Vintage cards offer glimpse of Grand View's past

My generous friend and fellow cemetery history buff, Jim Davis, recently gifted me with two amazing, undated vintage promotional cards of Grand View to share with readers.

The first one is of the Garden of Prayer, located to the south of the West Mausoleum main entrance door.  Gives you an idea of what it looked like back in the day compared to the second image of the same garden which I shot on November 15, 2006.

Some differences I noticed between the two include the size and growth of the trees on either side of the granite bible, the tree that no longer exists near the wall in the lower left corner of the card and the addition of steps and a handrail leading into the garden near where that tree used to be in the bottom photo.

The other card features bronze and marble memorial niches which according to information on the backside are "located in the large Chapel section of the Grand View Mausoleum," now known as the West Mausoleum. The red curtains appear to have possibly been added into the photo for posterity, but who knows, maybe at one time they did exist.

I looked through photos I took inside the mausoleum before it was locked, but could not find any that resembled this particular group of niches to compare with.

No dates appear on the cards but there are clues to indicate when they may have been produced.  First are the phone numbers for Grand View - CHapman5-1582 and CItrus2-2697 - which according to old phone books housed at the Los Angeles Public Library downtown, were used in the 1940s.

Another, more obscure yet informative clue, can be found on the niches themselves. 

The most readable name is Pearl Starr Grabill, located just below the center niche.  Her birth year of 1883 is engraved, but no death date is given.  With her is Harold Paul Grabill, whose dates are 1881-1952. 

I looked up Pearl in the California Death Records at Rootsweb.com and discovered she passed in 1966, which would indicate that this image was taken sometime between 1952 and 1966.

It's also interesting to note that these images, among many others of the grounds, were used in an undated color brochure for the cemetery which I found stored at the Special Collections Room at the Glendale Central Public Library.  They were also featured as late as 2006 on the official Grand View Memorial Park website, which went off-line earlier this year.  (See archived version of the site here.)

NOTE: Although I like to publish original stories to valleynews.com, this article was posted here instead because this site offers the ability to insert photos amid the text, which worked better for this item.