I was working at an abandoned building in downtown Los Angeles yesterday and found some neat old things to take pictures of. Now when I say old, I mean old for this area. I guess "old" is a relative term since most of our history here in California isn't what most of the world would consider old at all. Our country is less than 250 years old, and before westward expansion the only people living here were tribes of Native Americans. So we don't have any castles or ruins of advanced ancient civilizations. But since this is a car site devoted to machinery from the 1930's and 40's, this stuff is still older.
Here are some photos of the building. Pretty much everything is circa 1924.
A bank of beautiful old windows. Every floor was full of these pillars.
- Windows
- windows.jpg (61.48 KiB) Viewed 5097 times
Shutoff switches on a power panel
- Switches
- panel.jpg (54.8 KiB) Viewed 5097 times
Manufacturer's sign on an electrical panel.
- Electric Panel Sign
- sign.jpg (52.82 KiB) Viewed 5097 times
An old "bulldog" shutoff switch
- Power Shutoff
- power.jpg (54.85 KiB) Viewed 5097 times
A panel of open windows. Very necessary in the the-air conditioning era, as temperatures here often soar above 100F.
- Panel windows
- openwindow.jpg (67.47 KiB) Viewed 5097 times
An old side room I came across.
- Side room
- room.jpg (52.38 KiB) Viewed 5097 times
Elevator control. This is the manual kind, hold the button to move the elevator, and manually line it up with each floor. There aren't many of these things left around here but this one was incredibly smooth and quiet despite its 89 years of age. You could reach up and touch a giant iron pulley that was carrying the cable to move the lift. I had a real ball using this thing all day.
- Elevator control
- elevator.jpg (51.45 KiB) Viewed 5097 times
Old unused pipes
- Pipes
- pipes.jpg (85.37 KiB) Viewed 5097 times
Just a stairway.
- Stairway
- stairs.jpg (53.5 KiB) Viewed 5097 times
A great old window. How neat would it be to have this in your workshop?
- Window
- window.jpg (82.57 KiB) Viewed 5097 times
There were a lot of these colorful valves throughout the building.
- Valves
- valves.jpg (34.96 KiB) Viewed 5097 times
Another large room.
- Another room
- light.jpg (43.35 KiB) Viewed 5097 times
Some valves still in use.
- Valves
- valveset.jpg (93.47 KiB) Viewed 5097 times
Just your run of the mill rusted out fire escape that looks like it will fall off next time it's used.
- Fire Escape
- fire-escape.jpg (77.53 KiB) Viewed 5097 times
An old safe no longer in use.
- Safe door
Inside the safe, a pair of metal doors. They were locked so I couldn't look inside.
- Safe
- safe-open.jpg (52.71 KiB) Viewed 5097 times
A view of modern Los Angeles from the roof. The original 1920's city hall building is visible on the right, illuminated in white.
- Los Angeles Skyline
- skyline.jpg (48.87 KiB) Viewed 5097 times
The heart of downtown Los Angeles. It looks nicer at night than it does during daylight.
- Downtown Los Angeles
- downtown.jpg (83.63 KiB) Viewed 5097 times
