Christie/Nestor Studios: Hollywood's first studio-historical site (Los Angeles, California)

 place with historical importance, interesting place, film/video production studio/facility, historical layer / disappeared object

Historical location.

Although William Selig is usually credited with building the first studio in Los Angeles and shooting the first feature in the city, the first studio in Hollywood proper was the Nestor Studio, established by David and William Horsley in the abandoned Blondeau Tavern.

Not having obtained a license to use filmmaking equipment from Thomas Edison’s East Coast Motion Picture Patents Company, the Nestor Studio (formerly the Centaur Film Company of Bayonne, New Jersey) moved to California in 1911.

Through a contact they made on the train to the west coast, Horsley and writer-director Al Christie met the owner of the Blondeu Tavern. Located at the northwest corner of Sunset and Gower, the small roadhouse was struggling as a result of Hollywood’s recent liquor ordinance.

The studio first ran 180' along a dusty path known as Sunset and about half way up Gower St. toward the now defunct Salem Pl. Then the lot expanded 280 ft. up Gower to Salem Pl.*

The Nestor Company leased the building for thirty dollars a month, and built the first Hollywood film stage ever on the site. It consisted of a wooden platform measuring twenty by forty feet, with large sheets of muslin hung on cross wires fifteen feet up to diffuse the natural light used for filming. Each wall of their forty-foot square stage had a different background. The carpenters used their own tools; and when production started, the actors supplied their own wardrobe.

They began creating the first movies ever made on a Hollywood stage – including "Her Indian Hero" and "The Law of the Range." The studio would often shoot a couple one-reelers or two-reelers at a time, filmed from scripts usually written the night before.

Carl Laemmle, who formed Universal Pictures, absorbed the Nestor company and others in 1912.

The lot was purchased by Fred J. Balshofer for for his Balshofer Studios. In 1914, In a short-lived partnership with actor Ford Sterling, it was known as Sterling Film Co. By 1915 Balshofer formed a partnership with Richard Roland (president of Metro Pictures) and Joseph Engel, changing the name to Quality Pictures.

Shortly after (1916) director Al Christie bought the lot to make many films at the expanded studio (to half the block) under the banner "The Christie Comedies" until the early 30s, when the facility became a rental lot, Amalgamated Studios.

In 1936, the Nestor / Christie Studios were demolished to build the Columbia Square facility, which had served as home of Los Angeles radio station KNX 1070AM, and television station KNXT Channel 2 (later renamed KCBS) until it's recent move to the old Republic Pictures (Mack Sennett) lot in Studio City, renaming it CBS Studio Center.

Today the building - at the time of this writing - is available for lease.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christie_Film_Company
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestor_Studios

* See "American Film Studios" by Gene Fernett, page 24.