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Wednesday, October 8, 2008 – Things Do Change
Hollywood is like all of America – tear down the old stuff and put up something new. Watching that happen can be mesmerizing. The cranes just north of Sunset and Vine are cool.
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Detail of the mosaic mural at the Washington Mutual branch at Sunset and Vine. Washington Mutual is no more, as on September 25, 2008, the United States Office of Thrift Supervision seized Washington Mutual Savings Bank and placed it into the receivership of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), and the FDIC sold the banking business to JPMorgan Chase. No one knows what will happen to this mural now.
But things always change. This is the spot where Cecile B. DeMille directed Hollywood's first full length movie - The Squaw Man - for the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company. Paramount Pictures also started on this corner, but they're now down on Melrose. NBC Radio Networks (Red and Blue) built their massive west coast "Radio City" on this northeast corner, right here. That went up in 1938 - the Jack Benny Show and Burns and Allen and all the rest were done right here. They torn that down in 1964 - NBC moved all their West Coast operations to their Burbank facilities.
Now there's just a dead bank - Washington Mutual – and the mural.
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Across the street, the Sunset and Vine Tower, 6290 Sunset Boulevard, built in 1960 for the long-gone Los Angeles Federal Savings folks - architects Douglas Honnold and John Rex – now being stripped down to its skeleton, getting new glass curtain-walls, and becoming expensive condos. When completed the walls may be clean, but for now…
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If you wish to use any of these photos for commercial purposes I assume you'll discuss that with me. And should you choose to download any of these images and use them invoking the "fair use" provisions of the Copyright Act of 1976, please provide credit, and, on the web, a link back this site.
Technical Note:
These photographs were taken with a Nikon D200 – the lenses used were AF-S Nikkor 18-70 mm 1:35-4.5G ED, or AF Nikkor 70-300 mm telephoto. Photography here is modified for web posting using Adobe Photoshop 7.0 software.
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