Quite honestly, it amazes me that they can chop a house in two, lift it up on a truck, and drive it to some other location where they can set it down again. But I can’t even begin to imagine how they do that when the route involves going up Marmont Lane behind the Chateau Marmont Hotel near the start of the Sunset Strip. It’s is a narrow street, barely two cars wide, so how this truck managed negotiate it with a load like that beyond me. I imagine it was done very slowly and very carefully. This photo is from 1950, and I’m glad somebody thought to take it, otherwise I never would have believed it.
The vintage photo was taken right out in front of the hotel – which is the easiest part. All those twists and turns farther up the hill would have been much harder to navigate! This image is from May 2016:
Here’s a pretty good auto-colorization of that shot:
House moving was very popular after the war. My house was moved here in 1947 to make room for the Roosevelt Hotel swimming pool. Howard Duff lived in it while doing Sam Spade on the radio in the mid 40s.
I guess they had the process down to a fine art, but it still amazes me. But more amazing is that your house once stood where the Roosevelt pool is!
Traffic around the exclusive Chateau Marmont, located at 8221 Sunset Blvd. (in what is now West Hollywood), had been tied up for several hours today when a house being moved up Marmont Lane was snagged by an immovable telephone pole. With difficulty movers “rocked” the house by the pole and traffic flowed again. Photo dated: February 15, 1950.
https://i.imgur.com/GS3OP6N.png
https://tessa.lapl.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/photos/id/24203/rec/10
Thanks, Johnny. You’re Yumariffic!