famous architecture – Page 7

March 17, 2011April 4, 2020

The Barclay Hotel from “As Good As It Gets”

This past weekend, the Grim Cheaper and I re-watched the movie As Good As It Gets, which I had not seen since it first came out in theatres almost 15 years ago. I am ashamed to admit that I had somehow forgotten what a great flick it is! While watching, I, of course, became a bit obsessed with tracking down some of the Southern California locations featured in it and just about had a heart attack when I read on IMDB’s As Good As It Gets filming locations page that the interior of the Barclay Hotel in downtown Los Angeles stood in for the movie’s fictional Café 24 Heures, where Carol Connelly (Helen Hunt) worked and where Melvin Udall (Jack Nicholson) dined each morning. So I dragged the GC right on out to stalk the place this past Sunday afternoon. As it turns out, this location proved to be one VERY LUCKY find as it has been used in countless productions over the years.

First built in 1897 and commissioned by L.A. businessman Isaac Newton Van Nuys, the Barclay Hotel was originally known as the Van Nuys Hotel The Beaux-Arts-style building was designed by the architecture firm Morgan + Walls and, with its sprawling lobby, detailed stained glass windows, and phone service in each room, was considered one of the finest hotels of its day. In 1929, the property’s name was changed to the Barclay Hotel and there is supposedly a sign still visible on one of the building’s exterior walls which reads “Van Nuys Hotel, Rooms $1 and Up.” It would have been so incredibly cool to see, but, sadly, I could not find it anywhere. The Barclay has the distinction of being known as downtown L.A.’s oldest continuously operating hotel and is a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument. It currently serves as a residential hotel which offers affordable housing to its residents, many of whom have lived there for years.

The GC and I were lucky enough to speak with the Barclay’s manager as well as one of the hotel’s longtime residents while we were stalking the place, both of whom could NOT have been nicer! They filled us in on all of the filming that has taken place on the premises over the years and allowed me to take all of the photographs of the interior that I wanted. Yay! The resident that we spoke with was literally like a walking encyclopedia of the hotel’s vast filming history and in some instances was able to tell me not only when filming of certain productions had taken place, but how long the crew was onsite, AND he also knew the names of particular episodes of shows that had filmed on the premises and the exact dates on which those episodes had aired! Speaking with him was like . . . well, it was like speaking with myself, actually. Winking smile

The Barclay Hotel’s actual, working lobby was transformed into the supposed Manhattan-area Café 24 Heures for the filming of As Good As It Gets.

According to the hotel manager, producers not only brought in several booths for the filming;

but they also built a fake waitress station;

and swapped out the lobby’s front windows with French doors, which were then swapped back after filming had wrapped.

The hotel’s real life check-in desk, which is now caged, was used as the Café’s bar in the movie.

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The entire opening scene of the 1998 disaster movie Armageddon takes place in front of the Barclay Hotel and the neighboring Farmers & Merchants National Bank, which were both made to look like they were located in New York City.

In 2002’s Catch Me If You Can, the Barclay was the apartment building/residential hotel from which a young Frank Abagnale Jr. (Leonardo DiCaprio) was evicted after having written a series of bad checks to the landlord.

Leo returned to the Barclay for the filming of last year’s Inception, in which the hotel was featured twice. It first showed up towards the very beginning of the movie in the scene in which Cobb (DiCaprio) is dunked into a bathtub. According to the manager, that scene was filmed in one of the Barclay’s second floor hotel rooms.

The Barclay’s lobby was later used as the African casino where Cobb meets up with Eames (Tom Hardy). The hotel’s check-in desk is where Eames cashed in his casino chips in the scene.

The Barclay also stood in for the Columbian hotel where John Smith (Brad Pitt) and Jane Smith (Angelina Jolie) met at the very beginning of 2005’s Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

A fake bar was set up in the Barclay’s lobby for the filming of that scene.

In 2009’s (500) Days of Summer, the Barclay’s lobby was transformed into the coffee shop where Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) regularly hung out with his friends McKenzie (Geoffrey Arend) and Paul (Matthew Gray Gubler).

The Barclay’s former coffee shop, which is located on the southeast corner of West 4th and South Main Streets, is not currently a working restaurant, but was kept intact in order to be used for filming, which I think is so incredibly cool! Unfortunately, that area is closed to the public so I could only take photographs of it through its front windows.

The cafe was featured in the Season 5 episode of The Closer titled “Tapped Out”, in the scene in which Lieutenants Flynn (Anthony John Denison) and Provenza (G.W. Bailey) are shown eating breakfast and discussing Provenza’s new girlfriend all the while ignoring a crime taking place directly outside.

There is another vacant room located on the eastern side of the hotel that is also often used for filming.

That room was recently dressed to look like a New York bakery in the Season 7 episode of CSI: New York titled “To What End”.

The exterior of the Barclay also appeared a few times throughout the episode.

Most amazing of all, though – to me, at least – is the fact that the Barclay appeared in the pilot episode of the television series Starsky & Hutch way back in 1975, looking almost exactly the same as it does today! As I mentioned above, the check-in desk has since been caged in, but other than that minor detail, the Barclay has remained unchanged in the more than 36 years since filming took place. Love it, love it, love it!

Ironically enough, the Starsky and Hutch movie, which premiered in 2004, was also filmed at the Barclay. The flick’s opening scene took place on the hotel’s roof.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Barclay Hotel, aka Café 24 Heures from As Good As It Gets, is located at 103 West 4th Street in Downtown Los Angeles.

January 21, 2011January 20, 2011

David’s Bungalow from “Beverly Hills, 90210”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

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

January 11, 2011December 6, 2013

The Avalon Hotel – The Former Beverly Carlton Where Marilyn Monroe Once Lived

Another location that the Grim Cheaper and I stalked while in the Beverly Hills area two weekends ago was the historic Avalon Hotel, where my girl Marilyn Monroe once lived for a period of about three years back in the 1950’s. During that time, the property was a residential motel known as the Beverly Carlton that was first opened in 1948 and was designed by legendary graphic designer Alvin Lustig. And while the hotel was actually considered to be a moderately priced accommodation for its time, besides Marilyn, such stars as Mae West, Lucille Ball, and Desi Arnaz often stayed there. In the 70s and 80s the hotel became rundown, underwent several remodels, and was transformed into both a retirement home and an apartment complex. In 1998, property developer Brad Korzen purchased it and enlisted his now-wife, Kelly Wearstler of KWID Designs, to give the place an extensive reboot. In doing so, Wearstler and her team researched the original design elements of the hotel, which they obtained from photographs taken by famed photographer Julius Shulman for a 1948 Forum Magazine article, and it was those original designs that ended up serving as the inspiration for the entire remodel.

The result is that the property looks VERY much the same today as it did back in the 1950’s when Marilyn lived there! Love it!

I first learned about the Avalon a few years back when Cold Case star Kathryn Morris posed for an InStyle Magazine photo shoot on the hotel grounds. I became quite obsessed with the Avalon Hotel sign pictured above, but had assumed it was a fake that had been created for the shoot. Looking back, why I never thought to Google the terms “Avalon Hotel” is absolutely beyond me, but as they say hindsight is 20/20. Then last Christmas, I was flipping through Southwest Airline’s Spirit Magazine while on the plane ride home from visiting my grandmother in Reno, when I happened upon an article about the Avalon and noticed a picture of that same unique sign from the InStyle photographs. Well, I just about fell over upon realizing that the Avalon was in fact a real life hotel and immediately added its address to my ever-growing To-Stalk list. It wasn’t until much later, though, while doing some cyber-stalking on the internet, that I discovered that my girl Marilyn had once called the place home. So incredibly cool!

According to the super nice desk clerk that we spoke with while stalking the place, MM actually lived at the Beverly Carlton during several different periods of her life – first in 1948 and then again in 1951 through 1952, for a total of about three years time. The hotel is comprised of three different buildings – the Olympic, the Beverly, and the Canon – and the desk clerk informed us that Marilyn lived in Room 305 of the Beverly building, which is pictured above, although I have read some conflicting reports online, so I am not sure if that information is entirely accurate. What is for certain, though, is that during her tenure at the hotel, Marilyn rented a one-room studio apartment, which you “>can see a photograph of here. The starlet posed for numerous photo shoots while living on the premises – both inside of her actual studio and next to the hotel’s hour glass-shaped pool. You can see many of the photographs from those particular shoots here. I cannot tell you how cool it was to look through those pictures and see Marilyn standing in a location that still looks EXACTLY the same today as it did when she posed there almost six decades ago.

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Celebrities who have been spotted at the Avalon in more recent years include Jacinda Barrett, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jessica Biel, Justin Timberlake, Guy Pearce, Eva Longoria, William Baldwin, Selma Blair, Jonah Hill, Kate Hudson, Ryan Phillipe, Abbie Cornish, Terrance Howard, Tilda Swinton, Superbad’s Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Grey’s Anatomy’s Jessica Capshaw, Numb3rs’ David Krumholtz, House, M.D.’s Jennifer Morrison and Jesse Spencer, Entourage’s Kevin Connolly, sisters Hilary and Haylie Duff, and 90210’s Shenae Grimes, Michael Steger, and Ryan Eggold.

The front desk clerk also let us know that in the Season 4 episode of I Love Lucy titled “L.A. At Last”, the Avalon stood in for the Beverly Palms Hotel where Lucy Ricardo (aka Lucille Ball), Ricky Ricardo (aka Desi Arnaz), Ethel Mertz (aka Vivian Vance), and Fred Mertz (aka William Frawley) stayed while vacationing in Los Angeles. Lucy and Ricky’s hotel room set from that episode is now on display at the Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Center in Jamestown, New York, which I think is just about the coolest thing ever!

The Season 5 episode of Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List titled “Paris is My New BFF”, in which Paris Hilton guest-starred, was filmed on location at the Avalon’s pool area.

And 90210 star Jessica Lowndes recently posed for Zooey Magazine’s October 2010 issue at the Avalon, which you can see photographs of here. You can also watch a behind-the-scenes video of the shoot by clicking above.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Avalon Hotel, aka the former Beverly Carlton Hotel where Marilyn Monroe used to live, is located at 9400 West Olympic Boulevard in Beverly Hills. Marilyn Monroe lived in the hotel’s Beverly Building, the entrance of which is located at 412 South Beverly Drive. You can visit the hotel’s official website here.

January 10, 2011January 10, 2011

The Electric Fountain from “Clueless”

Two weekends ago while doing some stalking in the Beverly Hills area, I dragged the Grim Cheaper out to the corner of Wilshire and North Santa Monica Boulevards to finally, finally stalk the fountain where Cher Horowitz (aka Alicia Silverstone) realized her true feelings for her former stepbrother Josh (aka Paul Rudd) in fave movie Clueless. I was clued in – pun intended 🙂 – to this location two years ago by a fellow stalker who had visited the fountain while vacationing in Southern California and had later sent me pictures of it. Unfortunately, I cannot for the life of me remember who this particular tipster was, nor can I find the emails she sent to me in any of my saved email folders. UGH! So, whoever it was that informed me of the location of the Clueless fountain, I sincerely thank you! Anyway, even though I was tipped off about this locale quite a while back and even though Clueless is one of my all time favorite movies, for whatever reason I had yet to stalk the place until last Saturday afternoon.

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In real life the Clueless fountain is named the Electric Fountain and it was built in 1931 at a cost of $21,000 by architect Ralph Carlin Flewelling, who also designed the Beverly Hills Post Office. The 50-foot in diameter fountain, which was constructed out of concrete, cast stone, and terra cotta tile, boasts a large central basin detailed with relief carvings that represent various events in California history. Anchored at the top of the basin is a sculpture of a Native American woman praying for rain that was molded by Robert Merrell Gage, the same artist who sculpted the facade of the Los Angeles Times Building in Downtown L.A. The fountain got its unusual name thanks to the fact that it was the first electric fountain to be built in the United States. The structure is perhaps best known for its nightly water and lights show, which is vaguely reminiscent of the Fountains of the Bellagio show in Las Vegas, albeit on a much smaller scale.

My favorite aspect of the fountain, though, is the fact that it is located directly across the street from a Starbucks. 🙂

In Clueless, Cher arrives at the Electric Fountain while walking around the City of Beverly Hills in an attempt to clear her “totally buggin’” head after failing her driver’s license test and getting into a huge fight with Tai (aka Brittany Murphy). It is while she is at the fountain that she has an epiphany and realizes that she is in love with Josh.

And I,of course, just had to reenact the scene while there. 🙂

The rock group The Go-Go’s danced in the Electric Fountain (in a scene that must have been a precursor to the opening credits of fave television series Friends) in the music video for their 1981 hit song “Our Lips Are Sealed”.

You can watch the “Our Lips Are Sealed” music video by clicking above.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Clueless fountain is located on the northwest corner of Wilshire and North Santa Monica Boulevards, in Beverly Gardens Park, in Beverly Hills. The Witch’s House, which also appeared in Clueless, is located just around the corner from the fountain at 516 North Walden Drive, also in Beverly Hills.

December 29, 2010December 28, 2010

Architect Frank Gehry’s House

One location that I stalked quite a while back, but have yet to blog about is the residence belonging to legendary 81-year old Pritzker Prize-winning architect Frank Gehry, a man who is perhaps best known for his contemporary designs of the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Downtown Los Angeles, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, the Dancing House in Prague, the Experience Music Project in Seattle, and his new line of jewelry for Tiffany & Co. Gehry and his wife, Berta, purchased their pink Dutch Colonial-style Santa Monica home in 1977 and the architect immediately began a process of “deconstructivism” on it. Interestingly enough, he left the exterior of the home completely intact and untouched, but stripped down the interior to the point that only bare studs and wood framing remained. He subsequently set about rebuilding the interior with more modern-style elements and then proceeded to wrap the exterior of the original house with a new frame made of corrugated metal, plywood, glass, aluminum, and chain-link fencing, essentially wrapping the entire house with a brand new exterior.

According to the Arch Daily website, of the unusual design, the architect said, “I loved the idea of leaving the house intact. I came up with the idea of building the new house around it. We were told there were ghosts in the house . . . I decided they were ghosts of Cubism. The windows . . . I wanted to make them look like they were crawling out of this thing.” He also stated, “Here we are being surrounded by material that’s being manufactured in unimaginable quantities worldwide and is used everywhere. I don’t like it, no one likes it, and yet it’s pervasive. We don’t even see it. I noticed and started to find ways to beautify it. I wanted to take the curse off the material. It’s also why I made cardboard furniture. Cardboard is another material that’s ubiquitous and everybody hates, yet when I made the furniture with it everybody loved it.” Ironically enough, although he had received quite a bit of recognition prior to the remodel, it is Gehry’s Santa Monica house that is largely credited with putting the now-iconic architect on the map.

And while the unique abode became an architectural phenomenon virtually overnight, Gehry’s neighbors were not quite as appreciative of his aesthetic. Legend has it that one even went so far as to shoot at the house late one night in a show of protest! In 1991, Gehry angered both his neighbors and architectural enthusiasts alike when he once again remodeled the property, this time to meet the needs of his family – he had two growing teenage boys at the time who each wanted a room of their own. Architectural purists apparently feel that the most recent remodel makes the house appear too “finished”, but, as you can see above, the new design still retains quite a bit of rawness and the place is definitely still an acquired taste. In fact, the Grim Cheaper used to live just a few blocks away from the property and we would often drive by and marvel at the residence’s atrocity. It wasn’t until years later that we realized who the house belonged to and its architectural significance.

The oddest part of the property, in my mind at least, is the extensive use of chain-link fencing, which in most instances seems to appear virtually out of nowhere. And even though the residence is not really my cup of tea, I can’t recommend stalking it enough for the mere fact that there is literally no other place like it in the entire world.

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Gehry’s house was hilariously recreated – animation-style – for the Season 16 episode of The Simpsons titled “The Seven-Beer Snitch”, in which Marge Simpson commissions Gehry, whom she calls “the bestest architect in the world”, to build a concert hall in Springfield. That concert hall winds up going bankrupt on its opening night and is later turned into the Springfield Prison.

You can see some great interior and close-up photographs of the Frank Gehry residence here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Frank Gehry’s house is located at 1002 22nd Street, at the corner of Washington Avenue, in Santa Monica.

December 23, 2010December 23, 2010

The First Congregational Church of Los Angeles from “My So-Called Life”

Fellow stalker/My So-Called Life aficionado Andrew recently went on a mission to try to track down the church that was used in the Season 1 Christmas-themed episode of fave show My So-Called Life titled “So-Called Angels”. He had just picked up the most-recently released boxed set of the series, which came out in 2007, and was floored to discover that actor Wilson Cruz, who played Ricky Vasquez on the show, had recorded a commentary for the “So-Called Angels” episode and had described the location of the church as being on 6th Street close to Downtown Los Angeles. Even with that detailed information, though, this locale proved to be a tough one to track down. Thankfully, Andrew hit a stroke of luck, though, when he noticed that the doors of the church in the episode featured very intricate carvings. He figured those doors had to be unique and, sure enough, they were! Just type the words “carved doors”, “church”, and “Los Angeles” into Google and the very first entry that appears is for the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles, located on the corner of South Commonwealth Avenue and West 6th Street, about a mile from Downtown Los Angeles, right where Wilson Cruz had said it would be. Yay! So, once Andrew told me the good news, I immediately dragged my dad right on out to stalk the place – just in time for Christmas, too!

The Gothic revival-style First Congregational Church of Los Angeles was constructed in 1932 by brothers James Edward Allison and David Clark Allison, the same architecture team that designed the Beverly Hills Post Office and UCLA’s Royce Hall. Both the exterior . . .

. . . and the interior of the property are absolutely gorgeous in person. In fact, I think it is safe to say that I have never seen a more beautiful place of worship in my entire life! The church is literally breathtaking – especially decked out in all of its Christmas glory!

The First Congregational Church of Los Angeles’ main sanctuary, which stretches 198 feet in length and reaches 76 feet in height, is home to the world’s largest pipe organ, features carved oak pews, and is dotted with countless stained glass windows which were designed by Judson Studios in Pasadena.

The bronze doors that Andrew noticed in the “So-Called Angels” episode were designed in 1946 by artist Albert Gilles and, unbelievably, they measure three inches thick and weigh in at a whopping one thousand pounds apiece! The doors were so heavy, in fact, that I could hardly open them when we went to leave!

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In the “So-Called Angels” episode of My So-Called Life, the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles was the spot where Angela Chase (aka Claire Danes), along with the rest of the Chase family, and her friends Brian Krakow (aka Devon Gummersall) and Ricky wind up on Christmas Eve night after a heartbreaking course of events during which Ricky gets beaten up by his father and ends up first living on the streets and then in an abandoned warehouse. I had actually forgotten how very heartbreaking the episode was until I re-watched it last week. So incredibly sad!

The area where Patty Chase (aka Bess Armstrong) found Ricky lighting candles is located just to the left of the church’s main altar, although that area looks a bit different today. There are no candles located in that particular alcove (which I was seriously bummed about as I had planned on lighting one), nor is there a visible stained glass window. The red carpet has also since been removed.

The pew where Patty and Ricky sat in the scene is located just to the left of the alcove.

The exterior of the church looks a bit different today than it did during the filming, as well. The large potted plants which flanked the front of the church in the episode are no longer there, but I have a hunch that those trees were actually props brought in specifically for the filming and were never actually there in real life.

The street lamp that was pictured at the very end of the episode is actually there in real life, though, which I thought was just about the coolest thing ever! Smile

My So-Called Life is not the only production to have filmed at First Congregational. The church also stood in for New York’s St. Thomas Episcopal where Wilhelmina Slater (aka Vanessa Williams) almost married Bradford Meade (aka Alan Dale’s) in the Season 2 episode of Ugly Betty titled “A Nice Day for a Posh Wedding”.

First Congregational was also where the funeral for Preston Blake (aka Harve Presnell) was held in the 2002 Adam Sandler comedy Mr. Deeds.

It was also used as the church where Mary Jane Watson (aka Kristen Dunst) almost married John Jameson (aka Daniel Gillies) in Spiderman 2.

And it stood in for New York’s Trinity Church where the climactic final scene of 2004’s National Treasure took place.

Both the opening and one of the closing scenes from 2003’s Daredevil were also filmed at the church.

The First Congregational Church of Los Angeles has also appeared in episodes of Californication, The Riches, The West Wing, Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Shark, The Closer, Bones, The Practice, Cold Case, Joan of Arcadia, Six Feet Under, Jag, and The X-Files and in the movies Nancy Drew and Into the Wild. The church even has a page on its website which chronicles the many productions that have been filmed on the premises over the years (although My So-Called Life is ostensibly missing from the list). So love it!

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Andrew for finding this location! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The First Congregational Church of Los Angeles, from the “So-Called Angels” episode of My So-Called Life, is located at 540 South Commonwealth Avenue in Los Angeles. You can visit the church’s official website here and you can check out its extensive filming resume here.

December 20, 2010December 20, 2010

Adrianna’s New Rental from “90210”

Back in July of 2009, fellow stalker Jennie wrote to me asking for some help in tracking down a location that appeared in both the 1996 Aaron Spelling television series Kindred: The Embraced and the current reality show Celebrity Fit Club. Because I had never seen either of the shows, though, for this particular stalking venture I had to call in the team – aka Chas, from ItsFilmedThere, Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and fellow stalker Owen – and, magically, Chas came through in record time. He somehow managed to track down a Celebrity Fit Club crew member who told him that the show was primarily filmed at a convent in Los Feliz that belonged to the Los Angeles Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. I immediately added the place to my ever-growing “To Stalk” list, but, for whatever reason, never made it out to actually see it in person. So, you can imagine my surprise when I recognized the property as the mansion Adriana Tate-Duncan (aka Jessica Lowndes) rented on the recently-aired Season 3 episode of 90210 titled “Holiday Madness”. I literally just about fell out of my chair and dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to stalk the place that very weekend.

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From what I’ve been able to gather online, it appears that the property no longer belongs to the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, but is now owned by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and is known as the Cardinal Timothy Manning House of Prayer for Priests. (Although there is a Facebook page which claims that the property is now the International Institute of Theological and Tribunal Studies and is owned by the Graduate Theological Foundation of Indiana, so I’m not really sure what the story is.) Regardless of who currently owns it, though, the structure was originally built in 1928 as a private home for Los Angeles broadcasting/automobile tycoon Earl C. Anthony, a man who not only brought major league baseball to Southern California for the first time, but who was also part of the team that invented gas stations and the car radio. The Anthony House, as it later came to be known, was designed by architect Bernard Maybeck, the same man who gave us the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. Anthony had commissioned his previous abode to be built by the legendary Greene & Greene architecture firm, but once Anthony, who owned several Packard automobile dealerships at the time, caught wind of the fact that one of the Greene brothers had purchased a car made by a competing brand, he refused to work with the architects on any subsequent projects and hired Maybeck to build his Los Feliz home. LOL! Maybeck incorporated Italian Villa, French Chateau, Spanish Mediterranean, and Tudor elements into the design of the mansion and it wound up costing a whopping $500,000 to construct. At the time it was the most expensive house in Hollywood. After Anthony’s widow passed away in the early 1950s, the mansion was purchased by Sir Daniel J. Donohue and his wife, who, in 1971, bequeathed the entire property to the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, who continued to own it until earlier this year.

Sadly, the 8.5-acre property is closed to the public and not much of it is visible from the street, but, as I’ve said many times before, that’s why God created aerial views! And you can see some fabulous close-up pictures of the former convent on the I.I.T.T.S. Facebook page here.

In the “Holiday Madness” episode of 90210, the former convent was used as Adrianna’s new, massively huge, $20,000-per-month rental.

Both the interior and the exterior of the property were used extensively in the episode . . .

. . . especially during Adrianna’s Christmas party scenes.

As I mentioned above, the property is also used extensively each season on the hit reality television show Celebrity Fit Club.

The Anthony House was also the site of the wine festival in the Season 4 episode of Brothers and Sisters titled “The Wine Festival”.

The property has also appeared in episodes of The A-Team, Dirty Sexy Money, Knight Rider, Dynasty, Airwolf, Falcon Crest, The Greatest American Hero, and Hart to Hart.

Big THANK YOU to Chas, from ItsFilmedThere, for finding this location! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Adrianna’s new house from 90210, aka the former Los Angeles Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary convent, is located at 3431 Waverly Drive in Los Feliz.

December 14, 2010December 6, 2013

Granville Towers – Portia de Rossi’s Former Home

I just recently finished reading Portia de Rossi’s new memoir Unbearable Lightness and I have to say that it was easily one of the best books I have ever read in my entire life! I literally could NOT put it down. The memoir is a harrowing account of the actress’ long-time eating disorder which consumed her life during the years she portrayed Nelle Porter on the hit television series Ally McBeal. Besides being a fabulous read, the book’s topic really hit home with me as I was once told by an acting teacher that I was “stocky” and needed to lose weight if I wanted to make it in this business. I was a size two at the time. Needless to say the notion of “there is no such thing as too thin” is alive and well in Hollywood. Thankfully I had a strong foundation to fall back on at home and was able to blow off my acting teacher’s words – and eventually her class. But it is easy to see why someone like Portia, who was already deeply insecure over the fact that she was gay and whose family lived a world away in Australia, would falter in that sort of environment. Her story is both heartbreaking and fascinating and I honestly cannot recommend reading it enough. Anyway, in the book, Portia talks about living in a penthouse unit at the legendary Granville Towers in West Hollywood, so as soon as I finished reading the tome, I immediately ran right out to stalk the place.

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The Granville Towers, which was originally an apartment building named The Voltaire, was built in 1930 in the French Revival style by architect Leland Bryant, who also designed one of my favorite hotels in Southern California – the Sunset Tower Hotel on Sunset Boulevard. The 7-story, 40-unit property was a celebrity magnet from the very beginning and such stars as Ann Sothern, Jack Lord, Arthur Treacher, Janet Gaynor, and Rock Hudson called the place home. My girl Marilyn Monroe even stayed there for a brief while after her divorce from Joe DiMaggio in 1954. In the 1980s, the property was transformed into a luxury hotel at which point it was renamed The Granville. A few years later it was transformed yet again, this time into an upscale condominium building, and Hollywood luminaries once again began calling the place home. Just a few of the celebrities who have lived there in more recent years include Nicole Scherzinger, Ashley Greene (her boyfriend Joe Jonas is a frequent visitor), Mickey Rourke, Brendan Fraser, David Bowie, Amy Locane, and Michael Michele.

Portia de Rossi lived in the building’s north tower penthouse from the late 1990s through mid-2002. Of first seeing the penthouse apartment, she said, “I felt as though I had been transported to an artist’s loft in a city like Philadelphia, which was much more exciting to me than where I actually was. Where I was, was predictable. But the apartment made me think there was more to life than being an actress on a David Kelly show.” She signed the papers on the spot and immediately set about transforming the upstairs attic loft into a workout room. Of her makeshift gym, she says, “The treadmill was really the only thing up there and was perfectly centered in the attic, between the wall of windows that showcased the industrial city that was the roof of the Sunset 5 and the east windows through which I could see all the way downtown. The wall opposite the smokestacks acted as a bulletin board where I had taped pieces of paper. Mostly the pieces were exaggerated to-do lists. I say ‘exaggerated’ because they said things that were more like goals that I wanted to achieve than things that needed to be done. The largest piece of paper with the boldest writing stated ‘I WILL BE 105 POUNDS BY CHRISTMAS’.” She also fastened a list of cards to the wall just to the left of her to-do list. Each card featured a number, beginning at 111 and running backwards. Portia was 111 pounds at the time and each time she lost a pound, she would remove a card. Of her weight wall, she says, “It helped keep me focused and it helped me to remember that once I’d achieved the new lower weight and the card stating my previous weight was gone, that I could never weigh that much again; that the old weight was gone. It was no longer who I was. It was getting more difficult to lose weight as I got thinner, so I needed all the incentive and motivation I could muster. Putting my weight on the wall was a clever thing to do as it always needed to be in the forefront of my mind, otherwise I might’ve forgotten and walked on the treadmill instead of run, sat instead of paced. I once saw a loft where a famous writer lived, and all over the wall was his research for the novel he was writing. He described the book to me as his life’s work, his magnum opus. I felt like controlling my weight was my magnum opus, the most important product of my brain and was worthy of devoting a wall to its success.” See what I mean? Absolutely riveting – and harrowing – stuff!

The Granville is a truly beautiful building and features a 24-hour doorman, valet parking, a lobby with a piano, an indoor pool and spa, and a large garden patio area complete with statuaries and fountains. You can view some great interior photographs of the building here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Granville Towers is located at 1424 North Crescent Heights Boulevard, just south of Sunset Boulevard, in West Hollywood.

December 8, 2010December 8, 2010

The Kaufmann House – One of the World’s Most Famous Houses

I thought I’d take another break from my wedding blogging today to write about a location that has occupied a spot at the very top of my “To-Stalk” list for over two years now, but had, for whatever reason, eluded me up until this past weekend when the Grim Cheaper and I headed to Palm Springs for a little pre-Christmas getaway. While we were there, I made it a point to finally, finally stalk what is known as one of the most iconic and, perhaps, most famous houses in the entire world; a residence that is as well-known, if not more so, than the White House, the Playboy Mansion, Neverland Ranch, and Fallingwater all put together, architecturally speaking at least – Richard Neutra’s legendary Kaufmann house.

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The Kaufmann house was originally built in 1946 by world-renowned mid-century modernist architect Richard Neutra. Amazingly enough, the residence was commissioned by Edgar J. Kaufmann Sr., the very same man who also commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to construct another of the world’s most famous houses – the property known as Fallingwater in Mill Run, Pennsylvania. It is amazing to me that two of the most iconic dwellings in the entire world were constructed for the same man, especially since they were designed by different architects. I can’t even imagine owning one of the residences, let alone both of them! But I digress. Anyway, Neutra designed the International-style Kaufmann House, or Kaufmann Desert House as it is also known, out of steel, aluminum, glass, and stone at a cost of $295,000. Famed photographer Julius Schulman’s 1947 images of the home turned the place into an architectural landmark virtually overnight, but, sadly, after Kaufmann’s death in 1955, the property sat vacant for several years. In the time period that followed, the pinwheel-shaped dwelling went through a succession of different owners – singer Barry Manilow even occupied the place for a few years – and a slew of unsightly renovations. In 1993, the Kaufmann House was purchased for a cool $1.5 million by an architectural historian named Beth Harris and her husband, an investment manager named Brent. The two quickly set about a massive painstaking and costly restoration of the entire property, bringing it back to its original glory. In a mind-boggling-bit of trivia, though, according to an October 2007 New York Times article, at the time the duo bought the residence, it had not only been on the market for over three and a half years, but was being listed as a “teardown”!

The Harrises had not actually originally set out to buy the home, but had been stalking the property (so love it!) when Brent noticed a “For Sale” sign situated among the overgrown foliage. The purchase turned out to be a fateful one, though, being that the couple’s decision to restore the residence is largely credited with setting into motion the massive mid-century modernist restoration movement that Palm Springs is now known for.

The Kaufmann House is not only considered to be one of Richard Neutra’s finest designs, but also one of the most important examples of mid-century modernist architecture in the entire world and one of the most publicized homes in architectural history. The property has been featured in countless magazines and periodicals over its 64-year history, including Palm Springs Life, Time, and Life Magazine, as well as in numerous architectural books. In 1996, it was designated a Class 1 Historic Site by the Palm Springs Historic Site Preservation Board.

When the Harrises divorced in 2007, they decided to sell their beloved property. But a unique house deserves a unique sale, so it was put up for purchase via an auction at Christie’s. Most unusual about the sale, though, was the fact that Christie’s categorized the home not as a residence or a piece of property, but as a work of art! The house sold at auction for a whopping $19.1 million, but fell out of escrow shortly thereafter. It hit the market once again a few months later, this time as a regular real estate sale, for just under $12.9 million, but I don’t believe it ever sold and it looks as if it has since been taken off the market.

The 5-bedroom, 6-bathroom, 3,200-square foot home, which sits on over 2 full acres of land, features floor-to-ceiling sliding (or “disappearing”) glass walls, indoor-outdoor living space, a wall of moveable aluminum sheets that can either be closed to keep out the sun or opened to take advantage of the mid-afternoon breeze, a second-story “gloriette” or outdoor sleeping area, a separate viewing platform, a large pool, a tennis court, and striking mountain views. You can check out some fabulous interior photographs of the Kauffman House here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Kaufmann house is located at 470 West Vista Chino in Palm Springs.

October 29, 2010September 29, 2017

The Fisher & Sons Funeral Home from “Six Feet Under”

One location that I stalked well over a year ago, but for whatever reason have yet to blog about, is the Victorian-style residence which stood in for the supposed North Hollywood-area Fisher & Sons (and later Fisher-Diaz) Funeral Home on the immensely popular HBO series Six Feet Under. Amazingly enough, up until yesterday morning, I had never seen even one episode of the show and, unfortunately, I have to say that after watching the pilot episode yesterday morning, I wasn’t all that impressed with it. It’s a bit of an odd series. The only part I enjoyed was one of the opening scenes in which David Fisher (aka a pre-Dexter Michael C. Hall) tells a supposedly grieving widower (played by Harper Roisman) that his wife is at peace now, to which the widower replies, “If there’s any justice in the universe, she’s shoveling sh*t in hell!” LOL LOL LOL

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But while I didn’t especially like the pilot, I did absolutely fall in love the main house featured in it. In real life, the property is known as the Auguste Marquis Residence and it was originally built in the Queen Anne/Eastlake style (much like the “Thriller” house that I blogged about yesterday) in 1904 and is Los Angeles’ 602nd historic cultural monument. The dwelling, which currently houses the Filipino Federation of America, boasts 5 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a whopping 6,324 square feet of living space, and sits on over half an acre of land. The home was originally built for a Swiss native named Auguste Rodolphe Marquis, who worked for Death Valley’s Johnnie Consolidated Gold Mining Company, from which he made a considerable fortune. The property was purchased shortly after the second World War by General Hilario Camino Moncado, a native of the Philippines and founder of the Filipino Federation. His heirs still own the property to this day.

The Auguste Marquis Residence was featured each week as the home where the dysfunctional Fisher Family – siblings David, Nate (aka Peter Krause), and Claire (aka Lauren Ambrose) and their mother Ruth (aka Frances Conroy) – lived and operated their mortuary business on Six Feet Under, which ran from 2001 through 2005.

In real life, the Fisher & Sons Funeral Home sign is, of course, not there.

And while the home was mostly just used for establishing shots, some occasional filming was also done onsite there throughout the series five year-run, as was the case with the pilot episode, screen captures of which are pictured above.

The interior of the Fisher home was a set that was built on a soundstage at the Columbia/Sunset Gower Studios in Hollywood and, from what I’ve been able to discern online, looks nothing like the interior of the actual Auguste Marquis Residence. A short film named Good Night was also filmed on location at the Six Feet Under funeral home in September of 2009 and Don Cunanan, the set photographer, snapped some pictures of the filming, in which you can see some of the residence’s real life interior. You can take a look at those photographs here.

On a coincidental side note – I was floored to spot Mountain View Cemetery, which I just blogged about this past Tuesday, featured quite extensively in the pilot episode of Six Feet Under, as the site of the funeral of Nathaniel Samuel Fisher (aka Richard Jenkins).

And I’d like to wish all of my fellow stalkers a VERY happy Halloween! Hope your holiday is fun and candy-filled!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Filipino Federation of America – aka Fisher & Sons funeral home from Six Feet Under – is located at 2302 West 25th Street in the West Adams District of Los Angeles.