1923 Apartment Overhaul

[d-jones]

Ralph

When I was a kid walking home from Eagle Rock elementary school, my friends and I would stop in that Rexall and spend our milk money on a candy bar before crossing Colorado Blvd. I was sad to see it go as it was always such a tangible piece of my childhood. Once the drug store left, a series of silly pointless businesses came and went, with long periods of vacancy in between. Then Swork moved in(the trendy coffee shop)and everything changed. The women that owns it has done very well there, and now there's finally a place for all the rich kids from Occidental to hang out with their lap tops and impress each other. But the second floor of the old Rexall building is all office space and always has been. The building with the apartment that's being discussed in this thread is actually across the street just above the Mobil gas station. I posted a link above that you can use to get a look at it if you'd like to see it. Here's a photo looking north on Eagle Rock Blvd towards Colorado. The sign for the Rexall you're thinking of can be seen at the end of the block with a bus parked beside it.

 

[d-jones]

Looking North on Eagle Rock Bvd towards Colorado

If you look up the street here you can see the southern brick wall of the Jenny C Brayton Bldg just beyond the Texaco station, so you should have a pretty good idea where it is now. The Texaco is on the northwest corner of Eagle Rock and Colorado.

 

[rp2813]

Oh yeah --

Now I see where you are.  A little quieter on that side of Colorado.  Great pix of the trolleys with the National City Lines color scheme, and a rare rainy day scene (looks like a standard issue B of A building on the left in that one -- which is now in more modern digs on Colorado around the corner from you IIRC).  Definitely winter shots judging from the long shadows in the first one.

 

[d-jones]

If you look closely you can read the sign on the bank. Security First National Bank would later become Security Pacific, which would later be gobbled up by Bank of America. Here's another view of it. It was later demolished to make way for a smaller Security Pacific bank building with a parking lot

 

[blackstone]

We lived behind the store, in 4 rooms on the first floor. The living room opened directly to the store. It sounds kind of crowded, having 4 people living in 4 rooms, but we had the store, cellar, and backyard. Second and third floors had 5 rooms each (one extra room above the store). Family lived on 2nd; other long-time tenant on 3rd.

Picture shows one of the fireplace mantels that I saved, before selling the building. I am using it in my house now. I live just around the corner (adjoining backyards) in 2-family house which our family owned, also. It's also an old house. All the woodwork is the same in both buildings. I have removed the paint and refinished the wood. Very long process, working on 15 doors and 12 windows on each floor.

These two old buildings (c. 1893, best I can tell) had very small bathrooms and pantries. I renovated one floor to make one larger bathroom, eliminating the pantry. I also like to wallpaper the rooms--actually, one of the easier jobs to do. I am currently working on a kitchen floor. Took out the linoleum, and painting the floor. The wood was not good enough to polyurethane, and I didn't want to put in laminate floor, so I decided to paint. Not as quick and easy as I had hoped, though.

 

[rp2813]

B of A

I was referring to the building on Eagle Rock behind what is now the Shell station.  It looks like it has the old B of A ship logo on it and resembles one of similar vintage not far from me.  I can't picture in my mind if the building is still there.  I know there's a more modern Citibank building on that stretch of Eagle Rock now, but I think it's a block or two further south.

 

Lots of history in this part of Los Angeles, that's for sure.

 

[d-jones]

Ralph

That's an interesting observation about the possible B of A building. My family moved to Eagle Rock from Highland Park in 1970 and by that time the B of A was already in it's current location, as was the Shell station, though it was an Exxon back then. I'll have to look around and see if I can find a proper vintage photo of that area that would show it, since the building is long gone now. You can sort of see it here on the far left, but not well enough to make out the details.

By the way, I'm sure this ruined few peoples day.

 

[rp2813]

LOL!

W.C. Fields would have been hard pressed to do a better job of taking out a fleet of automobiles.

 

I love the understated "Next Car Please" in the front window.