The Pup, the Bulldog, and the Maddox Family

NOTE: For the most up-to-date research about the Pup Cafe, check out this page on my new website Virtual Boulevard.

I intended for this to be a pretty simple post reviewing the history of Culver City's "Pup Cafe," a dog-shaped building that used to exist in the Los Angeles area and is sometimes confused with the Bulldog Inn on Valley Boulevard. However, I ended up learning some surprising facts that reshaped my understanding of the Pup, its history, and its relationship to the Bulldog.

It turned out that the Pup was not originally located in Culver City, but was in fact moved there from the West Adams district of Los Angeles in 1933 or 1934. Some of the better-known photographs of the Pup are actually from this earlier location.

I also confirmed the identity of the Pup's creator: Joseph Andrew Maddox. And to my great surprise, Joseph Maddox's son Everett Floyd Maddox was the creator of the Bulldog. These two dog-shaped restaurants in Los Angeles didn't just happen to look similar — they were built by two members of the same family!

As a result, this post will not only present information about the Pup Cafe, but will also attempt to provide a unified timeline of the Pup's history, the Bulldog's history, and the movement of both buildings through the Los Angeles area.

The Pup (left) and the Bulldog (right).

Beginnings

I first learned about the Pup Cafe while researching the Bulldog Inn. The Pup's location didn't seem anywhere near as mysterious as the Bulldog's, for several reasons. For one thing, it existed up until between 1969 and 1971, meaning that plenty of people still alive today remember it from their childhoods and have described its location in detail online. The Bulldog, probably destroyed sometime around 1948 or 1949, was gone too soon. Additionally, the Pup is clearly visible in high-quality aerial photos of Culver City from 1934; no photos of similar quality exist for any of the Bulldog's locations.

All this is to say that I thought the Pup's history was pretty straightforward. One thing that did nag at me was that a few photos of the Pup showed a "5406" address over its door, when its address in Culver City was known to be on the 12700 block of West Washington Boulevard. I chalked this up to a renumbering of West Washington Boulevard in Culver City at some point, and moved on.

Below are the two pictures I know of where the "5406" is visible. 

Photo 1

Source. Photograph dated February 5, 1930.

Photo 1 has appeared in print as far back as 1933, in Los Angeles by Morrow Mayo. In 2018 it was reproduced in slightly greater detail for California Crazy: American Pop Architecture by Jim Heimann. In addition to making the "5406" more visible, this version cropped out less of the house on the right. The power and telephone lines were edited out, however.

Photo 1, version 2

Source

Photo 2

Source. If you look closely, you can see a "For Sale" sign to the left of the restaurant.

This picture also gives us a good look at "Ben's Garage."

5406 West Adams Boulevard

One day, I came across the following classified ad from 1933 in Newspapers.com's archives.

Source: Los Angeles Illustrated Daily News, April 20, 1933.

The name "Bull Dog Cafe" almost led me to think that the advertisement referred to the pipe-smoking bulldog from Valley Boulevard, but then I remembered the "5406" from the Pup photos. After checking old city directories to confirm that the "5406 West Adams St." of 1933 was the same geographical location as the 5406 West Adams Boulevard of today, I began investigating the address more closely. Luckily, the path forward ended up being very simple.

If Photo 1 were indeed taken at 5406 West Adams Boulevard, then the street running through the background would be South Burnside Avenue. The house in the right-hand background of Photo 1 would then have been on South Burnside, just south of its intersection with an alley behind West Adams.

Here's 2614-2616 South Burnside Avenue, the house at that location today, together with the house from Photo 1.

2614-2616 South Burnside Avenue, Google Street View, 2019.

Photo 1 (detail)

Some changes have been made to the house, but the roofline and shingled overhang are unmistakably similar. According to Los Angeles building records, this house was built in 1924, early enough to have appeared in the photo.

I moved on to the house visible in the background of Photo 2. This house is also visible in another photo of the Pup:

Photo 3

Source: California Crazy & Beyond, Jim Heimann, 2001. Credited to The 

Williams Partnership. The house in question is behind the Pup, to the right.

Here's the house from those photos side-by-side with 2618-2620 South Burnside Avenue, the house at that location today (one door down from 2614-2616).

2618-2620 South Burnside Avenue, Google Street View, 2019.

Photo 2 (detail)

Photo 3 (detail)

The house was an obvious match, and city records showed that it was built in 1923. The combination of the classified ad and matching houses led me to the conclusion that the Pup Cafe was located at 5406 West Adams Boulevard, Los Angeles until at least 1933. Since the earliest aerial photo showing it in Culver City was from 1934, this fit with the established timeline.

The classified ad also established that the Pup Cafe was known as the "Bull Dog Cafe" at one point. However, to avoid confusion with the Bulldog Inn, I'll continue to call it the Pup Cafe in most cases.

Here's what 5406 West Adams Boulevard looks like today. It's the red building near the center. I tried to capture this image from a similar angle to Photo 1.

Source: Google Street View, February 2020.

The First Movement

I looked up the address "5406 West Adams Boulevard" in the Los Angeles building permit archive and found the following document, issued July 16, 1929.

Source

It's a permit to move a building from some unspecified location in Los Angeles County (presumably not within LA city limits) to 5406 West Adams Boulevard. Another section specifies that the building will be moved "by Ridgeley Dr." The permit states that the building is already being used as a restaurant and will continue to be used for that purpose after the move. It also mentions that the lot at 5406 West Adams will be shared with a garage (presumably "Ben's Garage"). The building owner is given as J. A. Maddox of 5354 Westhaven St.

I'll have more to say about J.A. Maddox shortly, but I want to focus on the fact that this permit seems to document when the Pup first came to 5406 West Adams. It apparently started out in some other location that wasn't even within the city limits, and for at least part of its journey traveled along Ridgeley Drive. Ridgeley Drive intersects with West Adams Boulevard right near the 5406 address, so this makes sense.

However, the permit doesn't mention exactly where the Pup might have existed before being moved, and there's very little information to go on. J.A. Maddox may have even purchased a nondescript food stand, which he modified into the shape of a dog after moving it. In that case, there wouldn't even be any photographs of the Pup at a previous location.

Joseph A. Maddox

Searching old city directories for "5406 West Adams Boulevard" quickly turned up the name "Joseph A. Maddox." Here's his listing from the 1931 Los Angeles city directory (the ditto marks mean "Maddox"):

Source

Joseph Maddox died in 1949 at the age of 84, still living at 5354 Westhaven Street.

Source: Los Angeles Times, January 21, 1949.

But there was something more interesting about the obituary: it said that Joseph Maddox had a son named Everett Maddox. I recognized that name immediately as the man associated with the Bulldog Inn's address in the 1931 Rosemead city directory. Could it just be a coincidence?

At this point, my access to Ancestry.com through the Los Angeles Public Library came in extremely handy. Thanks to the massive set of searchable records it provided, I was able to verify pretty quickly that the Joseph A. Maddox who'd owned a restaurant at 5406 West Adams Boulevard, Los Angeles was indeed the father of the Everett Maddox who'd owned a restaurant at 1153 East Valley Boulevard, Rosemead. I also confirmed that Joseph's middle name was Andrew and Everett's middle name was Floyd. I won't bore you with the exact details, but things like census records, draft cards, and names of siblings and spouses left very little room for ambiguity.

I now had a personal theory that the Pup Cafe and the Bulldog Inn were built around the same time by two members of the same family. I wasn't sure if I'd ever find definitive proof of this fact, but then the answer basically dropped into my lap.

Joseph and Everett

Ancestry.com users can create entries about their ancestors, tying them to certain records and including extra material. It turns out that someone had already gone in and created entries for Joseph Andrew Maddox, Everett Floyd Maddox, and the rest of their family. They'd even included some photographs:

Joseph Andrew Maddox (left) and Everett Floyd Maddox (right).

Both photographs dated November 1925. Source (1, 2).

But even more important was a note attached to Joseph Maddox's entry, attributed to his granddaughter Lorna Elizabeth Maddox Williams and labeled "Joseph Andrew Maddox in LEMW's Words":

He was a carpenter and a building contractor. At one time he owned a second-hand store in Kansas and was a part-time sheriff's deputy.

With his three sons, he built his house at 5354 Westhaven St. in Los Angeles and lived there from 1924 until 1949 when he died there.

At one time he owned a small lunch stand built in the shape of a large bulldog, built by Joseph and his sons in the 1930s on W. Washington Blvd. in Los Angeles. Later on, his son Everett built one like it in San Gabriel. After the parents' death, Irene and Edwin lived in the same house until their deaths, when the property was sold.

So my theory was no longer just a guess — it was what had actually happened. The Pup Cafe in Los Angeles belonged to Joseph Maddox, and the Bulldog Inn in Rosemead belonged to his son Everett Maddox. (The Bulldog was just yards over the border between San Gabriel and Rosemead, so placing it in San Gabriel was entirely reasonable). Also note that 5354 Westhaven Street is just a few blocks away from 5406 West Adams Boulevard.

Of course, a few questions remained. Lorna Williams described the Pup Cafe as being built on West Washington Boulevard, but it seems pretty clear that it started out on West Adams Boulevard and was moved to West Washington Boulevard a few years later. It was probably moved to West Adams from some earlier location, but that location was outside the Los Angeles city limits, not on West Washington Boulevard. I think the best explanation is just that Mrs. Williams simplified the story when retelling it years later. In fact, she spent some time living in Culver City in the 1940s and so may have seen the Pup there after it was moved.

I'd like to think that Mrs. Williams's memory that Joseph Maddox and his sons built the Pup together is accurate. That's why I think the building moved to 5406 West Adams Boulevard in 1929 may have just been a generic cafe that was modified into the shape of a dog.

According to censuses and city directories, Joseph and Everett Maddox worked as contractors for most of their lives. Neither man seemed to own his restaurant for more than five years. Perhaps they built them as a kind of advertisement for their construction abilities.

The Pup in Culver City

The Pup Cafe was moved from Los Angeles to Culver City sometime between April 1933, when the classified ad was placed, and June 1934, when the Pup was photographed from the air. Different editions of California Crazy by Jim Heimann give either of the two addresses 12728 and 12732 West Washington Boulevard as its new location. However, I learned from old newspapers that the Pup Cafe's new address was actually 12718 West Washington Boulevard, Culver City. (Both incorrect addresses, as well as the correct one, point to approximately the same spot: the south side of West Washington Boulevard, between Rosabell Street and Wade Street.)

Here's the June 1934 aerial photo that I keep alluding to:

Source [direct link to TIFF file]

The Pup is clearly visible near the center — you can even make out the shadow cast by its head. West Washington Boulevard is the wide street curving across the top of the photo. Rosabell Street is the bent street on the left, and Wade Street is on the right.

Here's the earliest mention in print that I've seen of the Pup Cafe in Culver City, from November 1934:

Source: Venice Evening Vanguard, November 8, 1934.

Along with providing the 12718 West Washington Boulevard address, this advertisement also confirms that the name "Pup Cafe" wasn't just invented by history—it was really a contemporary name for this restaurant.

Here are a few photos of the Pup Cafe in Culver City. More signage accumulated on and around the building.

Photo 4

Source. Looks to have been found at a flea market.

Described as being from 1939 — maybe the year was written on the back?

This next photo was taken by the famed Ansel Adams "around 1939," according to the Los Angeles Public Library. There's a good description of its provenance at the source link.

Photo 5

Source. Photograph by Ansel Adams, c. 1939. Look for the cat in front of the Coca-Cola cooler.

It seems clear that these photographs were taken in Culver City for a few reasons. First, the date associated with Photo 5 is pretty solid, placing that photo after the Pup's arrival in Culver City. Then, since Photo 4 clearly shows the Pup in the same location from a different angle (little details like the Coca-Cola cooler and front patio match), it must have been taken in Culver City as well.

In 1948, a rectangular extension was added to the Pup's left-hand side (sources: "Building Permits Receive Approval," Venice Evening Vanguard, July 15, 1948; aerial photography). At some point, the Pup ceased to function as a restaurant and became Ugly Dog Records. Below is a photograph from 1969.

Photo 6

Source: "There Was an Old Woman Who Worked in a Shoe," Lawrence Dietz,

West Magazine of the Los Angeles Times, November 30, 1969. Photograph by Mike Salisbury.

Because it was in the West Magazine Sunday supplement to the LA Times, this photograph would have originally been in color and it's a shame the only version archived online is in black-and-white. Nevertheless, it's the only photographic evidence of Ugly Dog Records that I've been able to find. It's nice to see that the Pup has been cleaned up somewhat and maybe given a new coat of paint (although the image quality likely hides many flaws).

But the Pup wouldn't be around for much longer. By 1971, it had been replaced by a parking lot and entered the realm of memory.

Here's what the Pup's Culver City location looked like in 2019. The spot once occupied by the Pup is somewhere within the footprint of the white apartment building, which has the address 12712 West Washington Boulevard. I tried to capture a similar angle to that of Photo 5.

Source: Google Street View, March 2019.

The Maddox Bulldog Timeline

Below is my attempt to construct a timeline of Joseph and Everett Maddox's Pup and Bulldog restaurants. Sources are in brackets. I've included the remaining photos of the Pup that I know of as well.

Note that the Pup Cafe seemed to have a new owner pretty much every time it appeared in the news or in a city directory.

See my post on the Bulldog for more information about that restaurant's own history.

1864

Joseph Andrew Maddox born in Illinois. [1900 US census]

1899

Everett Floyd Maddox born in Pennsylvania. [1900 US census]

1924

Joseph Maddox builds a house at 5354 Westhaven Street, Los Angeles, and moves in. ["Joseph Andrew Maddox in LEMW's Words"]

1929

In July, Joseph Maddox files a permit to move a restaurant from somewhere in LA County to 5406 West Adams Blvd. This is the restaurant he would refer to as the "Bull Dog Cafe," which we know as the "Pup Cafe." [Los Angeles building permit records]

1930

Joseph Maddox is listed as a cafe proprietor by the 1930 US census.

At some point early in the Pup's existence, the following photos are taken at 5406 West Adams Boulevard.

Photo 7

Source

Photo 8

Source

Photo 9

Source

1931

In January, Joseph Maddox is robbed of $15 by bandits at the Pup Cafe. ["Hold-Up Totals Rise Anew," Los Angeles Times, January 12, 1931]

In February, Joseph Maddox fights back against two bandits at the Pup Cafe and thwarts their robbery attempt. ["Store Owner and Bandits Battle," Los Angeles Evening Post-Record, February 21, 1931]

Everett Maddox of 934 South Palm Avenue, San Gabriel is listed for the first time as the proprietor of a restaurant at 1153 East Valley Boulevard, Rosemead. This is the pipe-smoking Bulldog Inn. [1931 Alhambra / San Gabriel Valley city directory]

1932

The Alhambra / San Gabriel Valley city directory no longer lists Everett Maddox as owning a restaurant.

The Pup appears in video footage labeled "Driving Through Hollywood (1932)." I'm not entirely certain that the date is correct, but I think that 2614-2616 South Burnside Avenue does appear in the background, which would place the footage before the move to Culver City.

Pup Cafe appears at 2:21. Source.

1933

The Pup Cafe appears in Los Angeles by Morrow Mayo.

In April, the Pup Cafe is put up for sale. [Illustrated Daily News, April 20, 1933]

The Pup Cafe is moved to West Washington Boulevard in Culver City at some point before June 1934. [UCSB aerial photo archive]

1934

In April, the Pup Cafe appears in Modern Mechanix (below). The image used is still of the West Adams location.

Photo 10

Source

In November, an advertisement appears for "Mac's Pup Cafe" in Culver City. [Venice Evening Vanguard, November 8, 1934]

Also in November, the Bulldog Inn appears in National Geographic.

Everett Maddox now lives at 5351 Homeside Avenue, Los Angeles, not far from his father. [Los Angeles voter registration archives]

The Los Angeles city directory no longer lists Joseph Maddox as owning a restaurant.

1937

The Sadler family are listed as proprietors of the Bulldog Inn in Rosemead. [1937 Alhambra / San Gabriel Valley city directory]

Dorothy Bishonden is listed as the proprietor of the Pup Cafe in Culver City. [1937 Culver City / Los Angeles city directory]

1938

Virginia Jacobson is listed as the proprietor of the Pup Cafe in Culver City. [1938 Culver City / Los Angeles city directory]

1939-1940

The Pup Cafe is photographed by Ansel Adams. [Los Angeles Public Library]

Below is a second photo of the Pup taken by Adams at the same time.

Photo 11

Source. Photograph by Ansel Adams.

1940

In June, the Bulldog is advertised for sale or rent in the Los Angeles Times:

Source: Los Angeles Times, June 16, 1940.

Note that 1153 East Valley Boulevard is given as the residence of the cafe's owners. This aligns with how the Sadler family were listed as both residents of 1153 East Valley Boulevard, and proprietors of a restaurant at the same address (see my post about the Bulldog). They must have lived right next door to the Bulldog.

1940-1944

The Bulldog is moved from Rosemead to Monterey Park. [my own research]

1945

In August, Esther Chase, the proprietor of the Pup Cafe in Culver City, throws hot coffee at three would-be robbers and stops them from robbing her restaurant. ["Coffee Treatment Scares Bandit," Venice Evening Vanguard, August 23, 1945]

1948

In July, Esther Collings receives approval to build an addition to the Pup Cafe (this time referred to as "Dog Restaurant" in contemporary coverage). ["Building Permits Receive Approval," Venice Evening Vanguard, July 15, 1948]

1948-1949

The Bulldog is either moved out of Monterey Park or demolished. [Historic Aerials]

1949

In January, Joseph Maddox dies at his home in Los Angeles. [Los Angeles Times, January 21, 1949]

1957

In August, eight teenagers are arrested for "gang activities" and violation of curfew at the Pup Cafe (this time referred to as "Dog Cafe" in contemporary coverage). ["Teenagers Nabbed in Local Drive-In Raid," Venice Evening Vanguard, August 10, 1957]

1962

In November, Everett Maddox dies in a construction accident in Los Angeles. ["Police Probe Building Fall; 1 Man Killed," Valley Times Today, November 17, 1962]

1969

The Pup Cafe, now Ugly Dog Records, appears in West Magazine of the Los Angeles Times.

1969-1971

The Pup Cafe is demolished. [UCSB aerial photo archive]

Open Questions

Some questions remain about the Pup Cafe:

• What building did Joseph Maddox move to 5406 West Adams Boulevard in 1929, and where did he move it from?

• Was it already in the shape of a dog, or did he modify it?

• Did he move an unrelated building, then demolish it and build the Pup soon after?

• When did the Pup become Ugly Dog Records?

Last Bits

There's one photo of the Pup Cafe that I couldn't even attempt to place into the rest of the chronology. It appears as part of the endpaper design of California Crazy & Beyond by Jim Heimann and is credited to the author's personal collection. For completeness's sake, I'll include it here.

Photo 12

Source: California Crazy & Beyond, Jim Heimann, 2001.

Finally, I'll close with a memory of the Pup Cafe from Culver City that someone posted on Facebook, which I thought was really nice: On Sundays my dad would walk with us here and lift us up to pet the dog's nose. 

Thanks for reading, and if you have any questions or corrections, feel free to reach out!

The Secret History of the Bulldog Cafe

NOTE: For the most up-to-date research about the Bulldog Cafe, check out this page on my new website Virtual Boulevard.

There was a little restaurant shaped like a pipe-smoking bulldog somewhere in the Los Angeles area during the 1930s.

Source

In this post, I'll go over the existing photos of the restaurant, where it was located and why the conventional wisdom about its location is wrong, and how the restaurant found a second life years after the fact.

I tried to include a lot of detail in this post for others who might be as interested in this as I am. For those who just want the short version: I believe that this restaurant was located at 1153 East Valley Boulevard, Rosemead, CA from some point before 1931 to some point after 1940. Between 1940 and 1944 it was moved three miles southwest to 638 East Garvey Avenue, Monterey Park, CA, where it was used as a real estate office until its likely destruction in 1948 or 1949.

The only name used to refer to this restaurant in print was "Bulldog Inn," which appeared once in a 1937 city directory. The names "Dog Cafe," "Bulldog Cafe," and "Bull Dog Cafe" do not originate from primary sources related to this specific restaurant.

The conventional wisdom that it was located at 1153 West Washington Boulevard in Los Angeles originates from the California Crazy books by Jim Heimann. I was able to contact him via email to discuss the Bulldog in greater detail and learned that the address he provided was based on an old Los Angeles telephone book that listed a restaurant with "Dog" or "Bulldog" in its name at 1153 West Washington. While this was a pretty good guess, it turns out that aerial photos, a caption on a photo of the Bulldog, and a personal account from the niece of the Bulldog's original owner point to the San Gabriel Valley locations described above. Adding to the confusion is the fact that a different dog-shaped restaurant, usually called the "Pup Cafe," really did exist on West Washington Boulevard in Culver City.

Throughout this post, I refer to the restaurant as simply the "Bulldog," mainly to avoid sounding too presumptuous by calling it the "Bulldog Inn" (although I do think that is the correct name). I put "Bulldog Cafe" in the title in an attempt to make this post easier to find online.

There is still a lot I don't know about this place and I hope to update this post with any new information I might learn.

Existing Photos and Video of the Bulldog

The first thing I did when I became interested in the Bulldog's history was find all the photos of it that I could. So far, I've found nine photos and one video of the Bulldog. I'm sure there are more out there, but they've either never been digitized or are buried somewhere online with no identifying information. I have a general idea of the origins of most of the photos, but some are still a mystery.

Photo 1

Source. Photograph likely by Ralph D. Cornell.

Photo 2

Source. Photograph likely by Ralph D. Cornell.

These first two photos come from the UCLA Library's Ralph D. Cornell Papers collection. Ralph D. Cornell was a landscape architect who was involved in the planning of the UCLA campus. I've cropped both of these photos from the three-photo collage available at the link (the third photo is of a different restaurant). The caption is a little muddled:

Note on back of photograph: [The Pup] Valley Blvd. Alhambra. [Bull Dog] Beverly Blvd. & Virgil St. L.A. [5-15-32]., Text from nitrate sleeve: Roadside Eating Places. The Pup - Beverly & Virgil [Bulldog] - Valley Blvd., Alhambra 5-15-32.

Already we're faced with a question. Cornell seems to have mixed up the two restaurants between labeling the back of the photo and labeling the nitrate sleeve. Which caption is correct? Well, I was able to verify pretty easily that "The Pup" restaurant was indeed near the intersection of Beverly Boulevard and North Virgil Avenue in the city of Los Angeles (I found a low-altitude aerial photo of it that I could match to old aerial photos of the entire neighborhood). This leaves Valley Boulevard, Alhambra as Cornell's intended location for the Bulldog. In all the searching I've done so far, this is the only photo of the restaurant with a street name associated with it that wasn't added years after the fact.

It's not clear from the caption if Cornell photographed both restaurants on May 15, 1932, or just one of them. Whatever the case is, I think it's a good bet that all the photos were taken very close to 1932.

A few details that will be relevant later on: there's a power transmission tower sitting in a field visible in the background of Photo 1, and an "1153" on the restaurant door in both photos. Also, some of the Bulldog signs are on the other side of the fence, suggesting that whoever owned the restaurant also owned the property next door.

The Ralph D. Cornell Papers Collection also includes the negative of this photo collage. Well, it's labeled as a negative, but the colors aren't reversed, so who knows. I'm not familiar enough with 1930s photography techniques to be sure.

Photo 3

Source (eBay item number 254790812087)

This photo was printed on a postcard copyrighted in 1996. The back of the postcard reads "GIANT BULLDOG SMOKING HIS PIPE, one of the many unique restaurants in Los Angeles, February 3, 1933." I don't think such a specific date would have been made up, so it may have been attached to the original photo. The photo is credited to UPI/Bettmann Newsphotos, but I don't know how they originally acquired the photo or if it was ever published during the 60-odd years before being used on the postcard.

Source (eBay item number 254790812087)

The original version of the photo is still available at Getty Images, which absorbed the Bettmann Archive at some point.

A few notable details from this photo: the Bulldog was on a paved road busy enough to have a dividing line, which makes perfect sense given its status as an eye-catching roadside restaurant. A mountain range is visible in the background. There are also a couple things only visible in the Getty Images original:

Source

A sign in the bottom right corner reads "BULLDOG HAMBURGERS + HOT DOGS 5¢." There's also another sign on the other side of the fence that seems to be advertising something, although the only word I can make out is "ice."

Photo 4

Source: National Geographic, volume LXVI, no. 5 (November 1934), page 554. From the article “Southern California at Work” by Frederick Simpich. Photograph by Alexander Wiederseder.

This is the only photo of the Bulldog with a truly definitive timeframe: it must have been taken before the November 1934 issue of National Geographic was published. The referenced text on page 544 reads as follows:

Grotesque, indeed, are scores of startling, Coney Island-like buildings wherein food and drink are sold. Some are shaped and painted to represent giant owls, derby hats, shoes, airships, dogs, teakettles, windmills, mosques, wienerwursts, zeppelins, and igloos (see illustration, page 554). One cafe is built like a roundhouse, with a life-sized locomotive emerging from its front door. Another, the last word in realism, is a replica of a jail, bars and all!

Alexander Wiederseder was a cabinetmaker and hobbyist photographer from Southern California. He seems to have mostly taken nature photographs and may have been surprised that today, a Google search for "Alexander Wiederseder" turns up mainly copies of this one roadside architecture photo. (He may also have been surprised that the Internet existed.)

This photo was republished by National Geographic and various other sources several times over the years. Significantly, the December 2014 issue of National Geographic printed it at a very high resolution, enough to see that the sky in the original photo seems to have been carefully trimmed away to leave a completely blank background.

Source: National Geographic, volume 226, issue 6 (December 2014), page 43.

Photograph by Alexander Wiederseder.

The shift in coloring, as well as the obvious clipping around the leaves, give it away. I think this was either an attempt to make the sky blend in with the rest of the page more nicely in 1934 or to get rid of the wires seen extending from the Bulldog's head in Photos 1, 2, and 3 (probably power or telephone lines).

Photo 5

Source: California Crazy: American Pop Architecture, Jim Heimann, 2018. Retrieval link.

Like with Photo 3, the above link isn't the true original source of this photo. A high-resolution version is available at Alamy Stock Photo. It's dated "March 10, 1931" (although no source is given for the date) and is from the Burton Holmes Historical Collection, another all-encompassing stock photo archive.

This photo was printed in the books California Crazy: Roadside Vernacular Architecture (1980), where it was cropped in a similar fashion to Photo 4 to remove the sky and wires; and in California Crazy: American Pop Architecture (2018), where it was uncropped.

Photo 6

Source

This photograph appeared in a slightly more cropped and sepia-toned form in the book California Crazy & Beyond: Roadside Vernacular Architecture by Jim Heimann, and was credited as being from the author's personal collection. I imagine he discovered it at a flea market or garage sale. Perhaps at some point he made the Idle Hour bar a copy of the original, which they posted on their Instagram.

This is the last photo I have where the "1153" on the Bulldog's door is visible.

Photo 7

Source: Jim Heimann, via email

Jim Heimann has this photo in his personal collection and emailed me a copy of it. It shows a couple of interesting changes to the restaurant: "Ice Cream" on the Bulldog's right leg has been switched to "Sandwiches", a sign advertising "Drive In Car Service" has been added to the Bulldog's head, and the Bulldog's pipe appears to be missing.

The transmission tower from Photo 1 is also visible here. It doesn't look one hundred percent like the tower from that photo, which could either be due to the angle it was captured at or to the tower being upgraded at some point.

Photo 8

Source. Photograph likely by Tomoji Wada.

This photo comes from CSU Dominguez Hill's Tomoji Wada Family Papers collection. Wada lived in the Los Angeles South Bay during the 1930s. The source gives the date taken as 1938, although it's not clear how that date was determined — perhaps a date written on the back of the photo or on a box containing a set of photos.

The most interesting detail here is a "FOR RENT" sign in the Bulldog's left front window.

Photo 9

Source: Jim Heimann, via email

Jim Heimann also has this photo in his personal collection and emailed me a copy of it, noting that it was actually taken by his father's cousin and dated September 30, 1940. It offers a very comprehensive picture of the landscape around the Bulldog, including the building next door and the paved street.

There are a few interesting things to note. "Tamale" seems to have vanished from the dog's left leg, but "Sandwiches" is still visible. There appears to be a disc-shaped object mounted on the dog's forehead, and a wire extending down the dog's face and chin. This might be a clock, or an intercom for calling out orders to waiting cars.

 So far, I haven't found any photos of the Bulldog with a later date than this one.

Video 1

Source

This video was uploaded to YouTube by Periscope Film, a video archival service that occasionally publishes clips from videos it digitizes. It's described as a 16mm home movie.

This is, in my opinion, the most fascinating Bulldog artifact because it's so different from all the others. First of all, it's the only source to show the building in color. Additionally, there's a massive amount of text in the footage to try and glean information from. Still more surprising are the facts that the Bulldog now appears to have a street address of 638, rather than 1153, and is now apparently on a street corner rather than being right next to a house. (The black-and-white sign is almost certainly an old stop sign, like the one seen in the below image).

Source

The banner on top of the Bulldog reads Great Western Development Co. Real Estate Loans Insurance.

The orange sign to the left reads:

...TERN DEVELOPMENT CO.

- REAL ESTATE - INSURANCE - CA 8914

... ON RAMONA ...ED RM ... STUCCO ... TRANSP

100 x 504 M3 ZONE $6000. CASH

GARVEY AVE 4 RM FRAME RM FOR ST[???] $8250.

In this mishmash of properties for sale, we can make out a few key details. First of all, the Great Western Development Co. seems to have the phone number CA-8914. (It turns out that this two-letter four-number format was a standard at one point: see Wikipedia's article on telephone exchange names). The CA, or CApitol, telephone exchange served a section of east Los Angeles:

Source

Additionally, the streets "Ramona" and "Garvey Ave" are mentioned. Ramona Boulevard, Ramona Road, and Garvey Avenue still exist in the Monterey Park area today.

The Bulldog's pipe is now unquestionably gone, and it's received a fresh coat of paint, restoring detail to its eyes and possibly adding a new brown patch to its back. In fact, one might even wonder if it's the same building at all. Although at this point I don't have any incontrovertible proof that it is, there are a lot of design details that would have to be shared by the two buildings if they were separate: the outlining on the dog's ears and feet, the shape of the door frame and adjacent windows, and the overall shape of the head, for example.

Conventional Wisdom About the Bulldog

There have been a good number of articles online and in newspapers that mention the Bulldog. Most of them give its original location as "1153 West Washington Boulevard, Los Angeles" and its date built as either 1927 or 1928. I've seen the date demolished given vary from as early as 1955 to as late as "the 1970s." But most of those articles don't cite any sources. The ones that do always cite the book California Crazy by Jim Heimann.

California Crazy was published in three distinct editions: in 1980 as California Crazy: Roadside Vernacular Architecture, in 2001 as California Crazy & Beyond: Roadside Vernacular Architecture, and in 2018 as California Crazy: American Pop Architecture. Each edition dated the Bulldog to the late 1920s / early 1930s and gave its address as 1153 West Washington Boulevard. The first and third editions called it the "Dog Cafe" and the second edition called it the "Bulldog Cafe."

There's one more non-article source about the Bulldog that I know of: the plaque displayed next to the Petersen Automotive Museum's Bulldog replica from circa 1994 until 2014.

Source

This plaque calls it the "Dog Cafe" and says it was "built on West Washington Boulevard in 1928" and "destroyed in the mid-1970s."

However, I think that this information that's been used for the last 40 years is not completely accurate. The Bulldog was not located in the city of Los Angeles, but rather in the suburbs of Rosemead and later Monterey Park, and although it was likely built in the late 1920s / early 1930s, it probably only lasted until 1948 or 1949.

The Bulldog's Location and Name

Based on the "Valley Blvd, Alhambra" caption on Photos 1/2, as well as the possible references to eastern Los Angeles and Monterey Park in Video 1, I guessed that the Bulldog might have indeed been on Valley Boulevard in Alhambra. I contacted the Alhambra Public Library and a research librarian there kindly sent me some photographs of restaurant listings from old Alhambra-area city directories from the 1930s. The most helpful was the 1937 directory:

Close-up:

Under the Rosemead subheading of the directory's "Restaurants and Lunch Rooms" category was a listing for "Bulldog Inn 1153 E Valley blvd." "1153" matched the Bulldog photos, "Valley blvd" matched the Photos 1/2 caption, and to top it all off the restaurant even had a descriptive name (in contrast to some of the other ones in the section, which just had the names of their owners). It's true that Rosemead is not Alhambra, but the two cities are close enough to each other that it seemed very reasonable for Ralph Cornell to have labeled his photos as "Alhambra."

Later, I realized that I could search portions of the 1937 Rosemead directory through the Los Angeles Public Library's Ancestry Library subscription. That turned up a few more references to the Bulldog Inn:

Austin Sadler, Jess L. Sadler, and May Sadler are listed as (I assume) the proprietors of the Bulldog Inn, and also as residents of 1153 E Valley Boulevard (that's what the "r" means). To me, this suggests that the house next door to the Bulldog shared the 1153 address, and its residents also owned the restaurant. This could explain the signs posted over the property line in Photos 2 and 3.

The Alhambra reference librarian also uncovered this listing from 1931, which was in the "Restaurants and Lunch Rooms: Rosemead" directory section as well:

Everett Maddox is listed as the proprietor of a restaurant at 1153 East Valley Boulevard. Later, I discovered an account from Maddox's niece that had been preserved online and confirmed that he had built and owned a bulldog-shaped restaurant "in San Gabriel." Since 1153 East Valley Boulevard is just over the San Gabriel–Rosemead border, this was definitive evidence of the Bulldog's location.

So this confirmed that all the photos of the Bulldog were taken at 1153 East Valley Boulevard, Rosemead. Details like the mountain range in the background of Photo 3 made sense. But what about the video? The "638" address was especially confusing because it not only implied that the Bulldog's street had been completely renumbered, but that the odd and even sides had switched, which seemed unlikely. Luckily, I was able to find some background about that as well.

I had searched the Los Angeles Public Library's licensed Los Angeles Times ProQuest database many times for the phone number from the sign in the video (CA-8914). Once or twice I found the same number attached to a classified ad for property in the eastern Los Angeles region, but it never had any additional information about its owner. Finally, I searched for "CA-8914" on Newspapers.com instead of the ProQuest database, and found the following advertisement:

Source: Los Angeles Times, October 19, 1943, page A15.

I now had an address associated with the Great Western Development Co. seen in the video. It wasn't a "638" address, but it was something. I then searched the Los Angeles Times database for "5207 Alhambra Ave" and found the following news item from 1944:

Source: Los Angeles Times, July 30, 1944, page 15.

It was all laid out as neatly as I could have asked for. In 1944, the Great Western Development Co. opened offices at 638 East Garvey Avenue, Monterey Park. This explained the address and signage seen in the video perfectly.

Searching records of California real estate offices during the 1940s turned up results for the Great Western Development Co. at this address from 1943 through 1948, inclusive. I'm not sure how to explain the discrepancy between the 1943 listing and the 1944 newspaper article. I think the simplest explanation is that the Los Angeles Times article is accurate, and the 1943 directory just preemptively listed the office, perhaps because the Great Western Development Co. had already registered that address with some entity. The other possibility is that the article's phrase "has announced the expansion of its activities to Monterey Park and adjacent cities, with opening of offices at 638 E. Garvey Ave, Monterey Park" should really have read "has announced the expansion of its activities in Monterey Park and adjacent cities, with opening of additional offices at 638 E. Garvey Ave, Monterey Park." But that's a weird stretch and I think the first interpretation is more likely.

These pieces of evidence prove that this restaurant was located on 1153 East Valley Boulevard, Rosemead until some point between 1940 and 1944, when it was moved to 638 East Garvey Avenue, Monterey Park and used as a real estate office.

Read on for why the commonly cited address of "1153 West Washington Boulevard" can't be correct and where this mistake may have come from, some more excruciating detail about where exactly in Rosemead and Monterey Park the two aforementioned addresses are today, and when the Bulldog may finally have been destroyed.

Why the Conventional Wisdom Is Wrong

With an actual account from a family member of the Bulldog's creator backing up its location in Rosemead, the "1153 West Washington Boulevard" location is not really a candidate anymore. However, it's worth looking at where this location came from and why it can't be correct.

In 1980, the Bulldog was pictured in the book California Crazy with the caption "The Dog Cafe / Location: 1153 West Washington Boulevard, Los Angeles / Circa 1928." All other mentions of the Bulldog's location can be traced back to this book, or one of its other two editions.

Source: California Crazy: Roadside Vernacular Architecture,

Jim Heimann and Rip Georges, 1980, pages 50-51. Retrieval link.

In the 1930s, the address "1153 West Washington Boulevard" could have led someone to one of two city blocks in Los Angeles: one near downtown (in the neighborhood today called Pico-Union) and one in Venice (on the section of West Washington Boulevard renamed Abbot Kinney Boulevard in 1990). I originally considered both locations in this section, but learned from Jim Heimann via email that he specifically had the Pico-Union location in mind when writing California Crazy.

Mr. Heimann explained to me that in the 1970s he had found a listing in an old Los Angeles telephone book for a cafe called the "Dog" or "Bulldog" at 1153 West Washington Boulevard near downtown. This was, at the time, the best hypothesis for the restaurant's location; but in the intervening years so much material has been digitized that evidence has emerged against it.

Let's first examine 1153 West Washington Boulevard in a bit more detail. A 1917 advertisement in the Los Angeles Evening Herald listed "Makepiece, W. O., 1153 W. Washington" as a druggist in Los Angeles selling Applju brand juice. Note that the advertisement had a separate section for stores in Venice, but that this store was listed in the "Los Angeles" section, confirming that Makepiece's pharmacy was in Pico-Union.

Source: Los Angeles Evening Herald, June 4, 1917.  Retrieval link.

The 1927 Los Angeles street directory lists a "Wash Pharmacy" at 1153 West Washington Boulevard:

Source

The pharmacy's position in the list of West Washington addresses makes it clear that this, again, is the Pico-Union address.

It's not out of the question that the Bulldog could have shared its address with the Washington Pharmacy, or even doubled as a pharmacy itself. To really be sure, we should look at old aerial photographs of the area.

Unfortunately, it's not trivial to narrow down the location of "1153 West Washington Boulevard" in the 1930s to anything more specific than a block or two. The 1934 Los Angeles city directory says that the 1100 block of West Washington Boulevard began at Oak Street and ended at Toberman Street. But a 1915 advertisement says that W.O. Makepeace's Washington Pharmacy was at "Burlington and Washington," a couple blocks further west. Was the ad just giving a general location, or was the 1934 directory not entirely accurate?

For what it's worth, the L.A. County Assessor's website shows a lot with address "1153" on the corner of South Burlington Avenue and West Washington Boulevard (although there's no longer a specific building with this address). But whatever the case is, we can just look at this whole area of West Washington Boulevard and check for anything that could match the photos of the Bulldog. Here's an image of the area from 1931. West Washington Boulevard is the street running from the middle of the left side to the bottom right corner.

Source [direct link to TIFF file]. From the UCSB Library's aerial photo collection.

The open fields seen behind the Bulldog are nowhere to be found. It doesn't seem possible for pictures to have been taken here in the 1930s that show empty space stretching back very far.

Additionally, this segment of West Washington Boulevard had trolley tracks during the first half of the 20th century. I confirmed this by looking at old maps of the Los Angeles Railway such as this one and this one. (The tracks are also just barely visible in the aerial photo above.) Below is a photo dated 1924 of the 

Pacific-Southwest Trust & Savings Bank, Washington and Burlington Branch. According to the 1925 Los Angeles city directory, this building was located at 1156 West Washington Boulevard and so was probably right across the street from 1153 West Washington Boulevard. Trolley tracks are clearly visible running along West Washington Boulevard in the foreground.

Source

These tracks should have been visible in Photo 3 or Photo 9 if those pictures were taken on West Washington Boulevard.

One other small piece of evidence is that the original caption to Photo 4 mentioned the "suburbs of Los Angeles," which doesn't sound like a reference to an area close to downtown and could easily rule out Pico-Union if it were accurate.

Excruciating Location Details

In the section "The Bulldog's Location and Name" above, I talked about the evidence for the Bulldog being located in Rosemead and, later, Monterey Park, but didn't look too deeply into the actual spots in those cities where the Bulldog would have sat. This is a closer look into those two spots for those who are interested.

1153 East Valley Boulevard, Rosemead

The first thing to figure out is where this address would have even been, geographically. It's not trivial because at some point after 1937, the portion of Valley Boulevard that runs through Rosemead was readdressed. Today, if you travel east on Valley Boulevard through San Gabriel to Rosemead, you'll see the street addresses tick upwards into the range of "1131" right on the border — until you actually cross into Rosemead and the addresses switch over to "8527," "8531," etc. However, I'm pretty confident that in the 1930s, the addresses didn't switch and the westernmost Rosemead block of Valley Boulevard retained the 1100 numbering.

As evidence for the old addressing scheme of East Valley Boulevard in Rosemead, I found a Los Angeles atlas from 1943. The section below shows addresses on East Valley Boulevard starting with 100 at Del Mar Avenue, then counting upward: 400, 500, 600, 800, 850, 1000, 1100, 1200, 1300, 1400. The diagonal dotted line is the Rubio Wash, marking the border between San Gabriel and Rosemead. The Bulldog would have been right past that border, near the intersection of East Valley Boulevard and Walnut Grove Avenue — on the north side of the street, which we know because of the mountains in Photo 3.

Source: Renie Pocket Atlas of Los Angeles, 1943. Retrieval link.

So if we go off the idea that the Bulldog was on this block, then we can look at old aerial photos and try to compare them to the Bulldog pictures. Below is my attempt using a photo from 1938. (All aerial images taken from this photo from the UCSB Library's aerial photo collection).

First, a view of what I think was the Bulldog, the buildings next to it, and the fields behind it. East Valley Boulevard is the street running from left to right at the bottom. Walnut Grove Avenue runs down the right-hand side.

I think these are two power transmission towers at the top right. They're pretty grainy, but you can make out their shadows. These would match the tower seen in Photos 1 and 7.

Now, a closer look at just the Bulldog and the buildings next to it.

The building on the top left could be the one visible in Photo 4. The building on the bottom right could be the house next to the Bulldog. And of course, the white blob on the left of that second building could be the Bulldog itself. Also note the dividing line on Valley Boulevard and how the Bulldog is closer to the street than the house, just as seen in the photographs.

If we look closely at the reflection in the Bulldog's windows in Photo 4, we can make out a cylindrical shape on the right:

Source: National Geographic, volume 226, issue 6 (December 2014), page 43.

Photograph by Alexander Wiederseder.

I think that could be the round building on the bottom right, which seems to be in the correct position relative to the "Bulldog" blob. It could also be the curved section of the house visible directly across the street.

There was one other thing I noticed in that reflection: a flipped sign with the letters "REALT." In the 1937 Rosemead directory, there's a listing for "Mrs. M. Rose Wise real est, 1140 East Valley Boulevard." "1140," an even address, would probably have been on the opposite side of the street from "1153." I'd guess that's the building whose sign was reflected.

Some time after studying the aerial photo, I found a 1933 land-use map of Rosemead in the Huntington Library's online collection. When I looked at the section corresponding to the aerial photo, I was pleasantly surprised to see most of my assumptions confirmed.

 A section of the land-use map. Valley Boulevard is the white road running from

left to right about halfway down. Walnut Grove Avenue runs down the right-hand side. Source.

The wide purple strip reads (on the full map) "Southern California Edison Company Right of Way." It's almost certainly land that the Edison power company used for transmission towers — that's what this strip of land is still used for in Rosemead today. This makes it seem even more likely that the transmission tower seen in Photo 1 is the same as the transmission tower visible in the aerial photo above.

Zooming in even more. The intersection of East Valley Boulevard

and Walnut Grove Avenue is on the right. Source.

From left to right, top to bottom, the captions read: "??? Stand," "Grapes," "Lunch stand - ???," "Lunch stand," "Ser. Sta.," "Real Estate office," "Chickens," and "Service Station."

I was very happy to see that there was a real estate office across the street from where I think the Bulldog was, just like I'd predicted from the reflection seen in Photo 4. The three "stands" were also promising. By overlaying the land-use map onto the aerial photo, I was able to determine that the "Bulldog" blob matched the label "Lunch stand - ???". If that illegible word were "Dog," it would be a great piece of evidence. Unfortunately, the scanned land-use map just doesn't have enough detail to be sure.

If we look at the location today, we can still see transmission towers and mountains in the background. The mountains in Photo 3 must have been the San Gabriel Mountains. The Bulldog's original location can be found today at 8525 East Valley Boulevard, Rosemead.

Source: Google Street View, 2019.

638 East Garvey Avenue, Monterey Park

Examining this location is easier because the address doesn't seem to have changed since the 1940s. A 1949 map confirms that the 600 block of East Garvey Avenue was in the same location then as it is today. However, there's only a parking lot where 638 East Garvey Avenue should be.

Source: Monterey Park Sanborn map, 1925, updated 1949. Retrieval link.

In a 1948 aerial photo, we can just make out a blob where the 1949 parking lot is that could be the Bulldog.

The Bulldog might be in the upper left quadrant. Source.

This would line up with how, in Video 1, the Bulldog is on a street corner. In a 1949 aerial photo of the same spot, the parking lot is all that's visible. This, combined with the disappearance of the Great Western Development Co.'s Monterey Park address between 1948 and 1949, suggests to me that the Bulldog was demolished in 1948 or 1949 or that it moved to some as-yet-unknown third location.

Here's what the Monterey Park location looked like in 2019. The "638" address now belongs to ADT Insurance Services, which is part of a larger strip mall. I tried to capture the building from a similar angle to Video 1.

Source: Google Street View, 2019.

Just so there is absolutely no ambiguity, the coordinates of my best guesses for the Bulldog's two locations are (34.080854, -118.083101) for Rosemead and (34.062355, -118.113406) for Monterey Park.

The Bulldog Lives On

The Rocketeer

In 1982, the Bulldog appeared in Chapter 1 of Dave Stevens’ The Rocketeer comic and was featured several more times throughout the series, most prominently in the Chapter 4 opening splash panel. Within the comic, the restaurant was referred to as the "Bulldog Cafe." I think Dave Stevens invented the name himself, perhaps inspired by California Crazy's usage of "Dog Cafe." Even if he didn't know it, he was pretty close to "Bulldog Inn."

I found the below pages at this link. To confirm which Rocketeer chapters they appeared in, I looked through a copy of 2009's The Rocketeer: The Complete Adventures.

Source: The Rocketeer, chapter 1, page 1, writer/artist Dave Stevens, 

colorist unknown. Originally published in Starslayer #2, 1982.

Source: The Rocketeer, chapter 4, page 2, writer/artist Dave Stevens, 

colorist unknown. Originally published in Pacific Presents #2, 1983.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Dave Stevens said "I discovered [the Bulldog] in a 1934 National Geographic magazine" (source: "Flying a Rocky Road: 'Rocketeer' Rides a Bumpy Course From Comics to the Screen," Los Angeles Times, June 16, 1991). That would be Alexander Wiederseder's Photo 4, of course. Stevens clearly used Photo 5 as an additional reference, copying the "Toasted Sandwich" and ice cream signs on the Bulldog's windows directly. He even kept the "1153" over the door.

In 1991, Walt Disney Pictures released The Rocketeer movie. A replica Bulldog was constructed in Ventura County for exterior shots. Here's a relevant clipping from the Los Angeles Times:

Source: Los Angeles Times, "Ventura County News Roundup" section, November 26, 1990.

Article by Kathleen Williams.

Here are a few shots from the movie itself. The first one is from about 25 minutes in and the second one is from about 1 hour and 40 minutes in.

Source for both stills: The Rocketeer, Walt Disney Pictures, 1991.

The building's signage reads "Bull Dog Cafe" in the movie, which isn't really how "bulldog" is spelled, but whatever. Strangely, Disney changed the address number to "3521" (although they kept the window advertisements the same).

A Bulldog Cafe set was visible on the Backstage Studio Tour attraction at the Disney-MGM Studios theme park at Walt Disney World, Florida. It was on the tour from 1991 until 1996, according to a commenter at this link. Here's a photo of the Bulldog Cafe on the Studio Tour:

Source. Dated August 13, 1994.

I'd always assumed that there was one Bulldog Cafe exterior set built for The Rocketeer, which was moved from California to Florida after filming. But a few detailed comments that I've seen on various Facebook posts have called that into question. One commenter identified himself as a stage manager from the movie shoot and said that Disney built two "full-size, 1:1 scale replicas of the Bulldog Cafe," one for exterior/interior scenes and one for interior scenes and rear shots. Another Rocketeer fan described three Bulldogs: an exterior built in Ventura County, an interior built in San Pedro, and a third replica built in Florida just for the Studio Tour. Honestly, it does kind of make more sense that Disney would simply build another set on the tour rather than trucking the whole Bulldog across the country.

After 1996, the Studio Tour Bulldog was put backstage at Disney World, where it gradually succumbed to the elements. There's an anecdote on this Rocketeer forum thread from a former Disney employee who saw the Bulldog in this state:

When I was working at WDW in 2002, it was behind the magic kingdom in an area they call PLUTOPark. ... The cafe was in two pieces, lying side by side on the ground. There was a giant hole in one side of it.

However, the fact that the Bulldog appeared in a Disney movie means that it will be difficult for it to ever be completely forgotten. Disney's archival team will probably save enough material related to the Rocketeer movie that the Bulldog's memory will be safe for the foreseeable future.

Petersen Automotive Museum / Idle Hour

In 1994, the Petersen Automotive Museum opened in Los Angeles. On the museum's ground floor was a replica Bulldog, displayed as part of the museum's immersive "Streetscape" exhibit.

The Petersen Automotive Museum's Bulldog replica under construction in 1994. Source.

The Bulldog replica remained in the Petersen Automotive Museum for the next 20 years, described by a plaque as "The Dog Cafe" (see further up for a picture of the plaque). The window advertising matched Photo 5, just like in The Rocketeer. "Smoke" occasionally rose from the Bulldog's pipe, as seen in this video.

The Petersen Automotive Museum's Bulldog replica, probably around 2014. Source.

In 2014, the Petersen Automotive Museum was completely remodeled and the Bulldog replica was dismantled and removed by preservationist Bobby Green of the 1933 Group. See this article for a detailed account of the process, as well as many more photos. This video also provides some insight.

The replica mid-dismantlement. Source.

Moving the replica in pieces. Source.

The replica Bulldog was then reassembled on the back patio of the Idle Hour, an old Los Angeles bar shaped like a barrel that was in the process of being rejuvenated by the 1933 Group.

Reassembling the replica. Source.

To this day, the Bulldog sits on the Idle Hour's back patio and is available as a dining room for private parties. This YouTube video takes a peek inside.

Source

October 3, 2020. Source.

There are already so many articles, Instagram photos, and videos of the Idle Hour's "Backyard Bulldog" that, again, the memory of this building should be very well-preserved.

Another misconception I've seen online is that the Bulldog replica from the Petersen Automotive Museum is the same as the one built for The Rocketeer. Side by side, they're clearly different, but I do wonder if someone at the Petersen in 1994 was inspired to include a replica of this specific restaurant because The Rocketeer had just featured it three years previously. If so, then we could trace a very clear thread from Alexander Wiederseder's photo of the original Bulldog to Dave Stevens' inclusion of it in The Rocketeer comic to its appearance in the movie to the replica at the Petersen and, now, the Idle Hour. That would be so cool.

Conclusion

I would like to give thanks to the public libraries of California. Without their online newspaper databases, city directory and photo archives, and book collections, I would never have been able to do any of this research. Additionally, every research librarian I talked to throughout this project was friendly and some of them really went above and beyond to help me.

I also want to thank Jim Heimann, who worked hard to preserve the memory of buildings such as the Bulldog so that people such as myself could learn about them decades later. He also graciously allowed me to use some photos from his personal collection as part of this blog post.

Thanks to everyone who's read this far and I hope you learned something. If you have definitive proof that anything I discussed was correct or incorrect, or if — just maybe — you remember a bulldog-shaped building in Rosemead or Monterey Park, please let me know in the comments or via email!