Back in the 1920s, apparently all you had to do was put up a life-sized camel out of the front of your house and you get to call yourself the Camel Inn. I found a listing for Camel Inn at 5732 Hollywood Blvd in a couple of Los Angeles City Directories from the late 1920s, so I’m guessing this photo was taken around them. But this photo does show us what homes along Hollywood Blvd looked like in yesteryearland.
Article in The Los Angeles Times, April 17, 1927:
This is how 5732 Hollywood Blvd looked in August 2022. Nary a camel in sight.
Address on 5700 southside (facing north) would be near Taft, so the view would have looked toward those lemon groves that were filled in with houses and apartments from N. Van Ness on eastward a few blocks. Ralph’s Market would later be built on the northside. (Became Pier 1 after market left.) Reginald Denny’s model shop & factory would be near in the angled structure that had served as the real estate office for the tract.
I don’t know why, but it’s been noticeable to me that more and more buildings in L.A. are being painted gray and I find it a most unattractive color for this place.
I agree!
Los Angeles seemed to be all gray to me when I first moved here from the Bay Area in the mid sixties. Nothing but cement and freeways. I was not homesick for my family, but for greenery and colors. Things started to get better, more trees added, new buildings with some interesting designs, but now it seems we are regressing. Perhaps thanks to the ‘we love gray’ generation.
By that I mean all the people who are flipping homes these days. My family lives in Alameda, which has many unique and beautiful homes in all sorts of styles: Victorian, Craftsmen, Tudor, etc., which people are flipping right and left. They go in, redo everything, put in modern kitchens and baths, which is great, but then they paint everything gray, including the kitchen cabinets AND the fireplaces. They actually paint the stone or brick or river rock, whatever, in the same gray as the walls. I have nothing against gray. It can look very nice on the walls and makes for a neutral background in which to decorate. I have a grey/beige on my walls, which makes my beautiful red brick fireplace look really nice. But everything? I have visions of years from now, when tastes change yet again, some poor soul painstakingly trying to remove the gray paint from all the nooks and crannies of the fireplace in their new home.
But as you say, they are doing it on the outside here, and the photo above looks exactly like all the other new buildings or apartment complexes that are being built now all around the Southland. They are all the exact same style. Gray rectangular box with rectangular windows. But they do throw some color on one or two of the boxes, as if that’s going to make it ok. So ugly!
The home also has two gable humps.