MG T-ABC

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. Shutoff switches on a power panel Manufacturer's sign on an electrical panel. An old "bulldog" shutoff switch A panel of open windows. Very necessary in the the-air conditioning era, as temperatures here often soar above 100F. An old side room I came across. 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. Old unused pipes Just a stairway. A great old window. How neat would it be to have this in your workshop? There were a lot of these colorful valves throughout the building. Another large room. Some valves still in use. Just your run of the mill rusted out fire escape that looks like it will fall off next time it's used. An old safe no longer in use. Inside the safe, a pair of metal doors. They were locked so I couldn't look inside. A view of modern Los Angeles from the roof. The original 1920's city hall building is visible on the right, illuminated in white. The heart of downtown Los Angeles. It looks nicer at night than it does during daylight.

You should conduct a "name the location" contest. It's apparently an abandoned factory about a mile east of the civic center (?) but no idea what it was once used for. Can you give us a clue?


Nice photos btw

I don't know what it was used for either, but I believe it is zoned for manufacturing. I do not believe it is on any historic building lists, and if I'm not mistaken it was almost demolished to build new condominiums a while back.

Great photos Steve. So on your break from running a camera, you go around and take photo? So is Jim close saying about a mile east of the civic center? Maybe just west of the 101?

Closer to two miles east of there, near the LA river (ugliest river on the planet, bar none).

I couldn't help myself, the building was too neat to not sneak around for some photos.

Cool. I like old worn out stuff.

A bit like me!