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ALWAYS
KEEP THE SUN AT YOUR BACK is a cardinal rule
of photography, but sometimes it's not
possible. This Rozelle aerial lacks his usual
clarity because of that (I think). It was
taken in 1947, when the Bank of America
(excuse me, Home Federal, excuse me Washington
Mutual, excuse me Chase) building was the
tallest one on Broadway. The downtown post
office, at the lower left, caught my eye and
then I looked across the street. It was the
old Carnegie main library, torn down in 1954
for the "new" main library.
This
brings back memories. My family purchased the
Hotel Churchill at 9th & C (bottom left
corner) in 1972. It was built in 1915 as a
6-story building. Someone convinced Mr.
Churchill (no relation to Winston) to add a
ballroom and penthouses to the top during the
Roaring ‘20s, so they added the 7th floor,
increasing the room count to 92. They had a
total of ONE dance before they realized it was
a bad idea, due to the teeny elevator and
teeny public restrooms. They turned the
ballroom into a big guest lounge. My
involvement started right away as Assistant
Manager, which meant I worked the front desk,
elevator, houseman, and night auditor on
everyone else's days off. Hand operated 500VDC
Otis Elevator. We acquired the building to the
right of it a year later, and the building
behind it in the '80s. We put together 1/3 of
a block, and we sold the whole shebang in
1997. My dad had his office on the 7th floor
in the old ballroom until he passed in 1995.
If you look at the bottom right of the
picture, extreme corner, you will see parts of
our other main hotel, the New Plaza Hotel,
which is on 4th Avenue in the middle of the
block. We bought that one in 1973, and I
became the General Manager at the ripe old age
of 20. It was 192 rooms in two buildings. I
had 19 employees, all older than me. One clerk
was in his 80's. The first building was built
in 1906 as the Waldorf Hotel, and had a couple
of cool restaurants on the ground floor and
basement. In 1926 they built a 9-story annex
with an updated elevator, still called the
Waldorf Hotel. Sometime after the crash it was
renamed the New Plaza Hotel, due to its close
proximity to Horton Plaza. It was across the
street from the east entrance of the US Grant
Hotel. I lived in the penthouse on the roof
for many years. That was back when there
weren't enough people downtown on a Sunday to
have a fight. I parked my cars across the
street at the US Grant. We sold the Plaza
around 1984. I sure learned a lot about people
and business in those years -- George
Fish Jr. '71
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