This past weekend, I got to spend time marveling at some of the most-beautiful buildings in LA's historic Broadway District thanks to the Los Angeles Conservancy. For a few hours Saturday morning, I wandered in and around old theaters, movie houses and business hubs, some refurbished, some in desperate need of love and attention.
The tour featured stops in the Million Dollar Theater, Bradbury Building, former Cloons Theater, The Orpheum and a former Panteges Theater. The Bradbury Building and Orpheum are in fantastic shape, having been painstakingly restored by current owners willing to invest the millions is takes to keep 100-year-old buildings looking good as new. The Million Dollar Theater is still being used and maintains a lot of its original grandeur.
Exterior of the Million Dollar Theater
The Bradbury Building decorated for Christmas
The Orpheum's marquee
The Cloons and Panteges theaters haven't fared as well. Once the longest-running movie theater in the area, Cloons is now an electronics store, but walk through a curtain behind the register into the storeroom and the projection room and screen still remain.
Cloons exterior
Old screen at Cloons
The former Panteges, one of more than a dozen theaters built in Los Angeles bearing the name, is now a jewelry mall. Though the floor was leveled, the stage, curtain, balcony, boxes and decorated ceiling still remain, frozen in time above the jewelers' stalls.
Exterior of the old Panteges
Walking through those two buildings makes me wonder about the other hidden gems inside of downtown LA shops.
Following the more than two-hour walking tour, I drove a few miles west to Angelus Rosedale Cemetery, founded in 1884 and final resting place to notable Angelenos. It's also the final resting place of my great-grandmother and great-great-grandfather.
My maternal grandfather lost his mother when he was just 7 years old. She died during the Spanish Influenza epidemic that followed World War I. I know very little about her and didn't realize she had lived, died and been buried in Los Angeles until I got a packet of genealogy records from my paternal grandmother that included the burial certificates for my great-grandmother and great-great-grandfather.
I found my great-great-grandfather, a Civil War veteran, first. He's buried in a special section dedicated to the Grand Army of the Republic. In his section are rows of dozens and dozens of Civil War veterans, all marked with the same simple headstone listing their name, company number and battalion. Some of these markers are more than 100 years old so the names have pretty much disappeared. Looking at marker after marker, trying to make out whatever letters remained, I started losing hope that I would find my great-great-grandfather.
Honoring the Grand Army of the Republic
I did have a clue, though, I knew he was in plot 23. I kept my head down looking for markers, feeling more and more hopeless halfway through my third row when I saw a marker that said 23. I was getting somewhere! Right next to the marker I saw the name, so clear of, of my great-great-grandfather.
Lucky number 23
My great-great-grandfather's marker
It was an overwhelming moment for me and one that I was so grateful to have.
Finding my great-grandmother wasn't as easy. I circled around the cemetery several times trying to find her section. Finally, I found someone who worked at the cemetery to help me. I gave him my paperwork and he located her plot on a large map in a staffroom. He led me to her section at the furthest end of the cemetery, and we started looking for names.
He took one row and I took the other. He asked if she had a marker and I said she must, though it had been so long I didn't know what shape it would be in (the cemetery looked like it took quite a beating in the recent wind storms, so many headstones had been toppled and broken). I looked at the last marker in the row, right next to the fence bordering the street and saw the word "Mama," then the name of my great-grandmother, who was listed as my great-grandfather's wife, and the years of her birth and death.
My great-grandmother's marker
She was 35 when she died and left behind two small boys and a husband.
I thanked the man for helping me find her and then sat quietly for a while as dusk approached. I thought about my grandfather who I still miss so much and how hard it must have been for him to lose him mom, how much he must have missed her his whole life.
I still have so much to learn about my grandfather's family but feel like this trip did start me on the path to discovering so much more about them and our shared history in Los Angeles.
I took 115 pictures on Saturday. Thanks to the wind storms, the sky was bright blue and gorgeous. Drop me a line if you'd like to see more.
No comments:
Post a Comment