Found-A spiderpool

I finally finished reading the archives of Search for the Spiderpool. Turns out they found it, and have trekked up there a couple of times to take pictures.  I'm still fascinated, and am going to try to hike up their sometime myself. 

Comments

[Dave]

Wow, I've just discovered the whole spiderpool thing.
How can I find out more?
Google has led me to a few places but it's proving slow going, reading old discussions.
What about how it became destroyed and more on the owner 'Jack', and the photographers maybe, and where is the place? and what else happenned there?
Who asked Dolores Del Monte to go back there afer so many years?
Great work, whoever you people are....

[christian louboutin]

It's so lucky for me to find your blog! So shocking and great! Just one suggestion: It will be better and easier to follow if your blog can offer rrs subscription service.

[Alan]

The search for the Spiderpool group began in the Usenet group alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.vintage around June or July of 2004 (not sure since I started around September of that year). It then moved off of Usenet and a mailing list was created in November of 2004 so that we could focus on the search (a bunch of folks on Usenet were complaining about us looking for pics of the house and not of girls). I cannot recall exactly when, but somewhere in the fall of 2004, a couple named Tom and Cara found the pool by going to Lake Hollywood and looking across Cahuenga Pass with binoculars. When they saw the Spider, they went across the pass and hiked up there and took pics. It was a cool beginning, but a lot of info about Jack McDermott, the crazy house that he built, the models, etc, had yet to be discovered.

We also found another very interesting site that the group moderated dubbed The Hacienda. It took another couple of years to find where that was (partly because we were looking in the Hollywood Hills and it was in La Canada Flintridge). Like the Spiderpool, The Hacienda had an interesting owner named Freeman Ford.

The August 1929 issue of a magazine called "The Architect" had a photo layout of the Hacienda right after it was first built. In Pasadena, there is a famous house called the "Freeman Ford House" built by a firm called Greene & Greene. Freeman Ford raided whippet dogs and raced them at the Rose Bowl. He ran afoul of zoning regulations and purchased land in Flintridge (now La Canada Flintridge) where he had the Hacienda built by architect Edward M. Fowler, an amateur (he is not listed
as a member of any architects organization that we have been able to find and there are only a few houses in Pasadena designed by him). The house was called "Rancho Los Casitas Del Paso" though we knew it as The Hacienda long before we knew its real name.

I found, in the Pasadena library, aerial photos of The Hacienda from an aerial survey of Pasadena and surrounding areas performed in September, 1954 and included in the "surrounding area" was La Canada Flintridge and the Hacienda. The building had interesting arches whose shadows were visible in the aerial photo.

Meanwhile, the moderator of the group located someone who lived at the Spiderpool's house during the nude photography era and interviewed him and found a vintage photo of that place.

There is a huge amount of info. I kept an archive of emails until there was an internal dispute and I resigned in protest in January of 2008. There were over 16,700 emails exchange over the 3 1/4 years that I was with the group. I hope this little snippet was of value to the Spiderpool fans.
Regards,
Alan

[Dan Spector]

Wonderful job of investigation. i enjoyed the vintage abpev usenet site until it was stripped out of my providers' package. Noticed in the last essay on the house, Jack was said to have bought the plots back in '21 which is earlier than youall had supposed. have you looked back at the records for that transfer? And, just about how far was the pool from the casa? A hundred yards? If they filled the tunnels with the rubble, a zillion of those cool tiles are safely buried. But when you get sample tiles you don't get the number of duplicates used around the pool, you get a hodgepodge of styles.
As an aside, i enjoy the knowledge that some significant percentage of LA grannies were starlets of easy virtue back in the day.

[Alan]

The moderator of the forum, Rowanart, was able to find a lot of records and he may have had the one for that purchase, but I can't recall. He actually was able to interview the guy who was living in the house during the 1950's when the nude photo shoots occurred and he had a picture of the pool with the cabana still intact and a fabric draped across the pillars.

Also, not only was the spiderpool wall found, but someone tried to find it and, by accident, found parts of Jack's old house. The house was razed in the early 1960's, but some parts were simply buried or left alone. For example, the little fish pond that had the bridge crossing over it was there.

The pool was fairly close to the house, just over the hill. You cannot see it on Google Earth, but using the Microsoft Birds Eye view, it was possible to see the spider itself. At least that was true a couple of years ago, I tried looking tonight and do not have a clear view of it. Interesting that the lot is "land locked" - i.e. there is no public access to it. You have to trespass over someone else's property to get to it. That wouldn't past muster in 2010, but apparently it was ok in 1921.

[Pandora Bracelets]

This post has been somewhat of a revelation to me.

[Pandora Charms]

thank you for your article,My problem has been resolved.

[Pandora Beads]

Also, not only was the spiderpool wall found, but someone tried to find it and, by accident, found parts of Jack's old house. The house was razed in the early 1960's, but some parts were simply buried or left alone. For example, the little fish pond that had the bridge crossing over it was there.

[Christian Louboutin Shoes]

He snapped on about himself

[Thomas Sabo Charms]

As an aside, i enjoy the knowledge that some significant percentage of LA grannies were starlets of easy virtue back in the day.