Our Own Easter Island? The Mysterious Stone Towers of Early Hollywood

But of course we tore ours down…

This photograph was originally published in the April 1907 issue of The Architect and Engineer of California and claims to show one of eighteen towers erected throughout Hollywood by T.A. Mc Murtrie using his artificial stone working machines. What they neglected to say is what was the purpose of these towers. As the old Ogden Nash verse goes, “The Lord in His wisdom invented the fly and then forgot to tell us why.” Likewise with Architect and Engineer of California.

With nothing else to go on, I can only guess that these little programmatic beauties were intended to mark the entrances to the latest and greatest Hollywood real estate subdivision. But eighteen of them? Quite a production.

And who said Hollywood was a dull place before the movies came there?

Besides, they weren’t the weirdest things ever built by Hollywood realtors.

Or by the Janss Investment Company at Westwood. The lightning bolts are the best part!

Or down in Long Beach either.