we pulled up to the now-defunct fire station, the caretaker of the property, an EXTREMELY nice man named Daniel Taylor, happened to be standing outside speaking with a student filmmaker. So, I, of course, struck up a conversation with him and asked if it might be alright if I stepped inside to take a look around and snap a few photographs. And, let me tell you, I just about fell over from excitement when Daniel told me to go right in! YAY!

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Fire Station #23 actually has quite a storied, and sometimes scandalous, history. The structure, which first opened on October 2, 1910, was designed by the prominent architectural firm of Hudson & Munsell and served as the headquarters of the Los Angeles Fire Department for over a decade. The three story building, which cost between $57,000 and $60,000 to construct and measured 26 feet wide, 167 feet deep and encompassed 13,600 square feet of space, has been mired in controversy ever since the day it was first dedicated. In the beginning, angry citizens deemed the construction costs far too steep for a public building, especially since tax payers were footing the bill and considering the extravagance with which the place was built. And it has been said that no other fire station in the country is as opulent. The top floor of the structure housed the Fire Chief’s suite, an apartment which every fire chief from 1910 to 1928 called home. The suite featured a marble bathroom complete with a double bathtub, Peruvian mahogany wall paneling, imported Italian tile detailing, oak flooring, a private elevator, a brass bed, a roof garden, a marble fireplace, and French bevel glass mirrors. The second floor contained the captain’s dwelling, a library with built-in bookshelves, and bunks for twenty firefighters. The bottom floor contained an open arcade with enamel tiled walls, 21 foot high pressed tin ceilings, and stalls to accommodate ten horses. Pretty amazing for a fire house, huh? The Los Angeles Times even dubbed the place “the Taj Mahal of fire stations”.

Fire Station #23 remained in operation for fifty years, whereupon its men responded to over 60,000 fires. But with the city moving towards building more modernized stations, Engine Truck Company #23 closed its doors for good on November 23rd, 1960. Because a station in Pacific Palisades adopted the “23” company number, the shuttered station took on the name “Old 23”. For the next six years, the fire department utilized the space for medial records storage and as a training facility. In 1966, the same year it became a City of Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument, the fire house was shut down by the department completely. For the next ten years, as the area surrounding the building became more and more impoverished, the station fell into serious disrepair and suffered from extreme vandalism and looting. In 1979, the Fire Commission decided to renovate the property and eventually turn it into a firehouse museum. A non-profit organization named Olde 23 was set up to oversee the restoration process and to raise funds for the massive undertaking. In 1980, the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Nine years later, though, in 1988, the plans for turning Old #23 into a museum were nixed and the city opened their Los Angeles Fire Department Museum at a location in Hollywood instead.

Seven years later controversy came raining down upon the fire house once again when Los Angeles Times staff writer Robert J. Lopez authored a front page article accusing the Olde 23 corporation of misuse of funds. According to the article, Olde 23 had been collecting massive amounts of money (over $210,000 to be exact) thanks to the numerous film shoots that had taken place on the premises over the years. Not only had the company failed to turn that money over to the city, though, but no one had even informed the city that any sort of filming was going on. Being that a city department is responsible for handing out film permits, I’m not quite sure how this even happened, but I guess it’s just another case of a beaurocracy’s right hand not knowing what the left is doing. Causing further scandal was the fact that even though the city had moved the museum location to a different site seven years prior, Olde 23 was still collecting not only filming fees that would supposedly go into the museum fund, but also donations for the project. AND (yes, there’s more!) the supposed non-profit was ALSO collecting filming fees from production companies for shoots that were taking place at other firehouses in the area – firehouses that the Olde 23 company had no jurisdiction over! LOL Talk about a sh*tstorm!! 😉 President and C.E.O. of the Olde 23 company was none other than Los Angeles Fire Chief Donald O. Manning himself, who resigned from his post just 8 days after Lopez’s newspaper article hit the stands. Following his resignation, Fire Station #23 continued to host film shoots, with the money going to the City of Los Angeles, the property’s rightful owner. Just this past September, though, the building was designated surplus property and the city is considering selling it to several different private investors, including a restaurant developer and a non-profit arts education group.

Daniel Taylor, who has been caretaker of the property since 1985 and who the city is currently trying to evict, has different plans for the building, though. He recently formed the Corporation for History, Arts, and Culture (CHAC) with the hopes of restoring the old firehouse to its original grandeur for use as both a cultural center and a filming location. He estimates the restoration project to cost upwards of $8 million and is trying to raise funds now. If you would like to learn more about the cause, you can do so on CHAC’s official website. And while the future of the historic firehouse remains to be seen, in the meantime I highly recommend stalking it as it is a truly beautiful and unique building.

In Ghostbusters, the exterior of the gang’s headquarters (pictured above) was actually filmed at Hook & Ladder Company #8 located at 14 North Moore Street in New York.

But for the interior filming, cast and crew came to Fire Station #23 in Downtown Los Angeles. And I am happy to report that the interior looks almost exactly the same today as it did in 1984 when Ghostbusters was filmed! Amazing!

The boys’ back office area is not there in real life, though, and I am assuming it was just a set that was added solely for the filming.

The upstairs of the firehouse was used in the filming, as well, but unfortunately I didn’t get to see that area while I was there.

Five years later cast and crew returned to Fire Station #23 once again to film the interior scenes for Ghostbusters II.

And I just about died when I spotted the wooden wall adornment pictured above, which was featured in the sequel. So cool!

The firehouse was also featured in 1994’s The Mask, in which it doubled as Jim Carrey’s deceitful car mechanic’s office.

He later vandalizes the place after turning into “The Mask”.

In 2003’s National Security, the firehouse was used as the location of Earl Montgomery (aka Martin Lawrence) and Hank Rafferty (aka Steve Zahn’s) stakeout. Only the exterior of the building and a very small portion of the interior (pictured above) were featured in that shoot, though. Firehouse #23 has also appeared in V.I. Warshawski, Police Academy 2, Flatliners, Set It Off, RE(e)volution, Big Trouble in Little China, in the television series Firehouse, and in the Season 4 episode of The A-Team entitled “The Road to Hope”. All in all, it has been featured in more than 50 commercial, television, movie, and music video productions over the years.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Fire Station #23, aka the firehouse from Ghostbusters, is located at 225 East Fifth Street in Downtown Los Angeles. Unfortunately, the station is not in the safest of areas, so please exercise caution if you choose to stalk it. You can visit the CHAC Fire Station #23 website here.