Tuesday, October 21, 2008

No. 192 - (Site of) Franklin Garden Apartments

Franklin Garden Apartments

(Site of) Franklin Garden Apartments
1920 – L.H. Baldwin
6917-6933 Franklin Avenue – map
Declared: 6/7/78

Can any of you out there in Big Orange Landmarksland get your mitts on a street-level photograph of the good old Franklin Garden Apartments? I’ve gone to all the usual suspects and then some for just one good picture, but I’ve come up tragically empty when it comes to finding anything other than overhead shots. If you have a photo, or know of one, please give me the heads up, through comments or emailing me. It sure would be a shame if there’s no better record of HCM No. 192, gone for thirty years now.

The Franklin Garden Apartments were built in Hollywood in 1920. Designed by L.H. Baldwin, the building, according to the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission, was “an outstanding example of early California Spanish architecture, incorporating beautiful landscaping.”

Tom Glover, Sr, owner of much of the hill off Franklin including the apartment building, wanted to accommodate Milt Larsen,
the man who founded the Magic Castle (HCM No. 406) and was leasing the Castle’s property next door. Simply, Larsen (most famous for serving as technical consultant on 1971’s Bedknobs and Broomsticks) wanted the decaying Franklin Garden’s land for a parking lot. Glover, a member of the Hollywood Revitalization Committee, issued eviction notices to tenants in March 1978, and obtained a demolition permit. In order to at least slow down the razing process, a group of preservationists and renters petitioned the city to declare the apartment building an official landmark. After being presented a slideshow featuring shots of the building’s “stone fireplaces, plaster molding, wrought-iron fixtures, open-beam ceilings, tile roofs” (where are those pictures?), the Cultural Heritage Commission was convinced the semi-decrepit Franklin Garden Apartments were worth saving. After the designation, Glover returned the demo permit but began lobbying hard for again getting the approval to remove the run-down, nearly sixty-year-old building. He went so far as to photograph other, similar period buildings to prove Franklin Garden was neither distinctive architecturally nor worth saving. He won, and another demolition permit was issued in July 1978, just a month after designation.

(Site of) Franklin Garden Apartments
Where the Franklin Garden Apartments stood for fifty-eight years.

Why were the Franklin Garden Apartments allowed to deteriorate so much in the first place? Well, in the early 1970s, the city announced plans to widen Franklin Avenue, and, as destruction was always right around the proverbial corner, Glover began to rent the future landmark’s units “as-is” at low rents on a month-to-month basis. By the time those widening plans were tossed in 1977, the building had warranted repairs both major and minor.

While I pulled the black and white photo above from the city’s Department of City Planning website, it originally accompanied a Los Angeles Times piece on the landmark’s imminent demise in 1978 (here, it looks like a scan). It was taken by Len Lehman. To see a similar view, post-apartments, click here.

And, in closing, a picture of the parking lot today. That’s the Magic Castle in the background, left.

(Site of) Franklin Garden Apartments

Source:

Hendrix, Kathleen “Presto! An Apartment’s Vanishing Act” The Los Angeles Times; Jun 21, 1978, p. H1


Up next: Pantages Theatre

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Saturday, October 18, 2008

No. 191 - Luckenbach House

Luckenbach House

Luckenbach House
1887 – J.L. Frank
1441-1443 ½ Carroll Avenue – map
Declared: 5/3/78

Designed by architect J.L. Frank and built by William Rommel & Co. at a cost of $10,000 in 1887, this Victorian structure was originally a single family, ten-room residence for businessman James S. Luckenbach. The most interesting period in the house’s history, though, is when the house was a hospital back in the early 1900s.

Kaspare Cohn (born 6/14/1839 in West Prussia), in 1902 donated the building and “a considerable sum of money” to the Hebrew Benevolent Society. The home had been rented out as the Wooley Sanitarium, but now, Cohn, who’d go on to found the Commercial and Savings Bank in 1914 (it’d later be renamed Union Bank & Trust Co. of Los Angeles), wanted a hospital to cater to L.A.’s Jewish community (he was president of the Temple B’nai B’rith congregation) as a memorial to his late brother, Samuel. (Kaspare gained his fortune in a variety of ways, but I can tell you he sure made a bundle when he and his partners sold the La Puente rancho to Lucky Baldwin for $250,000.)

Luckenbach House
From the USC Digital Archive.

Officials dedicated Kaspare Cohn Hospital at 3:00 p.m. on September 21, 1902, with a pair of nurses overseeing a dozen beds. Memorial rooms were donated at $250 each, beds at $100 each. While there was a stated policy that “only Jews will be admitted”, the Society’s president, J. Schlesinger, told the press the hospital wouldn’t refuse care to anyone “whose case needs attention.” The hospital was not only free, but it was also the sole institution in the city where tubercular patients would be admitted, your only option in the area being the County Hospital, and its reputation wasn’t all that sterling. Dr Phillip Newmark was the physician in charge at Kaspare Cohn Hospital.

Take a look at this chunk of a 1906 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map. See where the hospital is, then compare (and contrast!) the image with this one, from twelve years prior.

1906 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map

In late 1903, a Los Angeles Times article announced Miss Mae Comport, who joined Kaspare Cohn’s staff at the age of twenty-two when it opened and had served as its superintendent for half a year, was the youngest hospital superintendent in the United States. When the write-up appeared that December, the hospital was claiming just six deaths in its short history of one hundred patients. By this time, there were fifteen beds with an average of eight patients at any one time.

Mae Comport & May Gray
Mae/May

When hospital officials purchased an adjoining lot and announced plans for an expansion that would include space for paying patients, neighbors, unhappy with “lungers” being within breathing distance, ratcheted up their dissatisfaction a few notches. In early 1904, city council asked for an ordinance barring any facility treating tuberculosis patients from within 250 feet of a residence, schoolhouse, or church. Deferred temporarily, that action had the hospital announcing by January 1905 its intention to sell the building and relocate just outside city limits.

Luckenbach House

Later that year, Dr Sarah Vasen, one the city’s first female doctors, became Kaspare Cohn Hospital’s resident superintendent, living at the Carroll Avenue house and remaining with the hospital until its move five years later.

Luckenbach House

Let’s jump to September 1909 when the hospital awarded building contracts for a pair of new structures on a five-acre plot on Stephenson Avenue (renamed Whittier Boulevard in 1922) between Dorris and Calhoun Streets in Boyle Heights. Edelman & Barnett were the architects behind the new complex, which would sport a fifty-bed main hospital and a tubercular ward with another ten cots. The new Kaspare Cohn Hospital was dedicated in June the following year. Per the request of the Cohn family (Kaspare Cohn died on November 19, 1916), the hospital was renamed Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in the summer of 1929. A new home for Cedars was dedicated on Fountain Avenue on May 10, 1930. It merged with Mount Sinai in 1961 to form Cedar-Sinai Medical Center.

Back to the landmarked Victorian. Alterations in the 1930s enlarged the front porch to allow for another door as the Queen Anne house was carved into four separate units, which is its make-up today.

From L.A.'s Department of City Planning, here's a shot, maybe from around the designation in the late 1970s?

Luckenbach House

Unless the street gets more designations, we’ve got just one more landmark on Carroll Avenue to visit, and that’s HCM No. 399, the Bates House, which we’ll see about a year from now. Don't go anywhere.

Luckenbach House

Sources:

“Hebrew Hospital.” The Los Angeles Times; May 9, 1902, p. A6

“Jews To Open New Hospital” The Los Angeles Times; Sep 21, 1902, p. B7

“Hebrews Dedicate Kaspare Cohn Hospital.” The Los Angeles Times; Sep 22, 1902, p. 144

“Youngest Manager of Hospital Work.” The Los Angeles Times; Dec 6, 1903, p. A1

“Care of Indigent Consumptives.” The Los Angeles Times; Jan 26, 1904, p. A2

“Tubercular Case” The Los Angeles Times; Apr 9, 1904, p. A2

“Jews Extending Benevolent Work” The Los Angeles Times; Jan 23, 1905, p. I5

“Hospital Will Be a Model.” The Los Angeles Times; Sep 5, 1909, p. V1

Up next: (Site of) Franklin Garden Apartments

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Tuesday, October 14, 2008

No. 190 - Kaiser House and Carriage House

Kaiser House and Carriage House

Kaiser House and Carriage House
c. 1889
1411 Carroll Avenue – map
Declared: 5/3/78

Yet another Victorian beauty on Carroll Avenue, this Eastlake-style house sits just to the west of HCM No. 188, the Winston House. Unlike with that home, we don’t know who the architect behind this landmark was, but we do know who the first owners were.

Kaiser House

Frank Kaiser was a 48-year-old widower in Louisville in 1888 when he up and married 18-year-old Ms Emma Vogel. They headed to California the next year, moving into this home in the new neighborhood of Angelino Heights (or Angeleno Heights). Soon after, they were joined by another pair of newlyweds, Joseph Mergen (Frank’s nephew) and his wife, Carrie (Emma’s sister). Here’s a photo of the couple of couples, taken in the early 1890s. We’ve got the Mergens on the left, Kaisers on the right.

Kaiser House and Carriage House, Winston House
Kaiser House and Winson House

Well, having a bride thirty years his junior had its effect on poor Frank – he died a few years after landing in L.A., in 1892, at the age of 53. And being married to Frank’s nephew was bad luck for Carrie, too. She died right around the same time, she just 21 years old. Other relatives came to stay at 1411, including Emma’s mom. Emma lived until in 1919, and Grandma Vogel died two years later. Will Vogel then bought the house.

Kaiser House
The designs on either side, flanking the central burst, don't match those in the black and white shot, do they?

Below is a clip of an 1894 Sanborn fire insurance map. You can see HCM Nos 188 and 189, side by side. At the left there’s also No. 191. And, to the right, is our old friend, No. 75, the Pinney House. Finally, in the upper-left, on Kellam Avenue, is No. 321, the Eastlake Inn. Let’s see if I’m still blogging in 2010 when this one comes up.

1894 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map

At the time of the Kaiser House’s declaration in 1978, the Safer family had been living there for thirty-three years. They were the house’s third owners, buying it from a man named or not named Holland. It’s easy to see why the home – with no huge exterior alterations (I miss the roof's ironwork, though) – was designated a city landmark. However, according to a file in the city’s Office of Historic Resources, “… the real inspiration for the nomination is the interior dining room in perfect condition with a wall & ceiling relief finish [sic] in sculptured fresco.” I don’t know if this means there was an exterior dining room.

Kaiser House's Carriage House
The Kaiser Carriage House

All comedy aside, though. Comparing the pictures from a couple of weeks ago to the one taken nearly 120 years ago, you can see not much of the house has changed. The stone wall along the sidewalk is gone, of course, and the carriage house has been altered, but it seems every generation of homeowner has done its best in preserving this landmark. (You can see more changes in its next-door neighbor, the Winston House.)

Kaiser House and Winson House
Kaiser House

Up next: Luckenbach House

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Friday, October 10, 2008

No. 189 - Winston House

Winston House

Winston House
1889 – Joseph Cather Newsom
1407 Carroll Avenue – map
Declared: 5/3/78

Joseph Cather Newsom built this house in 1889 for John B. Winston, agent of the Bradbury Estate, engineer. That’s according to the Picture Album of Historic Angelino Heights. Also from that 1978 booklet:
“This residence patterned on Newsom’s “El Capitan” design has an interesting angular bay and two original art glass windows. The inside foyer features hand-carved columns and graceful hall bench. A sliding redwood door with a pressed ivory motif separates the two front parlors, each of which contain two Victorian mantelpieces with decorative ceramic tiles. Also note the Lincrusta-Walton wainscot in the dining room and hallway. Both bathroom and kitchen retain some of the original Victorian built-in cupboards. Of particular interest is the Victorian butler’s pantry in the dining room.”
I like this house real well, and it’s one of my favorites on this historic street. This post, however, is going to take a slight detour and center around the local architecture of J.C. Newsom, designed alone or with his brother, Samuel.

Winston House
Winston House
Winston House

Joseph Cather (1857-1930) and Samuel Newsom (1848-1908) were two of eight boys in a twelve-child Canadian clan. Born in Montreal, the brothers moved with the family to the California Bay Area in the early 1860s.

Samuel Newsom
Samuel Newsom

Samuel and Joseph trained in their elder brothers’ architectural firm on San Francisco’s Montgomery Street. The pair began their own partnership in 1878 with an office in Oakland, then a main office at 504 Kearny Street in San Francisco. They built their most famous building, the Carson Mansion in Eureka, CA, between 1884 and 1886.

Joseph Cather Newsom
Joseph Cather Newsom

J.C. came south in 1886 to take advantage of the southland’s real estate boom, setting up the firm’s branch office at 108 North Main Street. By January 1888, the Newsom Brothers gave up their partnership, with Samuel retaining control of the Northern California offices while J.C. kept the L.A. branch. That same year, Joseph, living around this time at 816 West 9th Street, moved his office to the brand new Bryson-Bonebrake Building on the northwest corner of Second and Spring Streets, a building designed by the Newsom Brothers. Looking at the year and a half or so the brothers were in business together with the L.A. branch open, it’s pretty tough to determine what in SoCal is the work of the brothers versus J.C. alone. I think J.C. would like us to believe most of the Newsom Brothers area work during that time is his. Anything post-split, I’ll gladly give the nod to J.C. alone.

Soon, though, the boom had slowed considerably, and J.C. returned to San Francisco in 1889/1890 as an independent architect. Perhaps because of a commission or the promise of work, the younger Newsom moved to Philadelphia in late 1896 or early 1897. Sometime after the turn of the century, he returned to the Bay Area and went back in partnership with his brother and, at one point, with him and his nephew, Samuel’s son, Sidney B. By 1903, J.C. was back in Los Angeles, where he worked until late in 1906 – sometime after the San Francisco Earthquake – when he returned to the Bay Area. He continued to design buildings off and on until his death on June 5, 1930.

Now, today, we have no way of knowing how many buildings for which the Newsom Brothers were responsible – alone and separately – for a few reasons. First, most of their records were destroyed in that 1906 earthquake and subsequent fire. Also, the brothers published several plan books throughout their careers. It’s likely there were untold houses built – maybe even around the world – using their designs, if not with their direct involvement. According to Harriet von Breton, the number of buildings in the Newsom output reached more than 650.

The San Dimas Hotel
The San Dimas Hotel

As noted, J.C. Newsom originally relocated to Los Angeles to take advantage of the city’s first real-estate boom. New towns and developments were spring up all over the southland. As a matter of course, the first building put up in any of these locations would invariably be a hotel. The brothers began working with a series of developers, creating as many as twenty-eight of these boomtown hotels locally. Just about none of them exists today, and most of us never got the chance to see such Newsom hotels including the Hotel Glendale, the Mission Hotel in San Fernando, and the Burbank Villa Hotel. The sole remaining Newsom hotel is actually one of their first, the Sam Dimas Hotel, AKA the Walker House, currently being restored in San Dimas. (The San Dimas and Mission hotels busted early and were almost immediately converted into homes, the Glendale became a sanitarium while the Burbank Villa changed its name to the Santa Rosa.)

San Dimas Hotel
San Dimas Hotel close-up

Most of the buildings the Newsoms created were Victorian residences. We’ve already seen J.C.’s work at the Lewis and Sessions houses and possibly the home at 3537 Griffin Avenue. We’re also going to see the Fitzgerald House at Monument No. 258 (it’s for sale, folks!) and, much later on, No. 565, the Charles Greenshaw House. They’re still standing, so go see them.

Sadly, most of their homes have long been demolished. This includes the Bunker Hill mansions, of course, like the Hildreth and, maybe the L.A. building I most wish were still around, the Bradbury Mansion. (J.C. may or may not have also built the Hill’s Melrose Hotel.) Other L.A. Newsom homes you can’t visit? How about the residences for Messrs Shatto, Flint, Bryan, Cosby, Baker, Jevne, Garnsey, Loew, Boal, and Robinson?

Granada Hills Victorian
Granada Hills home

As the 20th Century seemingly wouldn’t stop, Pacoima, of all places, had become noted for a pair of Newsom Victorians. One has been moved to Granada Hills (this home’s for sale, too!). The other, still standing on Judd Street, has been smothered in stucco.

Judd Street House
Stuccoed in Pacoima

If you’re ever in Sierra Madre, you can see the brothers’ Pinney House. The front porch’s spindle work and swan’s neck pediment were taken from a house being demolished on Wilshire Boulevard in the 1930s and added to the house by a film crew.

Pinney House
Pinney House
Pinney House

Farther east, in Monrovia, there’s Idlewild, a home Samuel and J.C. built for General William Anderson Pile and his wife, Hannah Cain Pile. Legend has it Theodore Roosevelt spoke from the balcony. And, nearby the Pile House, stands the landmark Mill’s View, built for William Monroe, founder of Monrovia, as an 1887 wedding gift to his eldest son, Milton Monroe. Gebhard and Winter suggest this may be a Newsom house, but it's more likely the work of Solon I. Haas, who also designed the elder Monroe's home, the Oaks.

Idlewild
Mill's View
Idewild (top) and Mill's View (bottom)

By the time J.C. was serving his second stint in Los Angeles, the Mission Revival style had crept in his quiver, as can be seen in HCM No. 565. I wish his Ocean Park Bath House (1905) in Santa Monica were still around, but it’s not. What is around, though, is his 1904 home built for Mrs A.P. Posey near Chester Square, now known as the Severance House. It’s certainly got some Mission Revival elements.

Severance House
Severance House

And, sadly, that’s all that remains locally of the work by Joseph Cather Newsom, both with his brother, Samuel, and solo. Of course, there may be others out there, undocumented and/or altered beyond recognition. All of these extant buildings I tracked with the help of Gebhard and Winter’s Los Angeles: An Architectural Guide (I used a 1994 edition – it includes two additional Newsom homes which have since bitten the dust).

Finally, I regret not plotting my photography schedule better. No matter where I went for the non-landmark Newsoms – Granada Hills, Pacoima, Sierra Madre, Monrovia, and West Adams – it turns out I and my camera were always looking into the face of the sun. I need to plan better.

Winston House

Sources:

Newsom, Samuel and Joseph C. Newsom with introduction by David Gebhard Picturesque California Homes; a Volume of Forty Plates, Plans, Details and Specifications of Houses Costing from $700 to $15,000, and Adpated to Families Having Good Taste and Moderate Means. Hennessey & Ingalls, Inc. 1978 Los Angeles; Facsimile of 1st ed., San Francisco: Samuel and Joseph C. Newsom, 1884

Newsom, Joseph C. with foreword by R.L. Samsell; introduction by Jeanne C. Bennett Artistic Building and Homes of Los Angeles Calliope Press 1981 Los Angeles; Facsimile of 1st ed., Los Angeles: J. C. Newsom, 1888

Gebhard, David, Harriette Von Breton, Robert W. Winter Samuel and Joseph Cather Newsom: Victorian Acrhitectural Imagery in California 1878- 1908 USCB Art Museum, Santa Barbara, April 4 trough May 6, 1979 and The Oakland Museum, Oakland, May 22 through August 12, 1979


Up next: 1411 Carroll Avenue Residence and Carriage House

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Tuesday, October 7, 2008

No. 188 - U.S.S. Los Angeles Naval Monument

U.S.S. Los Angeles Naval Monument

U.S.S. Los Angeles Naval Monument
1977 – Terryle Smeed
John S. Gibson, Jr Park, Harbor Boulevard a 6th Street, San Pedro – map
Declared: 5/3/78

I wonder if the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission noted the incongruity of the same-day designations of Historic-Cultural Monuments No. 187, the Korean Bell and Belfry of Friendship, and No. 188, the monument of the heavy cruiser U.S.S. Los Angeles (CA-135), which, just twenty-five years earlier, was under enemy fire in its second tour of duty in the Korean War.

U.S.S Los Angeles

The bits and pieces which make up Monument No. 188 are from the third of four U.S. Navy ships named the Los Angeles. The first Los Angeles was a 435-foot boat built in San Francisco and commissioned in August 1917. The second was an airship, 2R-3, christened in 1924 and scrapped eight years later. The fourth and current Los Angeles – U.S.S. Los Angeles SSN-688 – is a nuclear-powered submarine.

U.S.S. Los Angeles Naval Monument

The U.S.S. Los Angeles (CA-135) memorialized at San Pedro’s L.A. Maritime Museum and Gibson Park was built with war bonds raised by the city and county of Los Angeles (we bought nearly $80.4 million worth of bonds in that drive, enough to pay for this ship plus four destroyers). Built in the Philadelphia Naval Yard, the 675-foot heavy cruiser was launched on August 20, 1944 with Irene Bowron, the wife of L.A. Mayor Fletcher Bowron, acting as the ship’s sponsor. The Los Angeles was commissioned on July 22, 1945, with Captain John A. Snackenberg in command.

U.S.S. Los Angeles Naval Monument
The Los Angeles’s mainmast, anchors, mooring bits, and capstan cover.

After its commissioning, the ship had a brief training period near Cuba, returning to San Pedro from Guantanamo Bay in mid-October. It left California on December 8, 1945, and, after a stop at Pearl Harbor, arrived in Shanghai at the beginning of 1945. The Los Angeles, with a few changes of captain, was assigned to the 7th Fleet in the Shanghai and Hong Kong area. It was decommissioned April 9, 1948.

U.S.S. Los Angeles Naval Monument
U.S.S. Los Angeles Naval Monument

As the Korean War heated up, the Los Angeles, with Captain Robert N. MacFarlane, USN, in command, was recommissioned on January 27, 1951. After more training cruises and a stop at the Long Beach Naval Shipyard, the big boat was off again to Pearl Harbor. It arrived in Yokosuka, Japan, at the end of May 1951, seeing action for the first time during the Korean War. The Los Angeles sailed to Inchon in early July, but, by December, the ship was back in Yokosuka where it was relieved by the U.S.S. Manchester. The U.S.S. Los Angeles returned to California on December 5.




See a video of the Los Angeles refueling at sea here.

The U.S.S. Los Angeles made its second Korean War tour of duty on October 9, 1952. In the spring of 1953, she suffered two rounds of hits in which a dozen men were wounded. Watch the men receive their Purple Heart in this film.

U.S.S. Los Angeles Ships Bell

For five and a half years beginning in November 1953, the U.S.S. Los Angeles made six more deployments to the Far East on peace-keeping missions. Her last two cruises were in 1961 and 1962, returning to Long Beach in June 1963. The ship was decommissioned there on November 15, 1963, after which it entered the Pacific Reserve Fleet at San Diego.

The U.S.S. Los Angeles was stricken from Navy records in January 1974. She was scrapped the following year.

Bridge of the U.S.S. Los Angeles
The U.S.S. Los Angeles bridge.

The U.S.S. Los Angeles Naval Memorial was dedicated on December 1, 1977, to the men and ships of the U.S. Navy. In Gibson Park, along with memorials to the fishing industry, the two longshoremen who were killed in a 1934 strike, and American merchant marine veterans, stands the Los Angeles’s mainmast, anchors, mooring bits, and capstan cover. The monument was laid out by Terryle Smeed.

U.S.S. Los Angeles Naval Monument

The ship’s bell, removed during a 1960 overhaul, stands to the left of the L.A. Maritime Museum across the street, while a portion of its bow is to its right. Inside the museum, you’ll find all sorts of artifacts from the Los Angeles, including the boat’s bridge.

Please visit this web page, the work of Mr George Bell, for an extensive history, memorials, visitors’ log, and photograph and video collection of the U.S.S. Los Angeles. It’s where I took the black and white shot here as well as much of the information.

U.S.S. Los Angeles Naval Monument

Up next: 1407 Carroll Avenue Residence

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Saturday, October 4, 2008

No. 187 - Korean Bell and Belfry of Friendship

Korean Bell and Belfry of Friendship

Korean Bell and Belfry of Friendship
1976 – Kim Se-jung
Angels Gate Park, Gaffey and 37th Streets, San Pedro – map
Declared: 5/3/78

Weighing nearly 18 ¾ tons, this twelve-foot tall bell was a gift of the South Korean government to commemorate the United States’ bicentennial. And not only did South Korea give us the bell, the country also sent over about three dozen workers to build the striking pavilion in which the bell rests today. First, Taekwondo, then this.

Korean Bell and Belfry of Friendship
Korean Bell and Belfry of Friendship

Kim Se-jung designed the San Pedro landmark, known as the Friendship Bell, as a replica of the Divine Bell of King Songdok the Great (the 33rd king of Shilla, remember?). (That big bell, also known as the Emilie Bell or the Pongdoksa Bell, was built in A.D.771 and is today situated on the grounds of the Kyongju National Museum.)

Korean Bell and Belfry of Friendship
Korean Bell and Belfry of Friendship
Bell of Friendship

Our Los Angeles bell is an alloy of tin, copper, gold, and silver, with a pinch of phosphorous, but, unlike the 1,237-year-old Korean version, our bell lacks baby. The bell’s rim, almost twenty-four-feet in circumference, is banded by Korea’s national flower, the Rose of Sharon, which really isn’t even a rose if you want to know the truth. To mark the friendship of the two countries, four sets of two figures – the Goddess of Liberty and a Korean spirit – are also engraved on the bell. While the four goddesses are holding torches, the spirits are bearing the Korean flag, the Rose of Sharon, a laurel branch, and a dove of peace.

Korean Bell and Belfry of Friendship
Korean Bell and Belfry of Friendship

When the thirty-five Korean stonemasons (suk kongs), tile-setters (wha kongs), and carpenters came over from Seoul to work on the belfry, they brought with them 435 tons of stone, traditional blue tile, and other materials. Living in a pair of Fort MacArthur army barracks, the crew wound up working twelve to fourteen hours a day to finish up by dedication day.

The tanch’ong-styled bell pavilion is supported by a dozen columns, representing the twelve signs of the Oriental zodiac.

Korean Bell and Belfry of Friendship
Korean Bell and Belfry of Friendship

Located in Angels Gate Park on Fort MacArthur’s old Upper Reservation, the Friendship Bell is rung four times a year: July 4th; August 15th (Korean Independence Day); New Year's Eve; and sometime in September to celebrate Constitution week. Rather than being struck with a clapper, the Friendship Bell is rung with this wooden log:

Korean Bell and Belfry of Friendship
Korean Bell and Belfry of Friendship

The bell and belfry have got to be one of the youngest – if not the youngest – L.A. Historic-Cultural Monuments, having been declared an official landmark just nineteen months after its dedication on October 3, 1976.

Korean Bell and Belfry of Friendship
Korean Bell and Belfry of Friendship
Korean Friendship Bell Information Center
The Korean Friendship Bell Information Center

When you visit HCM No. 187, right next to the Pacific Ocean, make sure you pop in the Korean Friendship Bell Information Center (above), also in Angels Gate Park.

Finally, the IMDb.com says you can see the Friendship Bell in 1995’s The Usual Suspects. I haven’t seen the movie since it came out, probably, so I don’t remember.

Korean Bell and Belfry of Friendship

Source:

Hillinger, Charles “West Coast ‘Liberty Bell’” The Los Angeles Times Sep 16, 1976, p. C1


Up next: U.S.S. Los Angeles Naval Monument

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