The Hotel Glendale.

STOP!
Find the Hotel.
(Then keep scrolling.)

In conjunction with Preservation Month, The Glendale Historical Society and the City of Glendale Historic Preservation Commission presented, earlier today, the Glendale Civic Center Walking Tour.  Participants picked up a booklet and map for the self-guided tour that covered 21 notable buildings in the heart of Glendale, including the Municipal Power and Light Building, Glendale Main Post Office and First United Methodist Church. 

Old though I am, I was not featured in this tour. The Hotel Glendale was.  Here is the stop placard. 

 Here is the postcard, front and back, with the printing intact.  You can see both these pictures, and more, lining the walls here at The Cave.

According to Glendale's volume of the ubiquitous series by Arcadia Publishing  ("Home of the Iconic Images of America Series!") the radio station was here 1927 - 1929. Katherine Yamada, one of the books authors, also pens the column "Verdugo Views"  for the Glendale News Press. You can read more about the Hotel's radio history, KGFH and the longer lived KIEV, here.

Before the antenna intricate enough to nuke everyone on the sixth floor, there was to be a dirigible port, the world's first.  I've read some places that it would take passengers into DTLA in twenty minutes, but the bigger vision was a series of roof top junctions that would end in New York.  

This post on Vintage Air gives us the ecstasy, agony, and eventual bankruptcy of Slate Aircraft's vision, via its prototype ship, the City of Glendale. "Slate envisioned a network of hotels and "stations" across the country where his transcontinental airships would make passenger stops, the first of which was built on the roof of the Glendale Hotel."














Before e-things and i-things, there were real things.  Good for us the ones that stand, protected. Thanks to those who work to protect them.