A Street Once Ran Across What Now Is a Parking Lot
Exposition Blvd. in Palms was once known as Featherstone Drive. It bordered the Pacific Electric right-of way, then turned south (left to right, above) to run in front of the Hart Lumber Company, some empty or almost-empty lots and then the Globe Mills Macaroni Factory (where the Globe A-l mosaic was later placed). It ended at Venice Blvd. on the right.

The area mapped above is now known as the Venice Crossroads shopping center. It includes an Albertsons (where the Hart Lumber Company was in 1929), a Ross next to it, and an Office Max and a Sav-on about where macaroni and other noodles were once made.

You may remember this area as the site of an Armstrong's Garden Store. Some of Armstrong's plants are still waiting for buyers back of the building next to the old Pacific Electric right-of-way.

An earlier map, 1924, shows the buildings facing Durango to be the site of the Altruart studio. The Sanborn's maps note the presence of "scenery storage," "scenery sets" and two dressing rooms. The large empty spaces in those buildings may have been where the scenes were shot. For a history of the studios, which apparently burned down in 1937, read Reel Life in Culver City, below.

At the very bottom were the offices. In a fine degree of congruity, that's where Hollywood Video is today.

Today a Juice It Up outlet stands just about where a machine shop was in 1929, facing Venice Blvd. [To see a photo of what appears to be the machine shop, go to this page.]

Pacific Electric Railway
The Pacific Electric right-of-way behind the building at the top is today owned by the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transit Authority. A Pacific Electric train also ran down the middle of Venice Blvd. at the lower right. Click here to see a map of P.E. lines and how they related to Palms in the last century.

More Links
Click here to see more references to 8985 Venice Blvd. Click here to see more history of Palms.

It was originally called the Culver City Studio, even though it wasn't actually in Culver City. Situated at Durango Ave. and Venice Blvd. (in Palms, on the present site of Hollywood Video in the Venice Crossroads Mall), north from Media Park, it opened its doors in 1917 (though film historian Marc Wanamaker puts the date in July 1918).

Al Jennings, an Oklahoma outlaw and convicted train robber (left), formed his own production company and starred in The Lady of the Dugout at the Culver City Studio (1918). The director was W.S. (Woody) Van Dyke, who would go on to direct such classic MGM films as San Francisco and The Thin Man.

The studio had a number of owners through the years, including Bryan Foy, son of renowned vaudevillian Eddie Foy, who produced a series of short subjects there, released by Universal Pictures.

In 1935, Sam Katzman took over the studio and began making "B" pictures (mostly Westerns) with Buck Jones, TimMcCoy (who had been a major star in silent films in the 1920s), and Bela Lugosi under the banner of Victory Pictures. . . .

Retired fireman Ray Moselle recalled living on Durango Ave. in L.A. shortly before he joined the Culver City Fire Department in June 1937, when a "mysterious" fire broke out at the studio, burning it to the ground in a very short time.

"The L.A. Fire Department put out the blaze," Moselle recalled. "In those days, Culver City firemen and L.A. firemen didn't readily assist each other, because you wouldn't be paid for helping in the other department's jurisdiction, and you wouldn't be compensated for injuries sustained in fighting a fire out of your city."

In 1940, the Aluminum Casings Company took over the studio property and built a warehouse on the site.

I told Ray that Joseph Newman, who had risen from office boy to film director at MGM, also lived on Durango Ave. during this period. He laughed and recalled:

"Joey Newman was an assistant director for Woody Van Dyke. Before I joined the fire department, Joey used to hire me as a stand-by assistant to Van Dyke's camera crew. I didn't know anything about cameras, but I was a great baseball player, and I played on Van Dyke's baseball team, The Van Dyke Vagabonds."