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.
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:
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
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
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).
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 ... TRANSP100 x 504 M3 ZONE $6000. CASHGARVEY 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:
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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!
9 comments:
Fantastic job! The Bulldog has long been my favorite of the programmatic buildings in SoCal (I mean, a dog with a corncob pipe, c'mon), and I spent this morning researching it on a whim. When I found newspaper mention after newspaper mention of 1153 W Washington in L.A. being a pharmacy, I figured something was up. As you suggested, I did entertain the idea that the cafe doubled as a pharmacy, but I soured on that idea since I figured there should be at least ONE mention of that address being a restaurant -- nothing pharmacy-related was advertised outside the building. Then, I happened upon your post here. Thanks for your research! If my mother were still living, I would have asked her about the building in its final incarnation, as she apparently lived walking distance to its Garvey location in Monterey Park at that time.
One question: regarding street addresses that get renumbered, do you know of a position or office in city governments that would know that type of thing?
Brian, great to hear from you and apologies it took me so long to moderate your comment (I rarely log into the admin console for this blog). I'm really happy that the research I did for this post helped answer your own questions about the Bulldog. Cool to hear that your mother may have seen it in Monterey Park as well!
Regarding your question about street renumbering: It looks like this is something that differs by city/county, but often involves a department with "engineering" in the name. For the City of Los Angeles, the Bureau of Engineering appears to ultimately be in charge. For Rosemead, perhaps their engineering department is responsible for this as well.
I imagine that the Bulldog's original address in Rosemead was assigned by Los Angeles County because Rosemead wasn't an incorporated city yet. I think that today, this would fall under the LA County Department of Public Works, although their website says that they were only formed in 1985 from the consolidation of several departments including the County Road Department and County Engineer. So my best guess would be that when the Bulldog was built, its address was assigned by the LA County Engineer, and when Rosemead was incorporated, its own engineering department renumbered that section of Valley Boulevard.
Thanks again for your comment!
Maybe there were two different dog buildings. I grew up in Mar Vista (Los Angeles) within walking distance of Washington Blvd. We definitely had a bulldog building there--at one point it was a record store. In thinking back, I believe it looked more like a Boston Bulldog, aka Boston Terrier. And did its eyes light up at night? More suggestion there may have been more than one. The one in my neighborhood was on W. Washington Blvd where Washington Place splits off, near Wade St.Los Angeles's Programmatic Architecture lists BOTH a Bulldog Cafe and a Pup Cafe. [The Pup Cafe - a Venice hot dog and ice cream stand located at 12732 West Washington Boulevard (1928 - 1973)] from http://www.weirdca.com/location.php?location=286. ALSO, they list an erroneous address for the bulldog cafe [Bulldog Cafe - similar to the below Pup Cafe, the Bulldog Cafe was built in 1928 and lived on 1153 West Washington Blvd. This restaurant appears in the Rocketeer movie; a small scale version of the building was created for the movie. Until late 2014 the Peterson Automotive Museum (which is also an example of Programmatic Architecture itself, as the front of the museum is designed to look like the grill of car) also had a smaller scale replica of the Bulldog Cafe inside. But during a recent renovation, it was decided that the cafe would be demolished. Luckily, the replica cafe was saved, and is now sitting on the patio of the Idle Hour Cafe (see below), slated to reopen in 2015.] Among other differences, though, the ears and eyes look different. However, it was there so LONG those may reflect repair and renovation efforts. Photos of both are at the link I included; see what YOU think. I DO know that, while I grew up there, from 1950 to 1970, there was one dog on Washington blvd; not two.
Thank you for your comment and for sharing your memories of the Pup Cafe in Culver City! I've never heard the detail about its eyes lighting up at night before -- that would have been really cool. You are correct that there was only ever one dog-shaped restaurant on West Washington Boulevard, and that it was the terrier-like Pup Cafe, not the pipe-smoking Bulldog Inn.
For more information about the Pup Cafe, you might be interested in this other post I wrote: https://technospinach.blogspot.com/2020/12/the-pup-bulldog-and-maddox-family.html.
Just to say that I had enjoyed a lot your research on such a subject!
My interest was related to scale models, thinking on building a model to go with miniature dioramas.
By the way, there are a few blueprints for the Disney's "Bulldog Cafe" in "the Rocketer", from a book about stage design.
https://twitter.com/goawaygreen/status/1174147134393921538
From the looks, it seems that it was certainly inspired in the well known famous photo, for the "looks", but I believe that the movie version was larger.
Cheers!
Thanks for the link, and good luck with your model! Hope you post some photos online when it's finished.
Wow!
I had no idea-and I'm enough of a fan that I can distinguish between the original, the "Rocketeer", and the Peterson versions at a glance.
That being I could never find the darn thing in old aerial photos (at Washington blvd) and now I know why! "He" was somewhere else all along.
I seem to remember that the Hoot Hoot Ice Scream Owl was originally set up in Rosemead* too. What a neighborhood!
*the owl was later moved to Southgate on Long Beach Blvd.
Just fantastic research--thank you for sharing this! I wish there were interior shots of the original lurking out there somewhere; I've always wondered what its seating capacity was, and whether that wonderful head was actually hollow and accessible.
Thank you for this. Such a fan of the movie, and didn't know that it was being true to the period. I'd love to drop-in and see it the next time I'm there.
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