Claremont – IAMNOTASTALKER

July 10, 2020July 9, 2020

The “Maude” House

I am a true television aficionado, even when it comes to series that were before my time, like Soap, which began airing just a few months after I was born. Yet when fellow stalker Brad emailed back in August 2017 asking if I knew the whereabouts of the home belonging to Maude Findlay (Bea Arthur) and her husband, Walter (Bill Macy), on Maude, I was at a loss. Sure, I’d heard of the 1970s sitcom, but had never so much as seen even a portion of an episode. Regardless, I accepted the challenge of IDing the place, which Brad informed me was said to be in Tuckahoe, New York, and was only seen in Maude’s opening and closing credits. After some unsuccessful digging, though, I pushed the hunt to the back burner and promptly forgot about it. Flash forward to June 9th of this year. Brad wrote to me once again inquiring if I had ever managed to find the Maude house. Coincidentally, my friend Owen had just embarked upon a massive endeavor to pinpoint all of the key yet-to-be-found locations from popular television shows that aired from the early 1970s through the early 1990s. I emailed him to see if Maude was included on his list. It wasn’t, but he was kind enough to look into the matter for me and, on June 10th, just one day later, wrote back with an address! The Findlay residence from Maude can be found at 1011 Harvard Avenue North in Claremont.

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How did he do it, you ask? I asked the same thing! As it turns out, a curb led him to the location. But first, while viewing the opening credits, Owen spotted an address number of “101” above Maude and Walter’s front door, something I had failed to notice during any of my searches for the place!

As he explained, “Because some of the intro was filmed in NY — and there are 100 blocks there — I started looking in Tuckahoe. I was coming up empty, and I was starting to wonder if a fourth digit was hidden behind the tree branches, so I turned my focus to that very distinctive curb, which I had never seen before.” He’s talking about the unique curb with embedded stonework visible in the screen capture below.

Owen next headed over to Google and performed a slew of different keyword searches. One finally led him to page 111 of the book Claremont (Images of America), which detailed the city’s unique stone curbs typically referred to as “elephant toes.” The curb pictured in the tome indeed resembled the one visible in the Maude credits. Owen furthered, “I pretty much knew right away that I was on the right track. I did a “Maude Claremont” Google search and quickly found this page. The answer presented itself at the very bottom of the replies section, thanks to a Mark Z. Mystery solved. P.S. If you blog about this place — and you should blog about this place — I’d mention those ‘elephant toes’! I think that’s such an elephant-astic description of that curb style.” Your wish is my command, Owen!

I was dismayed to find the place undergoing a renovation when I showed up to stalk it a few weeks later.

At least the fabulous elephant toes were still intact and visible, though!

Despite the extensive scaffolding, certain elements of the house are still recognizable. At the time Maude was filmed, the front porch was screened in, giving it quite a different look, but as you can see, the fluted pillars, rock wall flanking the front steps, and peak-roofed portico all remain the same.

Thankfully, Google Street View provides us with some pre-renovation imagery of the home that shows some additional matching detail.

As Owen noted, “The crumbling portion at the corner of the driveway that is visible in the opening credits is still like that! Love it!”

The residence appears throughout both the opening and closing credits of Maude, which ran on CBS from 1972 through 1978.

The American Foursquare-style property was originally designed in 1905 for land developer and Claremont pioneer C.C. Johnson. It is one of the city’s oldest houses. In real life, it boasts 5 bedrooms, 3 baths, 2,920 square feet, coved ceilings, crown moldings, a tiled wood-burning fireplace, a formal dining room, and 3 lots totaling 0.48 acres. The pad last sold in March 2018 for $1.2 million. A real estate listing from the time even mentions the home’s use on Maude!

Only the exterior of the property appeared on the series. The interior of the Findlay home was just a set, built first at CBS Television City and then at Metromedia Square, the two studios where Maude was lensed.

1011 Harvard Ave, Claremont, CA 91711

As you can see in the MLS images as compared to the screen captures above and below, the set does not resemble the inside of the actual house in the slightest. Maude’s home boasted a much more open floor plan than that of the Claremont residence. You can check out some more interior images of 1011 Harvard here.

1011 Harvard Ave, Claremont, CA 91711

Per the plans submitted to the Claremont Architectural Commission, only the rear of the home is being significantly altered during the renovation. Here’s hoping that when all is said and done the front is left largely intact for stalkers to enjoy for years to come.

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Brad for asking me to find this location and to my friend Owen for tracking it down! Smile

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 Findlay house from Maude is located at 1011 Harvard Avenue North in Claremont.

December 13, 2019December 12, 2019

Bridges Auditorium from “The West Wing”

I am one of the few people in the world who did not watch The West Wing when it was on the air. And boy was I missing out! The Grim Cheaper and I started binging the series on a whim this past January and now can’t get enough! The show is so good, I could cry! It’s literally one of the best productions to ever grace television screens! Early in our binging, I, of course, went on a deep dive to unearth some of its locations and was thrilled to come across a 2012 Architectural Digest article that spelled out one locale in particular, stating “Because The West Wing had not yet acquired an East Room set in time, the series’ second-season Christmas episode, ‘Noël,’ featuring the cellist Yo-Yo Ma, was filmed in the lobby of Pomona College’s Bridges Auditorium, in Claremont, California.” Well, believe you me, the venue went straight to the top of my To-Stalk List and I headed out there way back in February, but I’ve held off on blogging about it as I figured it would make for an excellent holiday post.

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The Mabel Shaw Bridges Music Auditorium, as it is formally known, was commissioned by Appleton and Amelia Shaw Bridges in honor of their daughter, Mabel, who passed away while attending Pomona College in 1907.

Designed by San Diego-based architect William Templeton Johnson in the Northern Italian Renaissance style, the venue was constructed from 1930 to 1931 at a cost of $650,000.

Bridges Auditorium was dedicated on September 18th, 1931 and its inaugural concert season officially kicked off the following month, on October 27th, with a performance by Artur Rodziński and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. Since then, it has gone on to host a slew of celebrated personalities. Just a few of the luminaries who have set foot on its stage include Steve Martin, Muhammad Ali, Amelia Earhart, Benny Goodman, James Earl Jones, and Bono.

Sadly, the hall was closed when I visited, so I did not get to see the interior.

The exterior is pretty darn spectacular, though, with a towering arched overhang lined with grand columns and topped by a cathedral ceiling.

The auditorium itself, which you can see photos of here, boasts rich red carpeting, seating for 2,494 guests, and a magical ceiling mural spanning 22,000 square feet that was hand-painted by Giovanni Smeraldi, the famed artist who also adorned the ceilings of Doheny Memorial Library’s Los Angeles Times Reference Room, the Pasadena Main Branch of the Bank of the West, St. Vincent de Paul Church, and the Millennium Biltmore Hotel’s South Galleria. (The latter, coincidentally, is also a West Wing locale!)

It is Bridges Auditorium’s lobby that is its real claim to fame, though. Featuring a coffered ceiling, marble columns, and a grand staircase, the versatile space has appeared onscreen as everything from a courthouse to a college admissions office to the White House (twice!). You can take a look at the beautiful room here.

In The West Wing’s “Noël” episode, which aired in 2000, President Bartlet (Martin Sheen) and his senior staff attend a congressional Christmas party during which Yo-Yo Ma performs – and yes, the actual Yo-Yo Ma guest-starred! As mentioned above, the production team transformed Bridges’ lobby into the White House’s East Room for the shoot. Architectural Digest notes, “Although smaller than the actual East Room—the largest room in the White House, primarily used for entertaining—the space, says [production designer Kenneth] Hardy, had the right feeling. He and his production crew hung replica chandeliers and added chairs, flowers, and presidential portraits.” It was a lot of preparation for what essentially amounted to about two minutes of screen time, much of which was interspersed with flashbacks of Josh Lyman’s (Bradley Whitford) shooting from Season 1. Nevertheless, the space did look beautiful in the scene.

The Bridges Auditorium foyer also masked as the courthouse lobby where Hillary Whitney Essex (Barbara Hershey) collapsed in the 1988 drama Beaches.

It again portrayed the White House – this time its grand entry hall – in the 1993 comedy Dave.

And in the Season 3 episode of Gilmore Girls titled “Let the Games Begin,” which aired in 2002, the foyer masqueraded as the main administration building at Yale University, where Richard (Edward Herrmann) forced Rory (Alexis Bledel) into an impromptu interview with the Dean of Admissions.

The exterior of Bridges Auditorium also appeared briefly in the episode.

The theatre itself is where the body of a murdered ballerina is found in the Season 3 episode of Lucifer titled “Anything Pierce Can Do I Can Do Better,” which aired in 2018.

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: Bridges Auditorium, from the “Noël” episode of The West Wing, is located at 450 North College Way, on the Pomona College campus, in Claremont.

August 29, 2018August 28, 2018

The Ella Strong Denison Library from “Beaches”

Libraries are very much on my brain as of late. It’s all thanks to Matilda and the post I wrote about the Wormwood home last week. While scanning through the 1996 film making screen captures, I became awestruck by the incredible book repository where young Matilda (Sara Magdalin) regularly hung out. Though countless websites claim that Pasadena’s Central Library at 285 East Walnut Street was utilized in the movie, I spent enough time there in my 10+ years of living in Crown City to immediately know that wasn’t true. Further digging led me to discover that the cavernous space where Matilda devoured books was actually the Doheny Memorial Library on the USC campus. (A post on that site will be coming soon.) Looking into the location reminded me of a similarly beautiful athenaeum I stalked back in February 2012 with Mike the Fanboy, but had failed to blog about – The Ella Strong Denison Library, which appeared briefly in Beaches. So I decided it was finally time to amend the situation.

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The Ella Strong Denison Library, named for Ella Strong Denison, the wife of a wealthy Denver physician who donated funds to numerous universities for the purpose of building libraries, opened its doors on the Scripps College campus in 1931.

Designed by architect Gordon Kaufmann (who also created the Royal Laundry Complex, La Quinta Resort & Club, Santa Anita Park, and Greystone Mansion), the building, which houses special collections, features intricately chiseled front doors, hand-carved wood detailing, and a massive stained glass window depicting Gutenberg encircled by literary motifs.

Oh, and card catalogs the stuff dreams are made of.

The grounds surrounding the place are also quite spectacular.

Along with serving as a quiet place to study, the library plays an integral role in the beginning and end of each Scripps undergrad’s college career. As the school’s website notes,“The key moment in the Matriculation Ceremony occurs in the first few days of Orientation, when incoming students process through the intricately carved Ella Strong Denison Library East Door. This door remains locked on all other days of the year save Commencement, when graduating seniors exit through this same door, signifying the beginning of Commencement Exercises, and the end of their educational journey at Scripps.”

In Beaches, the Denison Library is where Hillary Whitney Essex (Barbara Hershey) researches her illness shortly after being diagnosed.

The handsome space looks much the same today as it did onscreen thirty years ago.

As you can see below, the venue translates beautifully to the screen.

As such, I was certain it had appeared in numerous productions. I was unable to dig up any other movies or television shows featuring it, though.

I’m only now coming to realize that the vast majority of Beaches was shot in the Los Angeles area, despite largely being set in New York and San Francisco. I’ve written about a few of the movie’s SoCal locales previously including Hillary’s beach house at the Crystal Cove Historic District, Hillary’s supposed Atherton-area mansion (you can read a second post on that spot here), and Jewel’s Catch One, which portrayed both an SF nightclub and an NYC lounge. While scanning through Beaches in preparation for last April’s post about the latter (which is best known for its appearance as The Blue Banana in Pretty Woman), I discovered that the flick also did some filming at the now defunct Ambassador Hotel. The famed lodging portrayed Marlboro Blenheim, the ritzy Atlantic City resort where young Hillary (Marcie Leeds) took CC Bloom (Mayim Bialik) for a chocolate soda at the beginning of the movie. I recognized the wood-framed doorways, red floral carpeting and lobby fountain immediately upon viewing the scene. (The Ambassador was also utilized significantly in Pretty Woman as the interior of The Regent Beverly Wilshire, as I wrote about in this post.)

The Los Angeles Equestrian Center made an appearance in Beaches, as well, as young Hillary’s Bay Area riding club. (For those keeping track, that’s three locales the film shares with Pretty Woman, which I guess shouldn’t come as a surprise being that both were directed by Garry Marshall.)

I am also fairly certain that Southwestern Bag Company at 635 Mateo Street in downtown Los Angeles, aka the police station from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, portrayed the New York ACLU office where Hillary worked in the movie, but not enough of the space was shown for me to be absolutely certain.

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 Ella Strong Denison Library, from Beaches, is located in Scripps College’s Kauffman Wing at 1090 North Columbia Avenue in Claremont. Harwood Court residence hall, aka Eastland School from The Facts of Life, can be found just a few blocks away on the Pomona College campus at 170 East Bonita Avenue.

February 8, 2012February 7, 2012

Pomona College’s Harwood Court – aka Eastland School from “The Facts of Life”

Well over six months ago, my good friend Mikey, from the Mike the Fanboy website, asked if I would like to do some stalking with him of Harwood Court, the Pomona College dormitory which stood in for the fictional Eastland School, attended by Blair Warner (Lisa Whelchel), Dorothy ‘Tootie’ Ramsey (Kim Fields), Natalie Green (Mindy Cohn), and Joanne ‘Jo” Polniaczek (Nancy McKeon), in the 1980’s television series The Facts of Life. My answer, of course, was a resounding “YES!” Because both of our schedules have been a bit hectic as of late, though, we were not able to make it out there until this past Sunday afternoon. Needless to say, we were both pretty excited about the whole adventure when it finally came to pass and, a few days before we headed to Claremont, Mikey sent me an email which stated, “Wow, this is just like going scuba diving with Jacques Cousteau, or playing football with Tim Tebow, or getting a pants-dropping lesson from Marky Mark! Well, maybe not that last one!” Um, my stalking skills being compared to the scuba skills of Jacques Cousteau?!?! LOVE IT!

This location was actually found by Robert, of the Movie Locations and More website, way back in the Summer of 2010. Earlier that year, Robert had read online that the exterior of Eastland School was a building on the Pomona College campus in Claremont, but because Google Street View of that area is not particularly clear, he was unable to track down the exact structure used via the internet. So when he came to Los Angeles for a stalking visit a few months later, he drove around the 140-acre campus, screen shot in hand, and, amazingly enough, was able to track down the building fairly quickly. Thank you, Robert! In reality, Eastland School is the Harwood Court residential hall – a 68,000-square-foot unisex dormitory that was built in 1921 and currently houses 170 students. The structure, which was originally an all-female dorm, was completely renovated by the Wheeler & Wheeler architectural firm in 1990. Thankfully though, it still looks much the same as it did onscreen in The Facts of Life.

A few years ago, Mikey had actually purchased one of Molly Ringwald’s costumes from the first season of The Facts of Life, as well as a promotional lunch box from the series that he had signed by none other than Mrs. Edna Garrett (Charlotte Rae) herself, and he brought both items with him on our stalk to add to the fun. On our way there, he mentioned that he thought I might be able to fit into the track jacket portion of Molly’s former costume and, shockingly, he was right! I cannot tell you how nervous I was to be wearing such an amazing piece of television history, while drinking a Starbucks, no less, so I only kept it on long enough to snap a couple of pics.

Molly is pictured wearing one of the track jackets above. So incredibly cool!!

While we were there, a resident happened to walk out of Harwood Court and we stopped her to ask if she would take a photograph of Mikey and me. She obliged and afterwards I inquired if she was aware that her dorm was, in fact, The Facts of Life school. Shockingly, she had not actually been aware, and, even more shockingly, she did not seem to be too impressed by the news. Ah well, I guess not everyone is a stalker. Winking smile

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Harwood Court showed up as the fictional Peekskill, New York-area Eastland School during the opening credits of The Facts of Life’s entire nine-season run.

“The Facts of Life” Filmed at Harwood Court Residence Hall at Pomona College

You can watch the series’ opening credits by clicking above. On an interesting side-note – the show’s insanely-catchy theme song was co-composed by Alan Thicke, aka Jason Seaver, the patriarch of the Seaver family on Growing Pains, and real-life father of R&B singer Robin Thicke.

While doing research before heading out to Pomona College with Mikey on Sunday, I discovered that Harwood Court had also appeared in several other productions. In 1985’s Real Genius, it was featured as the dormitory where Chris Knight (Val Kilmer), Mitch Taylor (Gabriel Jarret), and Jordan (Michelle Meyrink) lived.

And while some of the real-life interior of the building was actually used in the movie . . .

. . . I am fairly certain that the hallway and dorm rooms were sets.

In 1987’s Teen Wolf Too, Harwood Court stood in for the Hamilton College dormitory where Todd Howard (Jason Bateman) lived with his roommate, Stiles (Stuart Franklin).

The back side of the building appeared in the movie’s beyond-words-awful “Do You Love Me” dance sequence.

I believe that the interior scenes were all filmed on a set, though.

In the Season 1 episode of the reality series Top Chef Masters titled “Masters Get Schooled”, the Elimination Challenge, in which professional chefs Michael Schlow, Hubert Keller, Tim Love, and Christopher Lee were required to cook a gourmet meal in a dorm room, was held at Harwood Court.

You can read Mikey’s fab write-up of our The Facts of Life stalk on the Mike the Fanboy website here and you can watch a video Mikey put together of our adventure by clicking above.

Big THANK YOU to Robert, from the Movie Locations and More website, for finding this location and to Mikey, from the Mike the Fanboy website, for inviting me to stalk it with him.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Harwood Court residence hall, aka Eastland School from The Facts of Life, is located on the campus of Pomona College at 170 East Bonita Avenue in Claremont.