KFI Noire

141 N Vermont Ave.  Los Angeles, CA

CHAPTER ONE - Origins
It all started with this photo. I was looking to model something else other than a car, and I saw this photo and really liked the film noir look of it. As I did more research on the building, I was dissapointed to find out the building had recently been demolished by the LAUSD to make way for a basketball court. 

I took the model as far as I could with what little reference material I had. Other than the above picture, I had a few scattered shots of it right before it was destroyed. So one day I decided to e-mail a gentleman who used to work at KFI, to see if he could tell me more about the building. I came across his web postings while I was doing my research and sent him the render shown here. He turned out to be a very nice person and was interested in helping me with my project. His name is Newcomb Weisenberger, and he was an engineer at KFI.

This is what the first version looked like

Newcomb introduced me to Stanley Kelton, who it turns out was the one who took the reference pictures I had of the building during it's demolition. Between these two and the online resources of google earth and image archive sites, I now had plenty of sources for reference.

The biggie came when we were able to find a floorplan, after that, progress started moving much quicker. Over the course of about a year, we corresponded via e-mail. They sending me photos and corrections while I would send them the latest renders and ask questions about the areas we were working on.

Next up - Chapter Two - The History....