Post #293231 by PremEx on Tue, Mar 20, 2007 12:58 AM

I didn't even know this thread existed until about two hours ago, when I logged on to go to the other Hedley/Cove thread, and then found reference to this one.

Sorry I'm so late to the party, but bungy...just incredible! Thank You sooooooo much! :)

Wow! Been a real Hedley day for me! Let me explain...

We're renovating an old church here in San Pedro...converting to mixed residential loft, office, and retail. I've made several visits to the Royal Palms and The Cove over the last several months, and just love the area. Being born and raised in the Newport Beach and Corona Del Mar areas...I feel right at home here.

Anyway, I've spent many days over the last several weeks with the wonderful folk at the San Pedro Historical Society, and their extensive archives...researching the history of our building and looking for photos, articles, documents, etc, etc. Today I finished a little early and so I asked..."What have you got on the Royal Palms and the Hedleys?"

Several hours later after having dug through hundreds of old White Point photographs, I had made several scans with my laptop and portable scanner of some photos from that era, and I'll post them now. A few you have already seen in Ben's posts, but these might be better images. And perhaps you Hedleys can answer a question or two that popped up in the course of looking them over? Thanks!

First there's this shot, which you've seen before in this thread:

...but here's a close-up from it of the family:

Next we have what I'm guessing was the transition of The Cove to the old Royal Palms area?

Which brings up one of my first questions. Did your family also own the old Royal Palms dance area with the stone fireplaces and all? And/or did you use them for your luaus and parties and such? I ask because I came across these...

This one looks like it has the same stage or table that's in one of Ben's photos. Definitely looks like it was being used for a luau.

And this is just a nice shot of the old lily pond that I guess was once there too. Not sure if this is from the same period though. No date on it but it was bunched with the other Hedley ones:

Next is this one. It's marked "Hedley Home" but not sure what it is actually. An out building perhaps? Is that one of "the boys" hauling some driftwood there?

Now I know it's hard to see clearly in this one as it's almost too dark, but who's the little one that's hanging up the laundry while Eli works with a net?

And here's Eli working on something else...

Now here's a wide shot of a good portion of the Royal Palms terrace area.

In the actual full sized photo of the above, there's lots of interesting details to "zoom in" on. But one tiny little bit really caught my eye. It's on the very right of that wide shot. What looks to be a face peeking out from behind a palm. Here's a close-up of that section:

Now either I've got tiki on the brain, or this is a tiki Rorschach test or something...but doesn't that look a bit like a big tiki head there? Any ideas what that is? If that's a mouth...I know it's not the same tiki, but it looks to be a similar type mouth to the one on the right in this photo of Ben's from the Hedley tiki carving grounds on Katella in Anaheim:

Again...some of those might not even be from the same Hedley period. Most were not marked and I only included them here because they were "batched" with some other Hedley photos, and I felt they could be.

Anyway...hope you all enjoy the pictures. Been a fun day! :)

Thanks!

[ Edited by: PremEx 2007-03-20 01:05 ]