Today I attended a tour called “Culver City at a Crossroads,” organized by the Los Angeles Conservancy. It gave me a chance to discover many things I did not know about the history of iconic buildings such as the Helms Bakery and the Culver Hotel.
It was Harry Culver who founded Culver City in 1917, at the crossing of three tram lines, half way between Abbot Kinney’s Venice and Downtown LA. In 1924 he commissioned architects Curlett & Beelman to build the Hotel Hunt, now the Culver Hotel, in the Renaissance Revival style. It was owned by John Wayne from 1945 to 1967, then fell into disrepair, it was reopened by Lou Catlett and restored in the 1990s, in 1997 it was placed in the National Registry of Historic Places. In 2007 new owner Maya Mallick revived it as a boutique hotel and restaurant. I had photographed this building before, but today we had access to Harry Culver’s private office, ante-room and vault.
In 1930 Paul Helms commissioned architects Grant and Bruner to build the Helms Bakery in the Art Deco style, it opened in 1931 and operated until 1969. Their famous trucks delivered bread and baked goods throughout Los Angeles, they had a distinctive whistle to call customers. Their motto was “Daily at Your Door.” I had never walked inside the furniture mart H.D. Buttercup, where the history of Helms Bakery is told in words and pictures on a wall, an actual truck from 1948 is preserved there. For the first time I saw the original arched wooden ceiling with skylights.
I had photographed the murals by Art Mortimer in the parking lot that reproduce old B&W photos from the 1930s and 40s, but today I saw one of the actual photos of the early 1930s trucks. A replica of the 1962 truck is parked on the now pedestrian Helms Bakery District.
Learning more about the history of the bakery, that served bread at the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics, helped me understand the meaning of the mural titled “Helms Coach Gone A Rye,” painted in 2002, also by Art Mortimer. It depicts Culver City landmarks like the Culver Hotel and the Kirk Douglas Theater, oil wells and an airplane, as a backdrop to a Helms truck that has hit a fire hydrant. The back doors open to reveal the shelves of baked loafs inside.
Another historic building, the Beacon Laundry built in 1932 in the Zig-Zag Modern Art Deco style, now houses my favorite Italian restaurant, Pasta Sisters. That is where I had a wonderful breakfast of Neapolitan sfogliatelle and affogato, hazelnut ice cream drowned in espresso.
Text and photos by Elisa Leonelli
Read more articles about Culver City
Pasta Sisters at this link
Movie Studios at this link
And a new article in LA Curbed about the history of Culver Studios.