Good Morning, Oppo

"ttyymmnn" (ttyymmnn) 06/12/2019 at 08:30 • Filed to: None

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Regular, unleaded, or avgas?

That’s a Fokker F-32, by the way.

InFierority Complex > ttyymmnn 06/12/2019 at 08:43

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That cool and and but can you do the can-can on it?

Yes, the answer is yes.

The engines look almost completely exposed

ttyymmnn > InFierority Complex 06/12/2019 at 08:47

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Before the addition of Townend rings . The F-32 first flew in 1929, the year the Townend ring was invented. 

facw > ttyymmnn 06/12/2019 at 08:58

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Not a gas station anymore, and definitely no classic aircraft (I assume planes like this would have been scrapped for aluminum during WWII):

ttyymmnn > facw 06/12/2019 at 09:10

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Good luck finding much open space at all in those parts of LA these days. Except maybe for a parking lot. This is an excellent website of photos from the early days of the area surrounding LA. They’ve got a few pages dedicated to the rise of aviation in the area, from the earliest days.

This photo (full size here ) shows the opening of the Western Air Express terminal at Alhambra Field in 1930, complete with a Fokker 32 as shown in the gas station photos. WAE only flew the F-32 for a couple of years because it proved to be underpowered (no surprise there) and was too expensive to operate. Alhambra Field , which was located at 620 East Valley Boulevard , about seven miles east of LA, is long gone. Although I wonder if the strip center at that address , a relatively open space in a dense residential area, is a vestige of the old field.

ttyymmnn > facw 06/12/2019 at 09:12

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And to add to my reply, I would wager that the F-32 at the gas station came from WAE, who was looking to unload it. The dates work out pretty well. 

facw > ttyymmnn 06/12/2019 at 09:34

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Your link certainly indicates you are correct. They have this picture of the terminal and hangars:

And you can see that in the 1953 aerial, that stuff was still there:

But by 1964, they had been demolished and replaced by shopping plazas:

Had I designed this mall though I would have preserved the terminal and maybe the hexagonal hangar to serve as distinctive features to make my strip mall stand out from all the others.

ttyymmnn > facw 06/12/2019 at 10:12

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I’m not sure if you noticed, but those photos are ©.

Yes, I would have kept the Art Deco terminal too. And the hex hangar would have made a neat shopping center, with long store fronts. 

facw > ttyymmnn 06/12/2019 at 10:15

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There was a little indication of that...

I’m claiming that low-res crops for non-commercial use to discuss building configuration passes the 4- factor test for fair use.