In this aerial shot of the Metro Pictures movie studios in 1921, the horizontal street at the top is Melrose; the next one down is Waring, followed by Willoughby, then Romaine. Taken three years before merging with the Samuel Goldwyn Studio and Mayer Productions to form Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and moving to Culver City, the biggest names at Metro that year were Alla Nazimova and a soon-to-be-famous Rudolph Valentino. That long white set near the top left corner was for Uncharted Seas, the movie Valentino was making when he met Natacha Rambova just before the release of his breakthrough role in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
If you’ve read my novel Chasing Salome you might remember that scene where Valentino meets Rambova when he walks into Alla’s office covered in fake snow made of mica.
Advertisement for Metro Pictures in the Motion Picture Studio Directory and Trade Annual, 1916:
This
The studio lot is now known as RED Studio Hollywood. This satellite image is from 2021.
Top photo is above Santa Monica Blvd. looking south by southwest. The bottom street is Eleanor, t-boned at the intersection with Cahuenga. (The street crossing in front of (new) Metro’s two blocks parcel is Romaine.) The south edge of the Colrove/Cahuenga Valley Growers packing house is on the lower edge (in that triangle cut) with the water tower facing onto Eleanor. Just across is the (Old) Metro Studio which went over to Chaplin, who then moved to his new studios, leaving this in 1921 to become Keaton’s studio under the name Corp. Co.. On the right past the big trees is Cole Avenue and Technicolor will occupy a building facing west right there in c.1929. The bungalows facing east at the t-bone become a restaurant next to a barber shop for some time in the ‘20’s. The big storage building with clock tower will go in where the packing house was removed before 1923. It will be then expanded in size in 1925, reaching further south to form a block shape. For a time it will bear the Lyon’s Storage name lettered on the south face high up where it appears in photos. All studio buildings and backlots were removed from existence by the 1932 era. Keaton was gone.