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The Title Guarantee Building (Mick's building)

Posted: Mon Mar 23, 2009 7:09 pm
by allegrita
I did a bunch of Googling and found a bunch of links containing info about the actual building in which Mick's fictional loft is located.

Title Guarantee Building Lofts
411 West 5th Street
Los Angeles, California 90013

A rental website, with a virtual tour of some suites:
http://www.apartmentguide.com/apartment ... fts/82352/

The original homepage from the TGB Lofts rental website (which is no longer up):
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Floorplans

Floors 6-11:
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Penthouse floor:
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Rooftop level:
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Interior photos of the Title Guarantee Building:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/fridayinla ... 422223274/

Someone did a cool 3-D Sketchup of the Title Guarantee Building:
http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/ ... 05d1964946

Here's an article about the renovation:
http://www.ladowntownnews.com/articles/ ... news01.txt

More articles about the Title Guarantee Building Lofts project:
http://www.angelenic.com/123/a-peak-ins ... /#more-123
http://www.angelenic.com/38/title-guara ... -move-ins/
http://www.angelenic.com/178/title-guar ... ll-lit-up/

Some interesting stuff from the Public Art in LA project:

History of Pershing Square and some nearby buildings:
http://www.publicartinla.com/Downtown/f ... story.html

Bas Reliefs from the Title Guarantee Building:
http://www.publicartinla.com/Downtown/f ... antee.html

View of Pershing Square and the TGB in the 1920's:
http://www.publicartinla.com/Downtown/f ... whit1.html

View of Pershing Square Fountain and the TGB in the background, 1920's:
http://www.publicartinla.com/Downtown/f ... whit3.html

Re: The Title Guarantee Building (Mick's building)

Posted: Mon Mar 23, 2009 7:46 pm
by francis
Way cool, allegrita! Could Mick's loft be (virtually of course) on the penthouse floor (12) with a private elevator and his bathroom and freezerroom is upstairs at the smaller building on top (where in reality there is the elevator room, not the one with the antenna)? His terrace would be tremendously big then, and the rooftop scene would fit nicely on the roof of the smaller building. I wonder, because he has this big glass ceiling, it has to fit somewhere, so I guess it's on the flat surface above the penthouse.
Of course, even with Lilly's stunning 3D rendition of the penthouse floor, we have no idea about the layout of the upper floor.

Re: The Title Guarantee Building (Mick's building)

Posted: Mon Mar 23, 2009 10:19 pm
by Lilly
I just love this building. :heart:

Perhaps some of the folks who took pictures of it while they were out in LA will post a few here.

Re: The Title Guarantee Building (Mick's building)

Posted: Mon Mar 23, 2009 10:21 pm
by Luxe de Luxe
you're amazing allegrita! this is fantastic.

Re: The Title Guarantee Building (Mick's building)

Posted: Mon Mar 23, 2009 10:42 pm
by VAsusieQ18
I'm not much of a photographer, but here are a few of the pics of the FoS that I took while out in L.A. last May:

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Re: The Title Guarantee Building (Mick's building)

Posted: Mon Mar 23, 2009 10:48 pm
by Lilly
Thanks, Susie! :hug: They're great!

Re: The Title Guarantee Building (Mick's building)

Posted: Mon Mar 23, 2009 10:48 pm
by redwinter101
Not much of a photographer, huh?

They are great.

I'll get there some day.....

Red

Re: The Title Guarantee Building (Mick's building)

Posted: Mon Mar 23, 2009 11:24 pm
by moonlight_vixen
I'll take the 12th floor penthouse suite... :whistle: Thanks for posting all these articles alle! I'm going to cruise around later on and look through them all.

Re: The Title Guarantee Building (Mick's building)

Posted: Tue Mar 24, 2009 12:30 am
by allegrita
francis wrote:Way cool, allegrita! Could Mick's loft be (virtually of course) on the penthouse floor (12) with a private elevator and his bathroom and freezerroom is upstairs at the smaller building on top (where in reality there is the elevator room, not the one with the antenna)? His terrace would be tremendously big then, and the rooftop scene would fit nicely on the roof of the smaller building. I wonder, because he has this big glass ceiling, it has to fit somewhere, so I guess it's on the flat surface above the penthouse.
Of course, even with Lilly's stunning 3D rendition of the penthouse floor, we have no idea about the layout of the upper floor.
Isn't it fun to try to imagine how it would work? Maybe some of the people who have actually been in the building (those lucky ones who went on the Moonlight Locations tour in May) would like to speculate. Having never been there, I really don't have a good feel for what would work. And I assume that you'd have to mentally "gut" the existing floorplan and redraw all the walls in order to accommodate Mick's loft in the building.

Anyone care to speculate? Draw a possible layout based on the building floorplan? Hmmmmm...? :mrgreen:

Re: The Title Guarantee Building (Mick's building)

Posted: Tue Mar 24, 2009 3:41 am
by MoonShadow
Here is the night shot I have.

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I owe someone apologies for this one, I don't remember who I copied this from, but I promised not to use it in a freshie fic, which I didn't. So it's been sitting in my library for about a year. If someone knows who this belongs to I would be happy to credit them. If they still don't want it posted I will take this down if they ask.

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Re: The Title Guarantee Building (Mick's building)

Posted: Tue Mar 24, 2009 3:46 am
by MoonShadow
Here is another night shot that we all know and love...

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Re: The Title Guarantee Building (Mick's building)

Posted: Wed Mar 25, 2009 9:02 pm
by francis
I wonder how, if at all, you could fit the loft into the real building. Of course you can’t, the windows for one are all wrong (Mick has three in a row on both sides of the loft, the building has always a pair of windows and then a bigger boulder alternating).

There is no space to have the upper floor layed out directly over the living room, because there is a sky light in the ceiling. If the upper floor winds itself around the sky light, there is no way the actual building fits with the floor plan.

The balcony and rooftop terrace could be the ones of the actual building, as the bannister looks quite fitting, as do the intricate gratings that you can see in his hallway, next to the stairs and the kitchen, on top of the stairs, and behind the door to the bathroom. The real tower on top of the building has no windows, only the grating. That could fit to Mick’s upper floor, but then the skylight over his living room cannot be there. And the angles of the walls are all wrong.

No idea as to the actual proportions and how big the loft is in the actual building. Mick seems to have some private elevator and hallway that leads only to his own apartment. There are windows in his hallway opposite his entrance door. The morning sun comes in on his balcony (or one of them), so one of them should face east (see 12:04). In FtP he wakes up to the morning sun coming in from the side where his TV set is. In Fever the morning sun comes through the windows at the stairs. They must have turned the whole building around in the meantime…

His office seems to get no direct sun, as in AD he has the window wide open while talking to the parents of Cherish. Maybe it faces north, or west.

The balcony might be behind the gray door in the library. There could be another balcony somewhere else, that could be reached from the hallway, for example, or the upper floor. But we don’t know.

I tried to play with Lilly’s excellent floor plan and her plans of the actual building. Nothing really fits, but I want to give it to your consideration:

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This one doesn’t really fit as the elevator is almost outside the building, the office has direct sun, and I think there were windows behind the police painting in the office, too. On the other hand, this has advantages: The balcony faces east, the windows could be like that and there is space for an additional balcony south of the hallway. (Shepard maybe got outside there to climb on top of the skylight).

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This one is problematic. The elevator still doesn’t really fit, but if the hallway is a bit shorter, it would work. The office faces west, but the windows would be in the middle of the building. The apartment has south and north windows, which doesn’t fit with morning sun coming in. The balcony would be south, not east.

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And if I make it bigger to fit better into the west window, the hallway becomes way too short and the whole loft too big.
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If I make the whole thing very small, it could almost fit into the tower. The windows would be in the right direction, there would be a balcony facing west, but there could be another one in the east. But the shape of the tower and the fact that it has no real windows doesn’t fit at all.

If I had to decide, for the sake of a very detailed fanfic for example, I would choose the first option and just tweak the actual building to fit my purpose in the smaller detail. If you squint, it might just work. Of course you have to think of the bathroom and all the upper rooms that they fit somehow magically into the tower on top of the penthouse floor and have no real windows and no skylight. Or that the tower looks very different alltogether.

Thank you to Lilly for the groundwork to this „fanwank“.

Re: The Title Guarantee Building (Mick's building)

Posted: Wed Mar 25, 2009 10:18 pm
by MoonShadow
I just sat here for 30 minute spinning the diagrams around and around,,, I think I sprained a brain cell! :giggle:

Thank you for putting this overlay on the blueprint, I love seeing all the interest.

Re: The Title Guarantee Building (Mick's building)

Posted: Thu Mar 26, 2009 12:03 am
by wondergirl9847
MoonShadow, those pics are mine, I believe. You are free to do whatever you want with them. :) I think I have some more of the FOS, but they are on another hard drive. I'll try to upload them if I can find them. :thumbs:

Re: The Title Guarantee Building (Mick's building)

Posted: Thu Mar 26, 2009 12:16 am
by VAsusieQ18
wondergirl9847 wrote:MoonShadow, those pics are mine, I believe. You are free to do whatever you want with them. :) I think I have some more of the FOS, but they are on another hard drive. I'll try to upload them if I can find them. :thumbs:
Christy, I was thinking they might have been mine, but then were we not there together? :snicker: I think you took a few pics with my camera for me cuz I really suck at taking pictures! :rofl2: