The stunning Art Deco Port Silver Diner at 5260 N. Port Washington Road in Milwaukee, Wisconsin as it was in the 1940s… and below as it appears today…
… a Burger King.
Home of the Whopper.
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in Real Gone PlacesFrom the category archives:
Real Gone Places
The highly appealing Otto’s Pink Pig at 4954 Van Nuys Blvd. in glamorous Sherman Oaks, California c. 1950, and below, the site today…
… a pod mall with a Subway, a Yogurtland, and a beauty parlor where my Aunt Laura used to get her hair done.
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in Real Gone Places
The distinctive neon of the Wagon Wheel Motel… which drew visitors from the 101 Freeway at Oxnard Blvd. in glamorous Oxnard, California, with its kitsch bowling alley and mid-century design… just look at the cowboy-ish splendor in the below pic.
After a long battle waged by preservationists who wanted to save the structure, it was demolished in 2011 for a proposed “European themed” residential complex with shops. The site now looks like this…
Very European.
And now this…
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in Real Gone Places, architecture
The very friendly-looking Biltmore Hotel as it stood in 1930 at 330-332 East Pettigrew Street in Durham, North Carolina, with its handy drugstore at street level. The Brick and masonry structure stood for over forty years but fell into decrepitude by the 1970s.
It was demolished in 1977. Note the fireplug above on the left…
You can see it in this pic of the site from 2008.
for more, visit Endangered Durham
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in Real Gone Places, architecture
The pseudo-Gothic Deco brick New Adams House Restaurant, boasting seating for 500 at 533 Washington Street in Boston, Mass., next door to the RKO Keith’s theatre (showing 1945′s “State Fair”)… and below as it appears today amid construction…
“Felt” bar and lounge, next door to the Opera House.
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in Real Gone Places, architecture, white buildings
Hollywood Blvd. near the Chinese Theatre as it appeared in the 1940s… and below, as it appears today.
In Los Angeles, 16 percent of all homeless are 24 years old or younger. The Los Angeles Homeless Authority estimates that 6,674 youths have no place to call home. Covenant House estimates at least 4,000 youths are homeless at any given time in Hollywood.*
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in Real Gone Places, architecture, oh the horror, pearl clutch
The majestic Nanking Fook Woh Co. (that’s pronounced “Fook Woh”) on Grant Ave. in San Francisco, and below as it appears today, still labeled Gold Mountain Sagely Monastery, it’s really an apartment management company, Kung Wo Co.
Fook Woh Co. is now Kung Wo Co. <— say that 3 times fast.
“Yes, one Barbequed Pork Fried Rice made with brown rice, and one order of Fly Head with chicken. And some hot mustard, please. I’ll pay cash.”
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in Real Gone Places, architecture, white buildings
That’s Bens De Luxe Delicatessen & Restaurant, built in 1950 at 990 De Maisonneuve Blvd. West in chilly Montreal, where the waiters wore white shirts and black bow ties and served up the smoked meat sandwiches on Melmac plates. Seventy-five employees were overseen by Fanny and Ben Kravitz and family for nearly sixty years.
The beautiful Art Deco interior went unchanged for decades.
Terrazzo marble floors never aged. Preservationists tried for years to save the building. It was demolished in 2008. Only the red letters of the sign were saved.
Today, it’s this hole in the ground, where a 15-story hotel is planned. A shonda.
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in Real Gone Places, architecture
This mostly unattractive building is the Duchess Hotel in Ogallala, Nebraska. The hotel building doubled as the Continental Trailways bus depot, with a hobby shop in the basement, and the Merle Norman cosmetic studio and Crook’s Shoe Service among the storefronts.
Below is a view of the hotel sign looking south on Spruce St. in 1969.
And the same view today. Notice the hotel is missing.
On a 15-degree Monday morning in December of 1974, a three-alarm fire swept through the Duchess Hotel. It burned out of control for more than five hours, despite the efforts of 60 firefighters from Ogallala, Brule and Grant. Miraculously, all thirty guests escaped. Two were hospitalized for smoke inhalation.
Firefighters managed to save the adjacent buildings, including the Prairie Movie Theatre, which still stands.
The fire started in the hotel’s furnace area at approximately 3 a.m.
Today, it’s this…
The remarkably dull Adams Bank & Trust now rests on the site, where the drive-thru ATM is open 24 hours.
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in Real Gone Places, architecture, unfortunate
This magnificent building was located at 16th and Curtis Streets in Denver, built in 1881 for a then unheard of $850,000 ($19 million in today’s dollars) by one Horace A.W. Tabor, who made a fortune in silver mines. Look at this interior!
Cherry wood was imported from Japan and mahogany from Honduras, with 1,500 mohair seats facing a 72-ft. stage that was 50-ft. deep, with a giant painted curtain… seen here in glorious black and white.
The inscription on the curtain prophetically states:
“So fleet the works of man, back to the earth again.
Ancient and holy things fade like a dream.”
Here’s another view of the building…
The Tabor was remodeled in 1921 for movies, and operated for nine years as the Colorado Theater, before once again becoming The Tabor. The great acts of Vaudeville played the stage. It was sold in ’49 for a million dollars. By the ’50s, it was facing the threat of demolition as the population departed for the suburbs.
It was torn down in 1964. Its giant curtain, too large to be displayed anywhere, was stored for years and disintegrated, and was later hauled to a dump. Today, the site is this:
…the Denver branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
Things fade like a dream.
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in Real Gone Places, architecture, art, cinema, stuff I like, white buildings
