Photo Essay: Plunging Into the Biltmore Hotel's Tiled Pool Palace

I haven't written about the Biltmore Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles yet—despite having taken a tour with the Los Angeles Conservancy—because I just didn't think I had anything to add to the existing reporting.

Tichnor Brothers, Publisher, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Located opposite of Pershing Square—once Downtown LA's "Central Park"—the Beaux Arts-style hotel by Schultze and Weaver gets a lot of press coverage, and for good reason. Today, this architectural masterpiece provides luxury accommodations much as it did back in 1923, when it was the largest hotel west of Chicago.

Photo Essay: Silver City, A Ghost Town Made of Pieces of Other Ghost Towns

When I first moved to California, some places just seemed so far away. It was impossible for me to wrap my head around making a day trip to Joshua Tree or Palm Springs—a three-hour drive each way. But over the past 14 years, my home state has continued to feel smaller and smaller, easier and easier to tackle. 

In April 2014, I made a detour from the Eastern Sierra to try to see Silver City Ghost Town in Bodfish, California, located in the Kern River Valley of the Southern Sierra. I'd gotten there too late in the day to catch it before it closed or to even photograph it in daylight. And it just seemed so out-of-the-way that it took me 11 years to try again. 

 

This time, I planned my trip a little better and got an earlier start, as I headed home from the early-morning Burro Run I'd attended in Indian Wells Canyon. 

Photo Essay: The Oldest and Most Haunted Cemetery in New Orleans

New Orleans is one of those rare cities that's just as famous for its burial grounds as it is for its living traditions.

So when our early morning swamp tour got postponed for a couple of hours last weekend, I didn't go back to bed. I went to the graveyard. 

 

Photo Essay: Delving Into the Underground History of The Mission Inn's Cloistered Catacombs

I'd already taken the tour of The Mission Inn in Riverside, California once, in 2015. And normally that would mean I was done with it. 

But at Halloweentime this year, the hotel unveiled a series of "Spooktacular" tours that took guests into its underground tunnels—a.k.a. its "catacombs."

Photo Essay: A Night of 4.5 Million Lights at the Mission Inn

It's been hanging over my head for 10 years now that I hadn't really done the Mission Inn's Festival of Lights "right" yet.

 

Photo Essay: Hanging Out In 'Hangtown,' Or Maybe Getting Sick in Placerville

Now that I've got some distance from it, I've been thinking a bit about what happened in the days before I came down with COVID-19 last year. 

I'm still not sure where I caught it, or how—but since I was traveling and bopping around to a lot of different spots, I may never know.

 

It was 4th of July weekend, and I was headed up to the Great Western Steam-Up in Carson City, Nevada. But first, I made a pit stop at the tiki bar in Sacramento (a.k.a. The Jungle Bird) and spent the night in the "Gold Rush" town of Placerville, California.

Photo Essay: Hollywood Post 43, A World War I Memorial Built By the Movies and Boxing Matches

It's been nicknamed the "Post of the Stars." 

 

Originally chartered in 1919 by Hollywood luminaries who'd returned from World War I, American Legion Hollywood Post 43 can count such luminaries as Clark Gable, Gene Autry, Mickey Rooney, Ronald Reagan, and Charlton Heston as its past members.

Photo Essay: Sleeping In NYC's Former Home For Shipwrecked Sailors

For my first trip back to NYC in five years, staying with a friend wasn't really an option—so I took the opportunity to stay in the weirdest and most historic hotel I could think of.

It's now a boutique hotel called The Jane, located in the westernmost environs of Greenwich Village, just steps from the East Bank of the Hudson River.

I remember its big reopening in 2008, with much fanfare. It then became a huge nightlife destination, though I don't recall ever drinking or dancing in its Victorian-style "ballroom." 

But my return visit would be very different—sleeping in a hotel room I vaguely knew had been built for sailors and that one of the Titanic survivors might've occupied in 1912.

Of course, it turned out I was actually going in a little blind—because there was so much I didn't know about The Jane. 

You see, it began its life at 507 West Street in 1908 as the American Seamans Friend Society Institute Building—built by the non-sectarian although decidedly religious (and even evangelical) Seamens Institute. 

circa 1909 (The Acts of the Apostles of the Sea, page 69) via Internet Archive Book Images (Public Domain)

According to the 1909 book The Acts of the Apostles of the Sea, the institute—whose president at the time was the Reverend Dr. Charles A. Stoddard—stood as "the largest distributor of the Word of God on the waters." Not only that, the book continues, the society "aided shipwrecked and destitute seamen of every race and nation, fed the hungry, clothed the naked, [and] buried the dead." 

circa July 2022 (Google Street View)

Photo Essay: The Quiet Elegance of the Wilshire Ebell Theatre

Although it took me years to get inside The Ebell of Los Angeles clubhouse for its open house last September...

 

...I'd actually already been to its theatre, on its south wing facing 8th Street, to see a performance of orchestral Dr. Dre all the way back in November 2015.

Photo Essay: The Clubhouse of Sisterhood, The Ebell of Los Angeles

There's a somewhat secret brotherhood that characterizes Los Angeles—a city of private associations that go beyond just your run of the mill country club.

There are athletic clubs, breakfast clubs (the oldest of which, I am a proud member), camera clubs, adventurers' clubs, fishing clubs, writers' and directors' guilds, actors' unions, magical societies, fraternal organizations, and more.

And I hate being left out of any of 'em.

 

But it took me many years to explore LA's landmark house of sisterhood: The Ebell Club.

Now, in honor of Women's History Month, it feels like a good time to share my photos and what I learned about it.

A Turkey-Free Thanksgiving at a Storied Mountain Lodge Outside of LA

When I was working as a field agent for Atlas Obscura a few years ago, I really wanted to host a dinner at Saddle Peak Lodge—specifically, a game meat dinner. 

I was fascinated with intimidating foods and thought that a communal experience would create a comfort level that I, and others, might not have alone. 

I couldn't get that event approved, so I finally went to Saddle Peak Lodge on my own a few years ago—but I wimped out both gastronomically and financially and just went to brunch. I don't remember the meal, but I'm pretty sure I had eggs (and not, like, ostrich eggs).

So, I've felt like I hadn't really experienced the restaurant—and when the 2018 Woolsey Fire swept through the area, fortunately sparing it, the urgency to return intensified.

I finally made it back yesterday, for Thanksgiving dinner—not because this colonial holiday is important to me (it's not), but because I felt like I needed the excuse of a special occasion to splurge on it. And since it's a Michelin star-receiving establishment, it also charges Michelin star-level prices.

Virginia & Truckee Railroad Once Again Rolls Out of Virginia City, Thanks to Rebuilt Tracks and Tunnels

My first trip to Virginia City, Nevada coincided with the 150th anniversary celebration of the Virginia & Truckee Railroad, a.k.a. "Queen of the Short Lines"—so while I was in the area, I wanted to make sure I could experience as much of the V&T as possible. 

After having ridden a railbike from Carson City towards Virginia City (where a train also runs, though its schedule didn't mesh with mine), I headed to Virginia City to ride a special train towards Carson City to experience the rail from the other end. 

But I had some time to kill before my train departure, so I started snooping around town. 

Photo Essay: A Real Estate Heir-Turned-Recluse Kept His Lake Tahoe Compound To Himself (And Accidentally Conserved Much of the Shoreline)

On my way from California to farther east in Nevada, I stopped along the eastern shore of Lake Tahoe (technically in the town of Incline Village, NV) to take a tour of a historic estate known as Thunderbird Lodge.  

 

Locals seem to call it "the old Whittell estate"—named after the eccentric millionaire from San Francisco who built it, George Whittell, Jr.

Photo Essay: Tail O' the Pup Once Again Unleashes Frankfurters Out of A Giant Hot Dog—This Time on Route 66

The Tail O' the Pup hot dog stand has been in storage ever since I moved to LA in 2011 (technically it got mothballed in 2005).

But I've always felt something of a connection to it. 

Maybe it's because its prior two locations were both in my neighborhood, at intersections I pass on a nearly daily basis (Beverly and La Cienega, basically where the Sofitel is now, and, after 1986, Beverly and San Vicente).

 

And now it's back in my neighborhood—in a new location on Santa Monica Boulevard, the old Route 66 in West Hollywood. 

Photo Essay: Where Gentlemen Millionaires Gathered & Gambled During Virginia City's 'Silver Seventies'

On the Saturday of my 4th of July weekend trip to Nevada, I had a couple of hours after getting back from my Fly Geyser tour and before the sun would set on Virginia City and the landmarks along its nationally-recognized historic district. 

 

I'd decided to make my visit to the Comstock Lode former boomtown as touristy as could be—including a stop at the supposedly haunted Washoe Club, where a ghostly woman in a Victorian blue dress reportedly occupies one of its windows on occasion. 

Photo Essay: Spending Two Nights In Gold Hill, A Near-Ghost Town Across the Divide from Virginia City, NV

I first heard of Gold Hill when I was researching a trip to Virginia City, Nevada that I ended up not taking last fall. All the travel guides recommended taking the train from Gold Hill instead of trying to find parking in Virginia City. That piqued my interest.

 Gold Hill train depot, built 1872

Photo Essay: Exploring More of Winchester Mystery House, From Turret Tip to Basement

After driving nearly 400 miles over the course of more than six hours (making a couple of stops along the way, of course), it felt like a miracle that I made it to Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California at all for my first tour of the day. 

But after ambling up two-inch steps and making hairpin turns around switchback-laden stairwells up and down four stories over the course of a couple of hours, I found myself facing the fact that I'd been so ambitious, I'd booked myself on a second tour of Winchester Mystery House, immediately following the first. 

With just a few minutes of rest between the two, I was tempted to bail and head to dinner early. But the second tour was the one that was really appealing to me—because the "Explore More" tour takes guests in places of the mansion not usually open to the general public. 

Photo Essay: A Friday the 13th Visit to Winchester Mystery House

It's easy to dismiss the tragic heiress and philanthropist Sarah Winchester as having gone crazy...

...and that being the reason why her 160-room home, now dubbed the "Winchester Mystery House" is so bizarre and, well, mysterious. 

Photo Essay: L.A.'s Beaux Arts Library, Built of Bricks and Funded By a Copper Fortune

The William Andrews Clark Memorial Library in the West Adams neighborhood of Los Angeles was one of those places I didn't know I wanted to go to until it was closed and I couldn't go. 

I think I first heard about it when it was undergoing a restoration (and earthquake retrofitting), sometime between 2015 and 2017. I kept my eye on it—and finally managed to take a tour in 2018. 

L-R Observatory, library (Photo: Security Pacific National Bank Collection, via LAPL)

75 Years Ago: The Navy Commandeered A Former Decorating Studio to Conduct Top-Secret Weapons Research

What appears to be a simple restaurant and tea room in Pasadena, California has a much richer history than meets the eye—one that involves the "foremost designer of residential interiors in Southern California in the 1920s" (according to late architectural historian Robert Winter), military secrets, and maybe even Albert Einstein. 

   

Located in what's now known as the Green Street Village Landmark District, it's currently known as Madeline Garden—but it was designed in 1927 in the Georgian architectural style by Louis du Puget Millar as a studio/office/workshop for renowned interior decorator Edgar James "E.J." Cheesewright and his staff of craftspeople and artisans (including woodcarvers), decorators, and furnishers.