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Formerly: KFI/KECA building
Formerly: KEHE building
Built:
1936
Designed by: Stiles O. Clements of Morgan, Walls and Clements
Type: Demolished
Stories: 1
Location: 141 North Vermont Avenue
City: Los Angeles
State: California
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W
hat is it about Los Angeles that infuses the visitor with a sense that this place in the sun is somehow different than others? Driving down the city's boulevards there is tangible, if subconscious, evidence that this is not Phoenix. This is not San Diego. This is not even Las Vegas. That's because the Los Angeles area has its own unique architectural style that while popular in the middle of the 20th century, never caught on quite the way it did here. Call it "Streamline." Call it "Pre-modern." Call it "Post-Deco." As long as its sleek, streaked, and bone white in the California sun, it's instantly recognizable. It is the architectural equivalent of those massive 1950's cruisers with flaring fins and bulging tail lights. The architectural firm of The Morgan, Walls and Clements built many of the area's heritage buildings in a similar fashion. From the El Capitan Theater downtown to Malibu's Adamson House, an architectural legacy was left across this valley giving it a sense of cultural identity. This building, known as the The Morgan, Walls and Clements building, was built as the studios and offices of KEHE radio (780 AM). Its call letters derive from the fact that it was owned by the Hearst newspaper company, and was the radio voice of the Evening Herald Express. In 1939 Earl C. Anthony, the owner of KFI radio (640 AM) bought KEHE, took it off the air and moved his existing station, KECA (1430 formerly KPLA) onto the 780 frequency. KECA was named after its owner's initials. Several years later Anthony then moved the two stations from their building on South Hope Street into the old KEHE building on North Vermont. KFI carried NBC's Red Network, and KECA carried the Blue Network. By 1944 the federal government decided that competition was a good thing, and prohibited ownership of multiple radio stations in the same market (a practice it encourages these days). Anthony had to sell KECA to NBC Blue, and the station moved out of its original home. NBC Blue eventually became ABC. Today KECA exists as KABC (790 AM). KFI stayed in the building until 1975. The Morgan, Walls and Clements building is another victim of the region's insatiable appetite for land, and innate urge to reinvent itself. It was torn down in 2003 by the Los Angeles Unified School District to make way for a basketball court, part of the US$12,900,000.00 Belmont Elementary School Number Six built to serve Koreatown. The children can take comfort in the irony that the same people trying to drill history into their minds is the same organization that destroyed an irreplaceable piece of their history.
**1972: The building's studio A was used in the shooting of the film "Lady Sings The Blues."
**2003: The building is torn down.
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