First and foremost, if you are feeling a bit strange today, that’s because today is “Odd Day”, 5/7/09, one of only six days this century that will feature three consecutive odd numbers.
Today’s lunchtime musing is on abandoned buildings. Abandoned buildings (and buildings under construction) have long fascinated me, ever since I was visiting my grandparents at their apartment on Veteran Ave, S. of Santa Monica, and contractors were tearing down a number of single-family homes built in the 1940s to build apartments. This was the early 1970s, and so these places weren’t fenced. I was able to easily wander in, explore the rooms, imagining the people that used to live there.
I mention this because of an article I read today about a fire at the abandoned apartments at the Moulin Rouge site in Las Vegas (there was no historic damage, primarily because there wasn’t much left of the old girl, the sign having been removed to the Neon Museum (pictures)). The Moulin Rouge has an interesting history. Opened in 1955, it was the first integrated casino in Vegas. Extremely successful at the start, but it closed within six months, for no reason. Surprisingly, the property was never redeveloped: it went through a variety of owners, all of whom promised to bring it back. That saga has become legend. This season, CSI built upon the legend by telling the story “Young Man With A Horn”, about a murder that takes place in a closed casino called “Le Chateau Rouge”, the first integrated hotel in town.
That got me thinking about another abandoned building episode: an episode of the series “Lou Grant”. As background, once upon a time (OK, in the 1970s) I would drive every Sunday to Wilshire Blvd Temple for religious school, going along Bevery Blvd., going past the old abandoned storefront of “The Original Spanish Kitchen”. Why and how it closed was a mystery, but it is said that the owner just closed it one day, leaving the tables and everything set for the next days operation. A ghost restaurant. The story was eventually investigates by an LA Times reporter, but what I remember more is the dramatization of that in the “Lou Grant” episode “Hollywood”, about a reclusive woman who lives above a restaurant where her husband was murdered.
These buildings have stories. Right now, there’s a big debate about the destruction of the “Wagon Wheel Hotel” in Oxnard. You can see some abandoned exploration pictures here (from the group socal_abandoned). What stores could the “Wagon Wheel” tell….
