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Photography

March 2010

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Thursday, March 11, 2010 – Hollywood Seville

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Fairbanks Center for Motion Picture Study (formerly City of Beverly Hills Water Treatment Plant Number 1) - architect Arthur Taylor, 1927 - 333 South La Cienega Boulevard, at Olympic, Beverly Hills

Ah, the La Giralda Tower of the Fairbanks Center for Motion Picture Study of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences – 333 South La Cienega Boulevard, at Olympic. It’s modeled after the real La Giralda – the bell tower of the Cathedral of Seville, in Spain, and the first two-thirds of that one is a former minaret from the Moorish period, with the top third being real serious Spanish Renaissance stuff. Here architect Arthur Taylor offers a pretty good replica, from scratch. And this is from 1927, when such towers were all the rage. But his sits on top of a Mission-style building – red tile roofs and low arches – that looks like it came from a Roy Rogers movie. It's a Spanish-Romanesque something or other.

But this was originally the City of Beverly Hills Water Treatment Plant Number 1 – abandoned in 1976 when Beverly Hills began to purchase its water from the Los Angeles Metropolitan Water District. In March 1988 the City of Beverly Hills accepted a proposal by the Academy that the Waterworks be restored to house their library and film archives, and this opened in January 1991. It's named after Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. – the first president of the Academy. The Academy Film Archive is here, the most complete film archive in the world, as is just about every screenplay and book on film ever written, and there's the Cecil B. DeMille Reading Room with all biographical files, and so on and so forth. The lobby is named after Bob Hope.

But it's an amazing restoration.

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Fairbanks Center for Motion Picture Study (formerly City of Beverly Hills Water Treatment Plant Number 1) - architect Arthur Taylor, 1927 - 333 South La Cienega Boulevard, at Olympic, Beverly Hills
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Fairbanks Center for Motion Picture Study (formerly City of Beverly Hills Water Treatment Plant Number 1) - architect Arthur Taylor, 1927 - 333 South La Cienega Boulevard, at Olympic, Beverly Hills
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Fairbanks Center for Motion Picture Study (formerly City of Beverly Hills Water Treatment Plant Number 1) - architect Arthur Taylor, 1927 - 333 South La Cienega Boulevard, at Olympic, Beverly Hills
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Fairbanks Center for Motion Picture Study (formerly City of Beverly Hills Water Treatment Plant Number 1) - architect Arthur Taylor, 1927 - 333 South La Cienega Boulevard, at Olympic, Beverly Hills

Yep, instead of a rose window, a big film reel –

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Fairbanks Center for Motion Picture Study (formerly City of Beverly Hills Water Treatment Plant Number 1) - architect Arthur Taylor, 1927 - 333 South La Cienega Boulevard, at Olympic, Beverly Hills
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Fairbanks Center for Motion Picture Study (formerly City of Beverly Hills Water Treatment Plant Number 1) - architect Arthur Taylor, 1927 - 333 South La Cienega Boulevard, at Olympic, Beverly Hills
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Fairbanks Center for Motion Picture Study (formerly City of Beverly Hills Water Treatment Plant Number 1) - architect Arthur Taylor, 1927 - 333 South La Cienega Boulevard, at Olympic, Beverly Hills
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Fairbanks Center for Motion Picture Study (formerly City of Beverly Hills Water Treatment Plant Number 1) - architect Arthur Taylor, 1927 - 333 South La Cienega Boulevard, at Olympic, Beverly Hills
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Fairbanks Center for Motion Picture Study (formerly City of Beverly Hills Water Treatment Plant Number 1) - architect Arthur Taylor, 1927 - 333 South La Cienega Boulevard, at Olympic, Beverly Hills
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Fairbanks Center for Motion Picture Study (formerly City of Beverly Hills Water Treatment Plant Number 1) - architect Arthur Taylor, 1927 - 333 South La Cienega Boulevard, at Olympic, Beverly Hills
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Fairbanks Center for Motion Picture Study (formerly City of Beverly Hills Water Treatment Plant Number 1) - architect Arthur Taylor, 1927 - 333 South La Cienega Boulevard, at Olympic, Beverly Hills
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Fairbanks Center for Motion Picture Study (formerly City of Beverly Hills Water Treatment Plant Number 1) - architect Arthur Taylor, 1927 - 333 South La Cienega Boulevard, at Olympic, Beverly Hills

In the background, the home of Hustler Magazine –

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Fairbanks Center for Motion Picture Study (formerly City of Beverly Hills Water Treatment Plant Number 1) - architect Arthur Taylor, 1927 - 333 South La Cienega Boulevard, at Olympic, Beverly Hills
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Fairbanks Center for Motion Picture Study (formerly City of Beverly Hills Water Treatment Plant Number 1) - architect Arthur Taylor, 1927 - 333 South La Cienega Boulevard, at Olympic, Beverly Hills

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 to 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. The high-resolution photography here was modified for web posting using Adobe Photoshop 7.0 software.

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All text and photos unless otherwise noted, Copyright © 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 - Alan M. Pavlik

[March 2010] [Oscar Ready] [Supergraphic] [Hush Now] [Pure Hollywood] [Animal Vehicles] [Hard Times Faces] [Complex Patterns] [Audio Post] [This Other Coast] [Sunset on Sunset] [Alternative Oscars] [Hollywood for Sale] [New Characters] [Crown Imperial] [Some Stickers] [That Rich Man] [Saturday Flowers] [In Better Tiimes] [City Cats] [Documenting Change] [From the Sun] [From the Moon] [Strangely Sinister] [Wake Up] [So Very Hollywood] [Hollywood Past] [Selling Something] [Street Signs] [Hollywood Seville] [An Angry Corner] [A City Girl] [Wilshire Seoul] [Daylight Savings] [Compound Spring] [At MacArthur Park] [City Birds] [All in a Row] [Two Eagles] [Hollywood Negatives] [Old Spaghetti] [The Deserted Beach] [Beach Houses] [American Buffalo] [Hollywood Pauses] [As Seen On] [Just Look Up] [The Old Stuff] [Getting Famous] [On Nutmeg Way] [Echo Park Echoes] [At the Clinic] [El Indio] [Eyes on Sunset] [March Surfers] [At the Pier] [To the Lighthouse] [Whale Watching] [The Overlook] [Hollywood 5000] [Hollywood Frolic] [Shooting Blanks] [Red-Tailed Hawk] [The Sandpiper] [Odd Birds] [Fairey on Melrose] [Face the Faces] [Melrose Zen] [The Hopper Star] [Dennis Hopper] [Party Friday] [LA Sunshine] [Those Two] [Sky Abstracts] [Virgil and Monroe] [Not Fine Art] [Titans in Hollywood] [Hollywood Heads] [The Odd Shots]