There was Johnie’s Coffee Shop, with its great roadside sign and space-age roof. Next door was the 99 Cents Only store. A little farther west stood a Sizzler, and beyond it an Ortho Mattress showroom. Across Wilshire were the La Brea Tar Pits and the museums of Museum Row.

Then, one by one, the lights began going out.

Johnie’s stopped operating as a restaurant in 2000. Ortho Mattress disappeared around 2008–09. The Sizzler eventually closed. Encampments became increasingly visible around the inactive properties. Then, in 2024, the 99 Cents Only store — the last major conventional retailer in the cluster — closed when the entire chain liquidated.

By then I had moved away. But every time I returned to the neighborhood, I wondered the same thing:

How had such a valuable stretch of Wilshire Boulevard gone dark?

I started digging into the history of the buildings, property records, old newspaper coverage and city documents.

What I found was more complicated than I expected — not one story, but several overlapping ones.

And one of the biggest surprises was that buildings I had always thought of as separate businesses were more closely connected than they appeared from the sidewalk.

Wilshire and Fairfax Before the Empty Block

It is easy to look at the vacant storefronts today and imagine this stretch of Wilshire as somehow destined for decline.

Historic photographs show almost the opposite.

Long before Johnie’s arrived, the northwest corner of Wilshire and Fairfax was already designed around Los Angeles’ growing car culture. In the 1940s, Simon’s Drive-In occupied the corner, its circular restaurant and glowing signage facing motorists along Wilshire.

Simon’s Drive-In at Wilshire and Fairfax, 1940s

By the early 1950s Simon’s was gone.

Then, in 1956, the future Johnie’s opened as Romeo’s Times Square.

Designed by Louis Armet and Eldon Davis — the architects behind Norms, Pann’s and other Southern California coffee shops — the building was practically an advertisement for postwar Los Angeles. Its steep roof, geometric facade and enormous roadside sign were designed to be noticed through a windshield.

One particularly revealing photograph from 1964 looks directly at the north side of Wilshire just west of Fairfax. Ram’s, as Johnie’s was then known, is operating on the corner, while Royal Food Center occupies commercial space immediately to the west. Cars fill Wilshire and storefront signs compete for motorists’ attention.

Ram’s and Royal Food Center on the north side of Wilshire Boulevard, 1964

The photograph is important for another reason.

One of the mysteries I encountered while researching this story was what occupied this stretch before the 99 Cents Only store opened in 1994. Royal Food Center gives us at least one documented piece of that earlier commercial landscape, although I have not established that its footprint corresponds exactly to the later 6121 Wilshire address.

By the mid-1960s, Ram’s had become Johnie’s Coffee Shop.

Neither building was designed for the Los Angeles that exists there today.

But both survived long enough to see it.

By the time I moved a block away in 1994, this older Wilshire was still recognizable. Johnie’s was still serving customers. Sizzler was still operating.

And that year a new business arrived next door that would become part of the neighborhood for the next three decades:

99 Cents Only.

David Gold, 99 Cents Only and the Wilshire Properties

The fate of several buildings on the block eventually became connected to one Los Angeles family.

David Gold founded 99 Cents Only Stores in 1982. The company grew from a Los Angeles discount retailer into a chain with hundreds of locations.

In 1994, the Gold family acquired the Johnie’s property. That same year, 99 Cents Only opened next door at 6121 Wilshire Boulevard.

The relationship between the properties included something quintessentially Los Angeles:

parking.

A 2005 SEC filing documents a parking arrangement involving the Johnie’s property at 6101 Wilshire and the neighboring 99 Cents Only operation.

City and corporate records identify Gold-family-related entities on the properties. Au Zone Investments No. 2, L.P. is associated with Johnie’s, while HKJ Gold Inc. owned the 99 Cents Only property.

This wasn’t simply an unusual arrangement on Wilshire. SEC records show Gold-family entities acting as landlords for several 99 Cents Only locations around Southern California.

The family’s real-estate interests outlived the retail company itself.

When 99 Cents Only Stores was sold in 2011 for approximately $1.6 billion, the family retained important real-estate holdings and continued leasing properties to the chain.

The Sizzler property at 6155 Wilshire has also been identified by the Beverly Press as Gold-family property.

That was something I had never realized while living nearby.

From the sidewalk, Johnie’s, 99 Cents Only, Sizzler and Ortho Mattress looked like separate businesses.

The property records tell a more interesting story.

Another Piece of the Block: 6111 Wilshire

There was another address tucked into this commercial strip that I had largely forgotten: 6111 Wilshire Boulevard.

For a time it housed a Marinello School of Beauty, part of the once-large chain of cosmetology schools that operated throughout California.

Older records also connect the address with the Fred W. Klein real-estate office, adding another layer to the commercial history of the block.

Krandill Mortgage and Investment Company / Fred W. Klein & Associates at 6111 Wilshire Boulevard, circa 1937. The Streamline Moderne building stood immediately west of Simon’s Drive-In, on the stretch later occupied by Marinello School of Beauty. Courtesy Water and Power Associates.

It is a small detail, but an important one. The north side of Wilshire was never simply Johnie’s, Sizzler and 99 Cents Only. It was a changing collection of restaurants, retailers, offices and service businesses.

The Empty Block had once been anything but empty.

The Sizzler and Ortho Mattress Mystery

The former Sizzler at 6155 Wilshire Boulevard presents a different kind of mystery.

County records describe two portions of the property: a restaurant/drive-in section with an effective year of 1971 and a larger retail section built in 1973.

For years I thought of the old Ortho Mattress showroom at 6205 Wilshire as another building farther down the block.

It turns out I was wrong.

A building-information document prepared for Metro’s Westside Subway Extension identifies the structure explicitly as:

“6155/6205 Wilshire Boulevard.”

The county records tell the same story.

Sizzler and Ortho Mattress were not two completely separate properties. They occupied different portions of the same low-rise commercial property on a single assessor parcel.

The restaurant portion measures roughly 4,650 square feet. The retail portion — later occupied by Ortho Mattress — measures roughly 10,779 square feet.

That discovery also helps explain why a separate 6205 Wilshire parcel is so difficult to find in modern property databases.

It isn’t one.

The two addresses belong to the same property.

And because Beverly Press identifies the former Sizzler property as Gold-family-owned, the shared parcel strongly suggests that the ownership encompasses the former Ortho Mattress portion as well. The newspaper itself refers specifically to the Sizzler building rather than Ortho Mattress, however, so I regard that as the best-supported interpretation of the records rather than an independently reported fact.

Whatever Happened to Ortho Mattress?

Ortho Mattress operated at 6205 Wilshire for years.

An archived version of the company’s own website places the store there by at least 2003.

I was also able to narrow its disappearance to a surprisingly small window.

A Yellow Pages review dated November 13, 2008 describes a customer visiting the store the previous day.

So we know Ortho Mattress was still operating at 6205 Wilshire on November 12, 2008.

But an archived copy of Ortho Mattress’s statewide California store locator captured on July 2, 2009 lists roughly 70 stores — and 6205 Wilshire is no longer among them.

That means the Wilshire store closed sometime between those two dates.

I found no evidence establishing why this particular store closed, and nothing connects its closure directly to the company’s earlier or later financial problems.

But the timing adds another piece to the chronology.

Johnie’s stopped serving customers in 2000.

Ortho disappeared around 2008–09.

Sizzler was gone by the mid-2010s.

99 Cents Only survived until 2024.

The Empty Block wasn’t created all at once.

It accumulated.

There is still one mystery I haven’t solved: what occupied the 6155/6205 property when it first opened in the early 1970s, before Sizzler and Ortho Mattress.

For now, that remains an unanswered piece of Wilshire history.

Why Did Johnie’s Coffee Shop Close?

Johnie’s stopped serving customers in 2000.

The specific business reasons for its closure were not well documented in the contemporary press I could find. What is much better documented is what happened to the building afterward.

In 2013, Metro’s Westside Subway Extension was advancing toward Wilshire and Fairfax. Preservationists became concerned about what construction of the future station might mean for Johnie’s.

The Los Angeles Conservancy nominated the diner for Historic-Cultural Monument status.

The process briefly hit a bureaucratic snag when the city acknowledged that notices concerning the designation had been sent to the wrong address, delaying proceedings so the Gold family could participate.

The City Council ultimately voted unanimously to designate Johnie’s a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument in November 2013.

Councilman Paul Koretz made an especially revealing comment during the process:

“I know the owners want to develop the entire site, but I believe they can do it without harming this location.”

That statement matters.

It tells us that redevelopment of the larger property was already being contemplated publicly more than a decade before 99 Cents Only closed.

But the redevelopment never happened.

Johnie’s remained.

Bernie’s Coffee Shop and Wilshire/Fairfax in 2019

Johnie’s wasn’t entirely abandoned after it stopped being a restaurant.

In 2016, Bernie Sanders campaign volunteers took over the old diner during the California Democratic presidential primary, temporarily transforming Johnie’s into Bernie’s Coffee Shop.

After the campaign, the building continued to be used by organizers and community groups and eventually became home to the Community Solidarity Project.

So describing Johnie’s as simply “vacant since 2000” would be misleading.

It was no longer a functioning coffee shop, but people were using the building.

By 2019, however, the physical condition immediately around it had become difficult to ignore.

I had lived a block away for 25 years by then. The contrast with the historic photographs was striking.

Johnie’s Coffee Shop at Wilshire Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue, with shopping carts, belongings and debris on the sidewalk outside, 2019. Via Google Street View.

Tents, tarps, bicycles and belongings along the Fairfax Avenue sidewalk beside Johnie’s Coffee Shop, 2019. Via Google Street View.

A person on the sidewalk outside the Johnie’s building, then being used as Bernie’s Coffee Shop, 2019. Via Google Street View.

They are uncomfortable photographs.

But they are also part of the history of the block.

Homeless Encampments Along Wilshire Boulevard

The conditions visible in the 2019 photographs were not fleeting.

Encampments repeatedly returned to this stretch of Wilshire in subsequent years.

In April 2025, a city operation near the vacant former 99 Cents Only property moved 27 people into housing, according to the Beverly Press.

But tents later returned.

In January 2026, the Beverly Press again documented tents outside the former 99 Cents Only store while city and LAHSA outreach teams worked with people living along the sidewalk.

Tents outside the former 99 Cents Only store on Wilshire Boulevard, January 2026. Photo by Edwin Folven, Beverly Press/Park Labrea News.

The city cleared and pressure-washed the sidewalk again on February 6. Five days later, at least five tents had reportedly reappeared.

The pattern raises a larger question:

Why does this particular stretch keep attracting encampments?

Part of the answer may be visible in the buildings themselves.

The idea resembles, in a limited sense, the “broken windows” theory: visible signs of abandonment can reinforce the perception that a place is unmonitored and inactive. Here, long-vacant storefronts meant fewer employees, customers and pedestrians — less everyday activity along the sidewalk.

That does not mean homelessness caused the decline of the block.

In fact, the chronology largely runs the other way.

Johnie’s stopped operating as a restaurant in 2000. Ortho Mattress closed around 2008–09. Sizzler was already gone and its property being marketed for lease by 2016–17. And 99 Cents Only remained open until 2024, when its entire parent company collapsed and liquidated hundreds of stores.

Tents outside the former Ortho Mattress store on Wilshire Boulevard, January 2026

Different businesses closed at different times for different reasons.

As the storefronts went dark, however, large stretches of commercial frontage became dead space.

Vacancy didn’t necessarily result from homelessness.

In much of the Empty Block, vacancy came first.

Metro Construction Changes Wilshire and Fairfax

While the north side of Wilshire was losing businesses, something enormous was happening underneath the boulevard.

Metro was building the D Line extension — known for much of its planning history as the Purple Line Extension.

The project affected this corner for more than a decade.

Indeed, the possibility that Metro might need the Johnie’s property during construction was one of the reasons preservationists sought historic protection for the diner in 2013.

Construction brought disruption, fences and years of work along Wilshire.

But it was simultaneously building something that could eventually make these properties far more desirable:

a subway station.

That creates one of the great ironies of the Empty Block.

The same infrastructure project that disrupted Wilshire for years was ultimately transforming this automobile-era commercial strip into transit-adjacent real estate.

And nowhere is that contrast clearer than at 6155/6205 Wilshire.

The low-rise Sizzler/Ortho property belongs to the commercial Wilshire of the early 1970s — spread out, low to the ground and surrounded by parking.

More than half a century later, a subway station has opened virtually at its doorstep.

A property created for one version of Los Angeles now faces another.

The 99 Cents Only Store Closes

In April 2024, 99 Cents Only Stores announced the liquidation of all 371 of its locations in California, Arizona, Nevada and Texas.

The Wilshire store went dark with the rest of the chain.

But the underlying real estate didn’t disappear with the company.

The Gold family had sold the operating company years earlier while retaining important real-estate holdings, including the Wilshire property through HKJ Gold.

After the closure, Jeff Gold, David Gold’s son, told the Beverly Press that the family had received numerous proposals from developers interested in the property.

He called it a “prime piece of real estate.”

That comment gets to the central paradox of the Empty Block:

The buildings looked abandoned. The land beneath them was anything but.

Yet there is an important distinction.

I found no evidence that the Gold family deliberately created these vacancies as part of a coordinated development strategy.

The former Sizzler space was actively marketed for lease in 2016 and 2017.

Nor have I found a publicly announced redevelopment project encompassing these properties.

What the evidence shows is less dramatic, but perhaps more interesting: separate businesses failed or left at different times, while the underlying properties remained.

Over the years, those individual vacancies accumulated until they began to look like a single abandoned block.

Four Days That Changed the Miracle Mile

Then, in May 2026, the story suddenly began moving in the opposite direction.

For years, two enormous construction projects had been unfolding almost simultaneously around Wilshire and Fairfax.

One was above ground.

The other was below it.

On May 4, 2026, LACMA’s new David Geffen Galleries opened to the general public, completing a major transformation of the museum campus across Wilshire from the Empty Block.

Four days later, on May 8, Metro opened Section 1 of the D Line Extension.

The new subway brought three stations to the corridor: Wilshire/La Brea, Wilshire/Fairfax and Wilshire/La Cienega.

For the first time, the Miracle Mile had direct heavy-rail service.

The timing was remarkable.

Within four days, one of Los Angeles’ most important museum districts gained both a new architectural centerpiece and a subway station connecting it directly to the larger rail network.

Passengers emerging at Wilshire/Fairfax now find themselves steps from the La Brea Tar Pits, the Academy Museum, LACMA —

and the Empty Block.

For years, the north and south sides of Wilshire seemed to be moving in opposite directions.

Museum Row was expanding and reinventing itself.

Across the street, storefronts were going dark.

Now those trajectories may finally be converging.

LACMA, Museum Row and a Changing Miracle Mile

The contrast across Wilshire is extraordinary.

The historic May Company building has become part of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.

LACMA’s David Geffen Galleries now stretch across Wilshire as the centerpiece of its rebuilt campus.

The La Brea Tar Pits remain one of Los Angeles’ most recognizable attractions.

And Metro now deposits passengers directly into the middle of it all.

For years, the north side of Wilshire seemed to be moving in the opposite direction from Museum Row.

Now, perhaps for the first time in decades, the larger forces surrounding the Empty Block appear to be pushing toward activity rather than away from it.

Councilwoman Katy Yaroslavsky’s office has said it is meeting with property owners along the corridor to encourage activation of vacant storefronts and long-stalled sites.

The Miracle Mile Homeowners Association has also publicly called for the blight to be addressed.

There have even been small signs of life inside the empty buildings.

The former 99 Cents Only store hosted a temporary art exhibition in February 2026.

Then something wonderfully appropriate happened at Johnie’s.

On the same day the D Line extension opened — May 8, 2026 — the old coffee shop opened its doors for an art exhibition organized by Cole Schiffer, David Gold’s grandson.

Before the exhibition, graffiti was removed and the building received cosmetic attention.

For a brief moment, the old diner was active again.

After decades of waiting, the subway doors opened beneath Wilshire at almost the same moment Johnie’s doors opened above it.

Can the Empty Block Come Back?

There are two photographs from 1978 that I keep coming back to.

Taken from the corner of Wilshire and Fairfax, they look in opposite directions across the intersection. In one, the May Company’s great gold Streamline Moderne tower rises above Wilshire. In the other, Johnie’s Coffee Shop sits across the boulevard, its Googie sign towering over the corner.

The May Company at Wilshire and Fairfax, 1978. Marlene & Anne Laskey Wilshire Boulevard Collection, Los Angeles Public Library.

Johnie’s Coffee Shop at Wilshire and Fairfax, 1978. Marlene & Anne Laskey Wilshire Boulevard Collection.

The photographs are part of the Marlene & Anne Laskey Wilshire Boulevard Collection, a remarkable record of Wilshire made during a series of Tuesday afternoon walks in 1978 and 1979 by Marlene Laskey and her 15-year-old daughter Anne, who took most of the photographs.

Nearly half a century later, remarkably, both buildings are still there.

The May Company is now home to the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. Johnie’s, though no longer operating as a coffee shop, remains one of the most recognizable survivors of the old Miracle Mile.

Around them, almost everything has changed.The May Company has become part of the Academy Museum. LACMA has remade its campus next door. Beneath the boulevard, trains now carry passengers through the Miracle Mile.

Johnie’s still sits on the opposite side of the street.

Behind it is another layer of Los Angeles history: the former 99 Cents Only store, the empty Sizzler and the old Ortho Mattress showroom.

I don’t know what this corner will look like five years from now.

Nothing I found suggests that the vacancies were the result of one deliberate plan. Johnie’s, Ortho Mattress, Sizzler and 99 Cents Only each went dark for different reasons, at different times.

But together, their closures produced something none of them individually created:

an empty block.

I watched much of that transformation happen while living a block away, without ever completely understanding how the pieces fit together.

Now the neighborhood is changing again.

The subway is finally here.

LACMA has reopened its new galleries.

Museum Row is entering a new era.

And city officials are talking with property owners about bringing inactive storefronts back to life.

Whether that will be enough to revive the north side of Wilshire remains an open question.

Johnie’s is still there, its great sign angled toward motorists just as it was when the building opened seventy years ago.

The coffee stopped pouring more than a quarter-century ago.

Ortho Mattress disappeared.

The Sizzler went dark.

The 99 Cents signs came down.

Tents appeared and disappeared along the sidewalk.

Now trains arrive beneath Wilshire and Fairfax every few minutes.

For now, the Empty Block waits.

Sources and Further Reading

Los Angeles Conservancy — Johnie’s Coffee Shop
History of Johnie’s Coffee Shop, its Googie architecture, Historic-Cultural Monument designation and ownership.

Los Angeles Times — “Johnie’s coffee shop designated L.A. landmark” (November 27, 2013)
Reporting on Johnie’s landmark designation, including Councilman Paul Koretz’s statement that the owners wanted to develop the larger site.

Beverly Press & Park Labrea News — “Wilshire tents illustrate a persistent problem” (April 9, 2025)
Reporting on vacant properties and homelessness along Wilshire Boulevard, including the former Sizzler property at 6155 Wilshire, Gold-family ownership and the relationship between vacant storefronts and recurring encampments. The article also discusses the “broken windows” theory. (Beverly Press & Park Labrea News)

Beverly Press & Park Labrea News — “Recurring tents on Wilshire prompt more outreach” (January 7, 2026)
Reporting by Edwin Folven on recurring tents outside the vacant former 99 Cents Only store and ongoing outreach by the city and Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. The accompanying photograph is also by Folven. (Beverly Press & Park Labrea News)

Reuters — “Retailer 99 Cents Only files for bankruptcy, plans to shut down” (April 8, 2024)
Reporting on 99 Cents Only Stores’ bankruptcy and the decision to close all 371 locations.

Los Angeles Metro — D Line Subway Extension
Official information documenting the May 8, 2026 opening of Section 1 and the new Wilshire/Fairfax station.

Los Angeles Metro — 6111 Wilshire Boulevard / Marinello Schools of Beauty records
Metro board records identify 6111 Wilshire Boulevard as a Marinello Schools of Beauty location operated by B&H Education, Inc. Metro approved a $2.5 million settlement involving the property in 2016. (DataMade Metro PDF Merger)

U.S. Department of Education — Federal School Code records
Federal education records list Marinello School of Beauty at 6111 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, confirming the school’s operation at the address. (FSA Partner Connect)

Water and Power Associates — Historical Los Angeles Photograph Collection
Historic photograph of Krandill Mortgage and Investment Company / Fred W. Klein & Associates at 6111 Wilshire Boulevard, circa 1937, documenting the Streamline Moderne building that stood immediately west of Simon’s Drive-In.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art — David Geffen Galleries
Official information documenting the April 19 inauguration and May 4, 2026 general-public opening of LACMA’s new David Geffen Galleries.

Los Angeles County Assessor / Property Records
Building and parcel information for the 6155/6205 Wilshire Boulevard property.

Metro Westside Subway Extension Building Survey
Building documentation identifying the combined commercial structure as “6155/6205 Wilshire Boulevard.”

SEC Filings — 99 Cents Only Stores
Corporate filings documenting Gold-family real-estate entities, leases and the parking arrangement involving 6101 and 6121 Wilshire Boulevard.

Archived Ortho Mattress Website / Store Locator
Archived company records placing Ortho Mattress at 6205 Wilshire Boulevard by at least 2003 and showing that the location had disappeared from the company’s California store list by July 2, 2009.

Yellow Pages — Ortho Mattress, 6205 Wilshire Boulevard
A customer review dated November 13, 2008 describes a visit to the Wilshire store the previous day, helping narrow the store’s closure to between November 12, 2008 and July 2, 2009.

Google Street View — 2019 Imagery
Historical street-level imagery documenting conditions around Johnie’s Coffee Shop and Wilshire/Fairfax in 2019.

When I was a kid, my dad worked in the distinctive elliptical office tower at the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and La Cienega Boulevard. Built in 1972 as the Great Western Savings Building, it later became widely known as the Flynt Building.

Next door stood a building from a very different era of Los Angeles: the beautiful Art Deco Fox Wilshire Theatre, today known as the Saban Theatre.

My dad once told me a story about that building.

A film producer named Jack Schwarz, he said, had lived in a penthouse there during the 1940s. A thirteen-year-old girl who wanted to become an actress had visited him—and afterward she disappeared.

My dad passed away many years ago, but I never forgot the story. Whenever I passed the old Fox Wilshire, I thought about it. Eventually I began to wonder how much of what I remembered was actually true.

Recently, using digitized newspaper archives, film databases, genealogical records and AI-assisted searches, I decided to see what I could find.

The basic story was true.

The girl’s name was Patsy Ruth Brown.

Patsy Ruth Brown

In May 1944, Patsy was thirteen years old and apparently determined to get into the movies.

According to contemporary newspaper accounts, she had repeatedly approached independent film producer Jack Schwarz about appearing in one of his pictures.

Schwarz was not a major studio figure, but he was a working producer. Born in 1896, he had operated movie theaters before moving into film production in the early 1940s and worked in the world of low-budget independent pictures.

One detail repeated in later accounts is that Patsy herself had already appeared, uncredited, in the 1943 film Nearly Eighteen.

I tried to verify that claim and couldn’t.

The American Film Institute Catalog contains a fairly detailed cast listing for Nearly Eighteen, including minor roles, but no Patsy Brown appears. Wikipedia’s cast list doesn’t include her either. An IMDb page for an actress named Patsy Brown lists only Birthright from 1951.

That doesn’t prove Patsy wasn’t an extra in the film. Uncredited performers frequently left little or no documentary trace. But for now, I think her supposed appearance in Nearly Eighteen should be regarded as unverified rather than established fact.

What does appear reasonably clear is that Patsy wanted to act—and that ambition brought her to Jack Schwarz.

An Afternoon at the Fox Wilshire

The Fox Wilshire was more than a theater. Its tower also contained offices and apartments, including residential quarters on the upper floors.

Schwarz lived in a penthouse there.

According to what he later told juvenile officers, Patsy came to his apartment accompanied by an older girl identified as O’Hara.

Schwarz said Patsy had asked him numerous times for a role in one of his films. She spent the afternoon at his apartment, and that evening he said he gave her three dollars for taxi fare.

According to Schwarz, Patsy left with O’Hara.

At some point afterward, she was reported missing.

The Los Angeles Times reported on the search on May 21, 1944, under the headline:

“Search Pushed for Girl Seeking Movie Career”

There was soon another lead.

A taxi driver told police that he had driven Patsy to Los Angeles Union Station. According to the driver, Patsy said she intended to travel to San Bernardino to visit her father, who reportedly worked for a rock company in Barstow.

Authorities followed the information but were unable to locate her.

On May 25, the Times published another article:

“Taxi Driver’s Tip Fails to Trace Girl”

At least as of that report, Patsy had not been found.

More Newspaper Coverage

This is where my own research added something I hadn’t seen mentioned in the accounts of Patsy’s disappearance.

The two Los Angeles Times articles from May 21 and May 25 are the reports generally cited online. But when I searched historical newspaper indexes for “Patsy Ruth Brown,” I found indications that the story received wider coverage.

A Newspapers.com search for the exact name produced 17 U.S. results for 1944, including ten in California. Because search results can contain duplicates and unrelated people with the same name, I don’t regard that as evidence of seventeen separate articles about Patsy.

More interesting were results in GenealogyBank.

Its California newspaper index appears to contain Los Angeles Examiner items concerning Patsy dated:

May 20, 1944
May 22, 1944
May 23, 1944

I haven’t yet been able to examine the full articles, so I want to be cautious about what can be concluded from the metadata alone.

But if the May 20 result is indeed about this Patsy Ruth Brown, it would place newspaper coverage of her disappearance one day earlier than the first known Los Angeles Times article.

The May 22 and May 23 results would also suggest that the Examiner continued following the search during the days between the two known Times reports.

There is a small archival wrinkle here. GenealogyBank sometimes identifies these records under the name Los Angeles Herald Examiner. That newspaper title did not exist until the Examiner and Herald-Express merged in 1962. In 1944, the relevant newspaper would have been the Los Angeles Examiner.

The original articles remain one of the most promising avenues for further research.

They might contain something as simple as an address, parent’s name, school or fuller identification of O’Hara. Any of those details could make it possible to trace Patsy through census records and city directories.

Following the Wrong Patsy Browns

Searching a common surname like Brown creates another problem: it’s remarkably easy to find the wrong person.

One initially interesting search result involved later newspaper references to a Patsy Brown in San Diego, including hits from 1954 and 2004.

At first I wondered whether one of these could somehow relate to Patsy’s later life.

Further research suggests otherwise.

Baseball player Ray Boone married his San Diego high-school sweetheart, Patricia Dorothy “Patsy” Brown, in 1946. She was born in San Diego in 1926.

That provides a much more likely explanation for the later San Diego newspaper references, particularly because Boone was an American League All-Star in 1954 and his family remained prominent in baseball for generations.

I can’t conclusively identify the newspaper hits without seeing the original clippings, but there is no good reason at present to connect this Patsy Brown with Patsy Ruth Brown.

Other genealogical searches produced similar dead ends.

A Patsy Ruth Brown in Coke County, Texas, for example, died in 1942 at two years old. Other women with similar names and California connections don’t match the age and circumstances.

So far, I haven’t found a genealogical record that I can confidently identify as our Patsy Ruth Brown.

Who Was O’Hara?

There is another potentially useful lead hidden in the original story.

The older girl whom Schwarz said accompanied Patsy is identified only as O’Hara.

I haven’t found her first name.

I don’t know her age, where she lived, how she knew Patsy, or whether police ever interviewed her.

If one of the Examiner articles identifies O’Hara more fully, that could provide another way into the story.

The same is true of Patsy’s father.

The taxi driver said Patsy told him that her father worked for a rock company in Barstow. Identifying that company and its employees in 1944 might eventually help identify the Brown family.

But without Patsy’s address or her father’s first name, there are simply too many possibilities.

What About Jack Schwarz?

The circumstances surrounding Patsy’s visit to Schwarz naturally attract attention: a thirteen-year-old aspiring actress spent an afternoon in the apartment of a much older film producer shortly before she was reported missing.

But it’s important to distinguish what is documented from what might be inferred from it.

I have found no evidence that Schwarz was arrested, charged or accused of harming Patsy.

According to his account, Patsy left his apartment with O’Hara after he gave her taxi fare. A taxi driver subsequently reported taking Patsy to Union Station, which, if accurate, places her away from the Fox Wilshire after the visit.

Unless additional records turn up, there isn’t a factual basis for going beyond that.

This isn’t an attempt to make Jack Schwarz into a suspect eighty years later. It’s an attempt to find out what became of Patsy.

So What Happened to Her?

That’s still the question I can’t answer.

I’ve searched for later references to Patsy under combinations of her name with missing, found, runaway, Hollywood, Union Station, San Bernardino, Barstow and Jack Schwarz.

I haven’t found a reliable article saying she was found.

I haven’t found one saying she returned home.

But that’s very different from proving that she remained missing.

Historical newspaper databases are incomplete. OCR frequently mangles names. Some newspapers haven’t been digitized at all. Patsy might have appeared in later records as Patricia rather than Patsy. She could have married and changed her surname. And if she simply returned home a few days later, the event might never have received another newspaper story.

For those reasons, I don’t think it is accurate to call this an unsolved cold case.

What I’ve found is an unresolved historical paper trail.

In May 1944, newspapers were reporting that thirteen-year-old Patsy Ruth Brown was missing.

Several days later, they were still trying to locate her.

And so far, I haven’t found the part of the historical record that tells us what happened next.

The Building Is Still There

Perhaps that’s why the story stayed with me.

Los Angeles has a habit of erasing its own past, but the building at the center of this story survives.

The Fox Wilshire opened in 1930. Today, after changes of name and ownership, it remains on Wilshire Boulevard as the Saban Theatre.

The Great Western building where my father worked came more than forty years later. I remember both buildings from my childhood, but the Fox Wilshire always carried that additional association because of the story my dad had told me.

Now the story means something slightly different to me.

The girl has a name.

I know there were at least two Los Angeles Times articles about her, and apparently several more in the Los Angeles Examiner. I know a taxi driver reported taking her to Union Station. I know some of the details that have been repeated about her—such as the Nearly Eighteen film appearance—are less certain than they first appeared.

But I still don’t know what became of Patsy Ruth Brown.

Maybe someone else can find the missing piece.

A researcher with access to the original Los Angeles Examiner pages from May 20, 22 and 23, 1944 might discover something I’ve overlooked. A genealogist might recognize the family. Someone familiar with Barstow history might know which rock companies were operating there during the war. A city directory or census record might provide the connection that ordinary internet searches haven’t.

And perhaps the answer will turn out to be completely uneventful.

I hope it does.

Maybe Patsy came home, grew up, married and lived a long life, while the newspaper reports about a few uncertain days in May 1944 were simply forgotten.

For now, I don’t know.

And whenever I pass the old Fox Wilshire, I still think about the story my father told me—and wonder what happened to the thirteen-year-old girl at the center of it.

Sources & Research Notes

Contemporary newspaper reports

1. Los Angeles Times. “Search Pushed for Girl Seeking Movie Career.” May 21, 1944, p. 10.

2. Los Angeles Times. “Taxi Driver’s Tip Fails to Trace Girl.” May 25, 1944, p. 12.

3. Los Angeles Examiner. Apparent indexed results concerning Patsy Ruth Brown dated May 20, May 22 and May 23, 1944, located through GenealogyBank. Full page images have not yet been examined, so these should be considered provisional pending inspection of the originals.

Film research

4. American Film Institute Catalog. Nearly Eighteen (1943) — cast and production credits. No Patsy Brown appears in the listed cast.

5. IMDb. Patsy Brown — currently lists Birthright (1951); there is no verified connection between this performer and Patsy Ruth Brown.

6. Wikipedia. Nearly Eighteen — secondary cast listing, used only as a cross-check.

Newspaper and genealogical research

7. Newspapers.com. Exact-name search for “Patsy Ruth Brown” in 1944. Search results indicate additional possible newspaper coverage; individual results require examination before they can be attributed to this Patsy.

8. GenealogyBank. California newspaper index searches for Patsy Ruth Brown, 1944.

9. Society for American Baseball Research (SABR). Ray Boone biography — used to help distinguish Patricia Dorothy “Patsy” Brown Boone from the missing Los Angeles girl.

10. Find a Grave. Patsy Ruth Brown, memorial 52979028 — a Texas child who died in 1942 and can therefore be excluded.

Secondary sources and leads

11. Jack Schwarz, Wikipedia — useful as a starting point because it identifies and cites the contemporary Los Angeles Times reports. Claims have been treated separately according to whether they can be independently verified.

12. Saban Theatre, Wikipedia — background on the former Fox Wilshire Theatre.

13. Etan Does LA, “Saban Theatre/Fox Wilshire” — modern history of the building that also references the Patsy Ruth Brown story and the May 21, 1944 Los Angeles Times report.

Records I’m Still Looking For

• Original Los Angeles Examiner pages from May 20, 22 and 23, 1944.

• Complete scans of the May 21 and May 25 Los Angeles Times articles.

• Patsy’s home address or parents’ full names.

• The full identity of O’Hara.

• The name of the Barstow-area rock company where Patsy’s father reportedly worked.

• A later newspaper, census, marriage, death or other record that can be confidently connected to Patsy Ruth Brown.

If anyone researching Los Angeles history or genealogy has access to these records, I’d be very interested in hearing what you find.

Pico-Burnside Baths, 1973. Advertisement from the B’nai B’rith Messenger, April 20, 1973.

At 5325 W. Pico Boulevard, an old Russian-Jewish bathhouse survived the changing city around it, helped inspire one of L.A.’s strangest magazines, and eventually became City Spa. I’ve been walking through its doors for 25 years.

Los Angeles has a habit of erasing itself.

Restaurants disappear. Neon signs come down. Familiar buildings are demolished or remodeled beyond recognition. A place you drove past for thirty years can vanish on a Tuesday, and by Friday there’s plywood around it and a rendering of luxury apartments taped to the fence.

But every once in a while, something survives.

At the corner of Pico Boulevard and Burnside Avenue, a few blocks east of Fairfax, there is one of those places.

Today the sign says City Spa & Health Center. But long before that name appeared, generations of Angelenos knew 5325 W. Pico Boulevard as Pico-Burnside Baths.

I’ve been going there for 25 years.

For most of those years, I didn’t think of myself as visiting a historical site. I went because I liked the place: the punishing heat, the cold plunge, the steam, the swimming pool, the food, the characters and that unmistakable feeling that once you walked through the doors, you had temporarily left Los Angeles outside.

Only later did I realize that every time I went there, I was stepping into a surviving piece of old Jewish Los Angeles.

And the deeper I dug into its history, the stranger—and more quintessentially L.A.—the story became.

Before City Spa, There Was Pico-Burnside

The Los Angeles Times dates the opening of Pico-Burnside Baths to 1955. Los Angeles’ SurveyLA historic-resources project dates the building itself to 1956 and identifies the property at 1374 S. Burnside Avenue and 5319, 5321 and 5325 W. Pico Boulevard as Pico Burnside Baths.

SurveyLA considered the property historically significant as the founding and longtime location of the baths, noting its long association with a Jewish clientele. (Los Angeles Times)

The one-year discrepancy between 1955 and 1956 may simply reflect the difference between the founding of the business and completion or recording of the building. Until an opening advertisement, building permit or city directory turns up, 1955–56 is probably the safest way to describe its beginning.

The location couldn’t have been more appropriate.

By the postwar years, Jewish Los Angeles had been moving westward from Boyle Heights and the neighborhoods around downtown. Pico-Fairfax developed into one of the centers of Jewish life in the city—a landscape of synagogues, kosher markets, bakeries, delis, restaurants and businesses serving families that had migrated west.

Into that world came a Russian-style bathhouse.

Not a Beverly Hills spa.

A shvitz.

“THE SCHWITZ IS OPEN”

One of the best artifacts I’ve found from the old Pico-Burnside survives in an unlikely place: the pages of the B’nai B’rith Messenger.

On April 20, 1973, the Jewish newspaper carried a display advertisement for the baths.

And it is wonderful.

PICO BURNSIDE BATHS
THE SCHWITZ IS OPEN

In a box in the upper-right corner was another message:

FOR MEN ONLY

The advertisement offered a sauna room, eucalyptus room, Russian steam room, platza massage, complete restaurant, hot mineral pool and an “Olympic Size Swimming Pool.”

There were discounted weekday hours for senior citizens. The place stayed open until midnight Tuesday through Friday, opened at seven in the morning on weekends and closed Mondays.

Then, at the bottom:

5325 West Pico Blvd.
Phone 933-5954

That advertisement tells us a lot.

By 1973, Pico-Burnside wasn’t disguising itself with the language of beauty treatments or luxury wellness. It was advertising directly to readers of a Jewish newspaper and proudly announcing itself as “THE SCHWITZ.”

Even the spelling has charm.

And then there’s that telephone number.

Today City Spa still occupies 5325 W. Pico Boulevard.

Its phone number still ends in 933-5954.

The city changed its area codes. The neighborhood changed. The name of the bathhouse changed.

The number survived.

What Was a Shvitz?

The Yiddish shvitz literally means “sweat,” but the traditional bathhouse was about much more than getting hot.

For generations of Eastern European Jewish immigrants, the public bathhouse was a place to wash, steam and prepare for the Sabbath, but it was also a social institution. The Los Angeles Times later described the shvitz as a popular ritual among Russian and immigrant Jews. (Los Angeles Times)

You went to get hot. Really hot.

Then cold.

Then hot again.

You talked. You ate. You rested. You played cards. You argued. You cooled off. Then you went back into the steam room and started over.

There was also the platza—sometimes spelled plaitza—in which bundles of leafy branches are soaked and used on the body in the intense heat of the steam room.

To an outsider it can look vaguely medieval.

To someone who loves a Russian bath, it makes perfect sense.

The old Pico-Burnside wasn’t particularly glamorous, either.

And that would eventually attract a very different group of Angelenos.

Then the Artists Arrived

In the mid-1970s, artist and architecture student Leonard Koren was experimenting with projects he called “Bath Art.”

Koren needed a way to thank the friends and artists who had modeled for him. He didn’t have much money, so rather than paying everyone a few dollars, he decided to throw them a party.

A friend suggested Pico-Burnside.

Koren later remembered discovering a funky, rundown Russian-Jewish bathhouse with mismatched wall finishes and lingering smells of Eastern European delicatessen food. (The Slowdown)

In other words, it was perfect.

There was a problem.

Pico-Burnside was a men’s bathhouse.

Men and women bathing together was absolutely forbidden.

Koren asked anyway.

Eventually the management relented. He later recalled paying $450 to take over the entire facility for the evening—the sauna, two steam rooms, swimming pool, whirlpool, changing and snack areas and weight room—on the condition that everybody was out by midnight. (Invention of Desire)

Think about that scene for a moment.

An old Russian-Jewish shvitz on Pico Boulevard.

Artists.

Designers.

Movie people.

Bathing suits.

Naked people.

Fully dressed people talking to naked people.

Food.

Steam.

And an electric jazz violinist wandering around the bathhouse.

It sounds less like something that actually happened and more like the setup to a lost Robert Altman movie.

But this was Los Angeles in the 1970s.

Koren intentionally left his invitations vague, so guests weren’t quite sure what they were supposed to wear—or what exactly was going to happen. He later remembered the resulting confusion as creating tremendous “social energy.” (Yahoo)

And out of that steamy night on Pico came something nobody could have predicted.

WET: The Magazine of Gourmet Bathing

After the party, Koren started thinking about how to capture the energy he had stumbled onto.

His answer was a magazine.

In 1976 he launched WET: The Magazine of Gourmet Bathing.

If the title sounds ridiculous, that was part of the point.

WET became an eccentric mixture of bathing, art, design, fashion, architecture, humor and Los Angeles counterculture. It eventually attracted contributors and subjects ranging across the creative world.

Koren has been explicit about where it began:

The idea grew out of the Pico-Burnside bath party. (LA Review of Books)

And there’s photographic evidence.

The first issue of WET, published in May/June 1976, contains Paddy Reynolds’ poolside photographs from that first party at Pico-Burnside. Those photographs remain preserved in the magazine’s official online archive. (WET the magazine of gourmet bathing)

Pico-Burnside didn’t disappear from the story after that first night, either. The surviving WET archive contains posters and announcements for later WET parties at the bathhouse. (WET the magazine of gourmet bathing)

It’s one of my favorite collisions in Los Angeles history.

An institution descended from Eastern European Jewish bathing culture somehow became a gathering place for the city’s experimental art and design crowd.

Old-world Pico-Fairfax met 1970s California.

Steam apparently made a good introduction.

Inside Pico-Burnside Baths, circa 1978

The Missing Years

There is still a mystery at the center of the Pico-Burnside story.

Who originally owned it?

The evidence I’ve found establishes the baths by the mid-1950s, but I haven’t yet found a reliable document identifying the original proprietor.

We do have an intriguing later name.

A California business record shows Pico Burnside Baths, Inc. at 5325 W. Pico Boulevard, incorporated on January 31, 1978.

Its president was listed as Ellis Passovoy. (BizStanding)

That doesn’t establish that Passovoy founded the baths.

Quite the opposite: if the Times‘ 1955 opening date is correct, the establishment had already been operating for more than twenty years when the corporation was created.

Passovoy could have been an owner who came later. The original operation might have been a partnership or sole proprietorship before incorporation. He could also have been associated with the business earlier than 1978.

For now, that’s one piece of the puzzle still waiting to be solved.

Somewhere there may be a 1950s telephone directory, building permit, photograph, newspaper advertisement or yellowed business record with the answer.

1989: Pico-Burnside Becomes a New Kind of Shvitz

The ownership trail becomes much clearer in 1989.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Kambiz Besharat and his brothers purchased the bathhouse that year and extensively remodeled it.

Besharat owned the neighboring wood-flooring business. The Times described him as an Iranian Jew of Russian heritage who remembered spending afternoons shvitzing with his father when he was a boy. (Los Angeles Times)

Over time, Pico-Burnside became City Spa & Health Center.

The clientele broadened. Women and coed bathing periods became part of the operation. The place increasingly attracted people from outside the old neighborhood and outside the Jewish community.

But the basic ritual survived.

Heat.

Steam.

Cold water.

Platza.

Swimming.

Food.

Conversation.

Sitting around doing absolutely nothing for a while.

Then getting hot all over again.

My 25 Years at City Spa

I’ve now been going to City Spa for about a quarter of a century.

When I started going there, I wasn’t conducting historical research.

I wasn’t thinking about SurveyLA or old Jewish newspapers or Leonard Koren.

I just liked the place.

There was something genuine about it—slightly worn, eccentric, communal and completely uninterested in being fashionable.

Los Angeles has plenty of places where you’re supposed to be seen.

City Spa always struck me as a place where you went to disappear for a few hours.

You walked in from Pico Boulevard, changed clothes, and gradually surrendered to a different rhythm.

Steam.

Cold.

Swim.

Sit.

Eat.

Talk.

Steam again.

After enough rounds, the traffic outside might as well have been in another city.

And after 25 years, I realize that this is probably not so different from what attracted people to Pico-Burnside decades before I ever walked through its doors.

Ghosts in the Steam

There is a little L.A. noir in the story if you look for it.

Not the Raymond Chandler kind with a revolver in a desk drawer and a black Packard waiting at the curb.

Something quieter.

Imagine Pico Boulevard after dark in 1973.

The old storefronts are illuminated by signs. Cars hiss over the pavement. Somewhere down the block there’s a deli still open. Behind an anonymous door at 5325 W. Pico, men are sitting half-naked around a table, eating and arguing while clouds of eucalyptus steam roll through another room.

Someone disappears into the Russian steam.

Someone dives into the pool.

Someone gets a platza.

Outside, Los Angeles keeps reinventing itself.

Inside, nobody seems particularly concerned.

A few years later, artists and designers invade the place for a night, an electric violin echoes through the steam, somebody from the Los Angeles Times shows up, photographs are taken around the pool, and eventually an odd little magazine called WET emerges from the whole thing.

Then the artists leave.

The bathhouse remains.

That’s the part I love.

The Shvitz Is Still Open

Pico-Fairfax isn’t the neighborhood it was in 1955.

Much of the Jewish commercial world that once defined this part of Pico has disappeared or moved elsewhere.

Pico-Burnside could easily have disappeared with it.

Instead, the name changed.

The owners changed.

The clientele changed.

The building changed.

But people kept coming to 5325 W. Pico Boulevard to sweat.

I’ve been one of them for 25 years.

And now, when I walk through City Spa, I can’t help thinking about everyone who came before me.

The Russian and immigrant Jewish men who treated the shvitz as part bathhouse, part social club.

The senior citizens who might have clipped that discount advertisement from the B’nai B’rith Messenger in 1973.

Ellis Passovoy, whose precise place in the story we’re still trying to understand.

Leonard Koren and his artists taking over the bathhouse for a night.

The Besharat brothers arriving in 1989 and giving the old place another life.

And thousands of anonymous Angelenos who walked through the same address, sat in the heat, jumped into cold water and went home feeling somehow different than when they arrived.

There’s something else I keep returning to.

That old advertisement from April 20, 1973.

PICO BURNSIDE BATHS.

THE SCHWITZ IS OPEN.

5325 West Pico Blvd.

933-5954.

More than half a century later, the address is still 5325 W. Pico.

The phone number is still 933-5954, now preceded by an area code.

And after 25 years of going there myself, I’ve come to appreciate how unusual that kind of continuity is in Los Angeles.

Some history gets landmark plaques.

Some gets preserved behind velvet ropes.

Some survives only in photographs and newspaper clippings.

And occasionally, if you’re lucky, the old place is still there.

You can walk in off Pico Boulevard.

You can get hot.

You can get cold.

And you can still shvitz.

Author’s note: This history is still a work in progress. One question I hope to answer is who founded and operated Pico-Burnside Baths during its earliest years in the 1950s and ‘60s. If you remember the old Pico-Burnside, worked there, knew its owners, or have photographs, advertisements or stories from the bathhouse, I’d love to hear from you.

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