The Bryson Apartment Hotel on Wilshire Boulevard just north of MacArthur Park, from 1913, is an odd Beaux Arts fantasy. Hugh W. Bryson, the developer, hired architects Frederick Noonan and Charles H. Kyser to design this, and it eventually became almost a character in Raymond Chandler's dark and nasty crime novels. Philip Marlowe looked for bad guys here. Chandler also used The Bryson as a setting when he co-wrote the screenplay for the 1944 film noir classic Double Indemnity, starring Fred...
more »The Bryson Apartment Hotel on Wilshire Boulevard just north of MacArthur Park, from 1913, is an odd Beaux Arts fantasy. Hugh W. Bryson, the developer, hired architects Frederick Noonan and Charles H. Kyser to design this, and it eventually became almost a character in Raymond Chandler's dark and nasty crime novels. Philip Marlowe looked for bad guys here. Chandler also used The Bryson as a setting when he co-wrote the screenplay for the 1944 film noir classic Double Indemnity, starring Fred MacMurray, who then bought the place. He owned the building for thirty years, and now it has been restored as good as new. Next door it’s the Wilshire Royale, 1927, from Walker and Eisen, a residential hotel built for the local leader of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, Olive Philips, as the Arcady, advertised for people who were accustomed to fine living. It eventually ended up as the retirement home for the elderly of First Congregational Church at Lafayette Park, but was recently renovated as the Wilshire Royale luxury apartments. And now this corner is back to what it was supposed to be. ~ Tuesday, January 19, 2021
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