Visual Materials
Commemorative plaque
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Inside Cumberland Hotel Apartments, 243 S. Olive, 1952
Visual Materials
Hall was living here in 1952 per voting registration records. The man pictured here is the manager, Benjamin Abowitz, born in Kovno in 1891. His wife Fannie née Shulman can be seen in the contact prints, Volume 1.
Book 1, pg. 45 / Neg. 5654
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Cumberland Hotel Apartments, 243 S. Olive, 1962
Visual Materials
The Cumberland Hotel (architect: Marsh and Russell, 1904). This is where Hall moved in 1952. There are numerous shots of its interior in the contact sheet binders. Hall moved to the Engstrum Apartments at Fifth and Grand when the Cumberland was marked for razing.
Book 3, pg. 34 / Neg. 14105
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Detail, front wall plaque on 142 S. Grand Avenue
Visual Materials
This collection contains approximately 9,000 negatives (2 1/4 x 2 1/4 inches), 7 binders of contact prints of a large portion of the negatives, and 3 photobooks (11 x 14 inches). The photographs were taken by Theodore Hall, an avid amateur photographer and resident of Bunker Hill, Los Angeles from 1938 to 1963. Photographs depict the historic structures and streets of the neighborhood before and during the urban renewal of the 1950s, when buildings were razed and much of the hill was lopped off and graded. Hall photographed houses, storefronts, signs, architectural details, cars, and often the residents: shopkeepers, newsstand vendors, local children, and people on their front porches. A diverse population including African American, Asian American, Latin American, and white residents are pictured in everyday activities in the neighborhood. Grand Central Market, the downtown food and grocery emporium, is featured extensively in detailed images of vendors, customers, neon signs, and food stalls. Also seen on Bunker Hill are hotels and apartment buildings, the Angels Flight funicular railway, Victorian mansions turned into rooming houses, liquor stores, and construction crews grading land and pouring cement. Many historic buildings are seen in disrepair, and some are pictured in the midst of being torn down. Other Los Angeles sites depicted are: Union Station, City Hall, Olvera Street and the Plaza, churches, freeways, and automotive tunnels. The contact print binders also contain Hall's photographs of friends, social gatherings, camera club members, practice portrait sessions, annual visits to family in the San Francisco Bay Area, and a few day trips in Southern California. Some of the Los Angeles architects whose buildings are represented are: John C. W. Austin, Austin and Brown, Welton Becket, Dodd and Richards, Frederick R. Dorn, Edelman & Barnett, Theodore A. Eisen, Charles O. Ellis, Arthur L. Haley, Marsh and Russell, T. J. McCarthy, William H. Mohr, Joseph C. Newsom, John Parkinson, John Cotter Pelton Jr., James M. Shields, Lewis A. Smith, Train and Williams, George Herbert Wyman, and Robert Brown Young.
Book 1, pg. 20 / Neg. 10236
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Street scene on West 3rd Street
Visual Materials
The Budget Basket at 528 West Third St, attached to the west side of Angels Flight Pharmacy.
Book 1, pg. 38 / Neg. 10165
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Wrecking Sherwood Apartments at 431 S. Grand Avenue, next to Edison Bldg., 1957
Visual Materials
Hall lived in the Sherwood (architect: Meyer & Holler, 1913) when he moved to Los Angeles, but relocated to the Cumberland in 1952. The adjacent Southern California Edison purchased and demolished the hotel for an employee parking lot, September 1957.
Book 3, pg. 12 / Neg. 11304
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West end of 2nd Street tunnel (i.e. Third Street tunnel)
Visual Materials
Hall made a mistake here; this is the west end of the Third Street tunnel. The white structure above with two bay windows is 632 West Third. Below is the Crown Hotel at 702 West Third, the Havlin Hotel at 706 (with "Café Bobs"), and the moving/storage company was at 710 West Third. At left, Cinnabar Street runs from Third, between Hope and Flower, north to Second Street.
Book 1, pg. 29 / Neg. 6231