The Former Car Dealerships of CV – Part 2

Last week I began writing about the former car dealerships of CV, starting with the ones whose showrooms still exist. I expected to get some updates and corrections from my readers. Sure enough, I just got an email from Stu McCament, who has lived in the valley for 80 years. He writes about the building at 3450 Verdugo Road that now houses VIP Trust Deed:

“The building at 3450 was built in 1923 that had Whippet autos. At some point the building was bought by Wallace Tupper who had the first Ford dealership in the era. He lost the franchise in 1946 through some dispute with Ford. The son Harry was a friend of mine. The Tuppers had one of the first boxes when the Santa Anita race track opened in 1935.”

Indeed, Wallace Tupper was a big deal in CV and Glendale, his name always in the news as a civic leader. His former home on Royal Boulevard in Glendale has been restored and is now a Glendale Historical Landmark.

But getting back to the showrooms of former car dealers, there are two up on Foothill. The Antique Store at 2865 Foothill Blvd. just west of the library, was once Williamson Oldsmobile. W. O. Williamson had an Olds dealership in Montrose in the 1930s (don’t know the location). In 1941 he moved his sales shop to a gas station at Foothill and La Crescenta. The postwar auto sales boom put him into the showroom where the west half of the antique store is today. He had attached service shops which are now occupied by an independent mechanic and an electrical contractor. (The Williamson family owned, and still owns, a lot of property along Foothill. It was from them that the county bought the land for our new library.) In 1951 Pete and Link Paola bought the dealership from Williamson and expanded the showroom east. Paola Oldsmobile left that building in the mid-60s.

An old auto showroom that is still a showroom today is Bob Smith Toyota at 3331 Foothill. It was built in 1963 as Gianera Pontiac, owned by father and son Joe and Howard Gianera.

Joe Gianera was the classic American rags-to-riches story. He immigrated from Italy and worked his way up from a laborer to own a car dealership. They later sold Datsuns, then Nissans. A few years ago, Bob Smith Toyota, then located directly across Foothill, wanted to expand so they bought the Nissan dealership. The old Gianera Pontiac showroom, still looking good after more than 50 years, now features new Toyotas.

There’s one other building still in Montrose that was a dealership for a brief time. The Black Cow Cafe at 2219 Honolulu was for a brief time a car dealership. The two-story Rienhard Building had a large retail space on the ground floor and medical offices on the second floor. In the 1930s Fairbank and Fee Pontiac crammed a new car showroom into that retail space. As an aside, that same space was of great interest to us baby-boomers in the ‘70s. It was the home of “Here, There, and After Records,” which featured a (gasp!) head shop along with the latest rock and roll. I’ve been dying to write a definitive history of that shop, but have no info. If you have anything on this counter-culture gathering place, please email me.

Moving over to La Cañada, we have one last dealership building, surprisingly the oldest of the lot. J.P. Anderson was a Ford dealer in La Cañada as early as 1912. As far as I can tell, he was located in the building at 1424 Foothill which is today Taix Workout Studio. At some point very early on, the dealership was sold to R.J. Westmeyer and moved right next door to 1420 Foothill. In an old photo, a tall glass-topped gas pump sits in front right on the curb.

That’s all I have on the dealership showrooms that are still around. Next week I’ll get into the ones like Hauter Ford and Preister Chevrolet that are completely gone.

Once again, please email me anything I’ve missed.

  mike lawler