The Santa Ana Civic Center and the 1970s

Today's "then and now" images show the part of the Santa Ana Civic Center I like to call "The Salt Flat of the Flags." The concept illustration was done in 1970, shortly after the completion of the Orange County Central Justice Center. I took the "after" photo a couple years ago. Note the State Building which now looms over this mostly featureless plaza.

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Thanks to Anaheim native and architecture expert Daniel Paul, I now what to call the angular, massive, rough-surfaced, unpainted concrete structures that were added to the Civic Center in the 1970s. Daniel tells me that the official name for this style of architecture is "brutalism." The State Building and Santa Ana's City Hall are both good examples.

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Indeed, look up "brutal" in a thesaurus and you'll find plenty of words that describe these buildings (and 1970s design in general): Coarse, heavy, dull, stupid and cruel. Okay, well maybe it's only cruel if you have to look at it all day.

Old Huntington Beach street names

Our series on changing street names continues in Huntington Beach. I took today's photo a couple years ago at the corner of Lake and Pecan in downtown H.B. Originally, Lake St was known as Railroad Ave, because it ran alongside the railroad tracks. And what's now Pecan Ave was called Magnolia Ave. However, the old street names are still stamped into the old sidewalk at this intersection. (Just another example of how history is all around us.)

[Update 3/15/2019: The city destroyed this section of sidewalk to put in a handicapped accessible ramp. Even though it was already a ramp to begin with.]

The name Railroad Ave. appears on the original Huntington Beach tract map in 1904 and on the 1909 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map, but was changed to Lake St. sometime before 1922.

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The name Magnolia Ave was changed to avoid confusion with Magnolia St, which had previously been called Cannery St. and Lamb St. The names Cannery and Lamb disappeared when the County began unifying street names from one community to the next.

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How's THAT for confusing?

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Here are a few more street name changes in Huntington Beach:

• Ocean Blvd is now part of Pacific Coast Highway
• Smeltzer is now Edinger Ave.
• Wright is now Brookhurst
• Gerhart is now part of Heil Ave.
• Hampshire Ave. is now Beach Blvd.
• Los Patos and Wintersburg (like Delhi in Santa Ana) are now part of Warner Ave.

"Railroad Ave" and "Magnolia Ave." both appear on this 1909 map.

Ranchos, cogstones, Bowers, Capistrano, etc.

This map is less detailed than the one I posted yesterday, but it's also more legible. This stylized map is from the 1950s and shows (roughly) the old rancho boundaries. Note that the modern community names on this map include Talbert (instead of Fountain Valley), and El Modeno (instead of El Modena). Also note how few communities appear at all in southern Orange County.
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The Bowers Museum has featured a few posts relating to local history recently. Their "Objects of the Week" have included a statue from Mission San Juan Capistrano and the Yorba family, an 1897 painting of a Mission confirmation class, a handful O.C.'s mysterious cogstones, and a photo of Charles and Ada Bowers at their Santa Ana home.

WPA map, Capistrano, it's a small world & wildfires

Today's image is a map created for the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in the 1930s. The map shows "Orange County adobes, old roads, trails, ranchos, springs, and other points of historical interest." I wish I knew where to find the original map so I could get a better quality scan. This version comes from a slide found among County Planning Dept records at the O.C. Archives. (Click on the map to see a MUCH larger version.)
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Scenes depicted on the map include an Indian village, Portola's expedition, a stagecoach heading up El Camino Real, a bear hunt, Mission San Juan Capistrano, the wetlands at Bolsa Chica and Talbert Gap, McFadden's Wharf, and various adobes. The map also shows some of the cattle brands used by the ranchos.
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For those of you following the recent it's a small world debacle, Mary Blair's family has now come out against the proposed changes to the attraction.
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And for those following the story of the controversial rectory garden at Mission San Juan Capistrano, the Register has an update about that too.
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The Register also posted an interactive database of 37 Orange County wildfires since 1958.

Orange Drive-In, Rob Selway, OTPA, etc.

On this day in 1955, Rev. Robert Schuller preached his first sermon in O.C. from the roof of a snackbar at the Orange Drive-In Theatre. This place was Orange County's first drive-in theater when it opened in June 1941. The photo above was taken in 1946.
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Rob Selway is retiring from his long-term gig as head of Historical Parks & Programs for Orange County's Harbors, Beaches & Parks Dept. The rumor of Rob's impending retirement circulates every so often. (One HBP employee said, "It's had more performances than South Pacific"). But this time, the rumor has been confirmed. Congratulations, Rob.
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Nominations for the Old Towne Preservation Association's annual Preservation Awards are due April 10th. Individuals or groups can be nominated for their restoration efforts in the community. For more information, visit OTPA's website.
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For the record, I just noticed that you can still purchase windows salvaged from the poor old Reuben E. Lee. I only wish I had some use for them.

Irvine Ranch House & Irvine street name changes

With all the interest in the new Katie Wheeler Branch Library (which looks like James Irvine's home), I thought it would be fun to post this 1913 image (top) of the actual Irvine family ranch house. The second photo (in color) shows the ranch in 1976, transitioning from agriculture to its current state. This aerial view overlooks the industrial part of Irvine.

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Where street names have changed, old maps can be difficult to compare to modern ones. Nowhere in Orange County is this more true than in Irvine. Compounding this difficulty is the fact that some of the streets that do retain their old names are now in somewhat different locations. A few examples of Irvine street name changes follow:

• Central Ave is now Sand Canyon Rd.
• Como Rd is now Harvard Ave.
• Crosstown Rd is now University
• Lane Rd is now (more or less) Main St.
• Laguna Rd is now Laguna Canyon Rd.
• Myford Rd is now Old Myford Rd. (and another Myford Rd has been created.)

Disneyland's Wonderful Wizard of Bras

Today's photo shows what may have been the earliest robotic figure in Disneyland: “The Wizard of Bras.” The Wizard was the mascot of the Hollywood-Maxwell Brassiere Co., and hosted a display in their Intimate Apparel shop on Main Street, U.S.A. (The exterior can be seen in a recent post on Gorilla’s Don’t Blog – The same post which inspired me to research this stuff.) The shop was open on Disneyland’s opening day, but was one of its shortest-lived features. It closed in January 1956, and was replaced by the "China Closet" shop.
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The photo above, which ran in a July 15, 1955 insert to the Register, shows C.V. Wood (left) vice-president and general manager of Disneyland, along with Herndon J. Norris, president of Hollywood-Maxwell.
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Here are a few excerpts from the article that accompanied the image:

“[The] exhibit features the Wonderful Wizard of Bras on a revolving stage, on one side of which is a complete re-creation of the fashions and intimate wear of the 1890s, and on the other side a showing of the fashions of today… On stage, acting as master of ceremonies, via a tape recorder, is the Wonderful Wizard,…

“The exhibit will portray a typical 19th Century shoppe. The Wonderful Wizard and modern day clothing will occupy one-half. The remaining part will be devoted to a Victorian ‘front-room’ complete with period fireplace, drapes, large mirror, sofa, and old fashioned showcase. A most unusual… part of the display will be an authentic Singer Sewing Machine circa 1860. In addition, 3-D illusion boxes will be featured depicting both outer and intimate apparel of the by-gone era.”

The image below shows the Wizard as he appeared in a Hollywood-Maxwell ad in the same newspaper supplement – but not as he appeared in the Main Street display. Copies of the Wizard’s audio-taped spiel were once sold via the “Disneyland Forever” CD kiosks in the park, and copies continue to float around the Internet.

Speaking of Disneyland, there's yet another new blog involving the park's history: Disneyland Nomenclature.

Happy Easter!

This is a rare image of a statue of Jesus by Claude Bell, based on Paul von Kleiben's painting of "The Transfiguration of Christ." The painting, and its accompanying audio-visual show elements, opened as a Knott's Berry Farm attraction in 1941. After retiring from Knott's, Claude Bell moved to Cabazon and built two enormous dinosaur-shaped buildings that still stand vigil over the highway.