In January 1924, inventor Raymond Ragsdell of 202 South Grand wrote a letter to the Los Angeles Traffic Commission about his idea for a collapsible car that would fold down to the size of a go-cart. "With an automobile of this type it will be possible to park millions of cars where we are now able to park but a few hundred."

When we last discussed the Fremont Hotel, we took a look at the antics of some of the hotel's residents over it's five decade existence. This time around, the Fremont employees get to bask in the OnBunkerHill spotlight.

Location: 355 South Grand Avenue
Date: 1922-?

When the Angel Michael spoke to Ruth Wieland in 1922, she was a Spring Street taxi dancer living on Bunker Hill. She first heard him as she walked along Broadway, then three days later in her room at 355 South Grand Avenue. Over the next 42 months he dictated the "Lamb's Book of Life" to Ruth and her mother May Otis Blackburn, speaking occasionally, night and day--but only if they stayed inside and away from the bustle of everyday life.  In time, the handwritten book comprised such vast bulk that, at least according to May, it would have taken sixteen stenographers six months to transcribe it.

In that our post about the earth carvings (the Cuscans have nothing on us) at Second and Hill garnered some interest, I thought it worthwhile to detail salient features and goings-on sundry of other buildings on the block.

The Fremont Hotel that stood on the corner of 4th Street and Olive for five decades had 100 rooms. As previous posts on this site have shown us, no place on Bunker Hill with a lot of rooms and a long lifespan existed without a good amount mayhem. The Fremont is no exception.

October 30, 1920

“A sailor's life, it is a merry life…”
– Fairport Convention

K.W. Cross (19), C.J. Terry (20), and R.P. Cullison (18), had been sailors for only two months when they came to the conclusion that a sailor’s life wasn’t so damned merry after all. In fact, each of the swabbies was positively desperate to get out of uniform and back into civilian life, so they hatched a plan to get themselves discharged from the service.

When we last visited the Argyle, it was the a first rate Bunker Hill rooming house, artists' salon, and night spot besieged by troubled management and unpredictable closings.  This week, we turn to the Argyle's tenants, and their various encounters with local law enforcement.

At first, the hotel attracted the sort of person who perhaps wished for a bit more intrigue and drama than life at the Argyle provided.  And being artistic types, they were perhaps prone to overactive imaginations.

On December 22, 1887, police were summoned to the Argyle at 2:30 in the morning, and greeted at the door by a hysterical landlady who claimed that the house was full of burglars, and "one of them is standing in a guest's room with his throat cut!"

Say “mother fixation” and dollars to donuts you mean, or are taken to mean, a fixation on your mother. Mrs. Emma Rupe was fixated on being a mother. So much so that on July 5, 1936, the Denver waitress took a fancy to John, the two year-old son of Mr. and Mrs. John Richard O’Brien. John, it seems, looked just like Emma’s own toddler who’d died nine years previous. On the pretext that she was going to take the little darling out to buy him a playsuit (the O’Briens being trusting souls, and near penniless, so how could they refuse?) Emma thereupon took John shopping…as far from Denver as she could get, and with as great a chance of disappearing as possible. Because clichés are born of truth, noir clichés especially, she beelined straight for Los Angeles, Bunker Hill specifically, and checked into the St. Regis.

 “Mama don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys.
Don't let 'em pick guitars and drive them old trucks.
Make 'em be doctors and lawyers and such…”

September 23, 1892
401 South Hill Street

Eight year old Willie Fisher waited until the early hours of the morning, then lifted $3 from his mother’s purse and disappeared.When Mrs. Fisher realized that her boy was missing, she immediately contacted police. She told them that she believed that the child had boarded a northbound train to become a cowboy, or maybe a lawman.