In 1915 the Coleman's lived at 2118 West 16th Street, Los Angeles, California. It was their "Home, Sweet Home." If they wished to return today to this address they'd not find their lovely two story apartment building. The address is now a rather nondescript neighborhood of single family homes. But then it's not actually the same street. I'll get to that.
Click on image to see it larger.
In 1915 they rented the upper left apartment and placed some potted plants on the upstairs railing, one inside a soy sauce bucket. Perhaps there were other uses for such buckets, but in Hawaii we called it a soy sauce bucket and I still have one I use as a stool.
I'm assuming that's Mrs. Coleman with her hand on her hip laying claim to her home. A beautiful building.
Want to rent one of the apartments? Just call the realtor at A-4234.
I give you the soy sauce bucket planter.
So what you'd find today at this address is the image below provided by Google.
But thanks to two readers I now know that indeed the building does still exist and is not the nondescript single family home shown above.
The first comment opening my eyes to the possibility was from Daniel who enlightened me to the fact that over the years many street names had been changed in Los Angeles. Then thanks to Mike Brubaker of TempoSenza Tempo I can now show you what the building looks like today. It's still a stunning building even if the doors have bars on them. Not a particularly nice neighborhood, but it looks as if the owner is keeping the place up. You can see a 360 shot of the neighborhood here.
Thank you Daniel! And bravo Mike!
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I'm quite sure this isn't the same location. A lot of street names have been changed in LA over the years, and I'd doubt this house would be replaced by something that looks like a post WWII tract of homes. Also, the old photo shows a slope to the land, and Yahoo shows flat land. Graded, possibly, but I suspect the old house was much closer to downtown than this tract of homes ever would be. Love your blog---Daniel
ReplyDeleteOh Daniel, I hope you're right. I hate to think of this building being gone. And thanks for the encouraging words.
ReplyDeleteFound it! paste this Google map link:
ReplyDeletehttp://g.co/maps/9xvg3
2118 Venice Blvd, Los Angeles
Looks like the neighborhood has come down a bit since the Colemans knew it as modern. Appears to have been preserved.
I found the info on this website link: http://www.ulwaf.com/LA-1900s/SpecialReports/Streets.html
which has a long list of LA street name changes. Numbered streets at the top, says West 16th is now Venice Blvd.
AND the fern and maybe the soy sauce bucket are still on the balcony! So maybe the Colemans are there after all.
ReplyDeleteSome fine detective work here.
ReplyDelete