LAist: Bulldozer Bonanza Brought Down Important Landmarks in 2007

Hindinwood

Fri, 28 Dec 2007 10:16:27 -0800

Oh God, Please don't touch Santa Anita!!!

Jacy Young

Thu, 27 Dec 2007 21:07:15 -0800

i *love* the ennis brown house. But -- and not on your list -- a building I loved growing up (and that we drove by nearly every day) was that weird building that was like a steam boat on Ventura and Barham. Bye-bye, childhood!

franklinavenue

Thu, 27 Dec 2007 20:38:59 -0800

They're actually off by a year on the Ambassador, which was demolished in 2006. January 16, the final portion of the structure was demolished -- with the exception of the piece of the Cocoanut Grove that still stands. Now, the LAUSD wants to demolish it too, and the LA Conservancy is fighting them on it... but there wasn't all that much physically that changed this year at the site; the Ambassador was already long gone.

tony k

Thu, 27 Dec 2007 17:44:11 -0800

i grew up in downey... ate at johnnies a bunch of times, went to the car shows there.. but more importantly there used to be a dive n surf school next to it. when that closed down us kids used to hop the fence and skate the pool. i skated with one of my childhood heroes, mark gonzalez, the gonz, there. that was the best pool to skate besides combi in upland.

Callie Miller

Thu, 27 Dec 2007 17:12:35 -0800

Aldo - Pictures would be AMAZING! Especially the googie sign, which is very cool. There are tons of excellent photos of the partial teardown on Flickr, but they're "all rights reserved" so I couldn't include any.

aldo

Thu, 27 Dec 2007 17:04:45 -0800

I'll try to take some pictures, but whoever was tearing Johnie's down seemed to do a really bad job at it. Many parts are half standing in ruins and it's in such bad shape I wonder if it won't just have to be completely razed/rebuilt. At least it's no longer a car dealership, which made you wince every time you passed by.