Water tank
Hal Roach Studios
Water tank
By April 1920 the lot at 8822 West Washington Boulevard, at the corner of Washington and National, held the administration building, one large open stage and an enclosed stage, a set-storage building, a laboratory, and department bungalows. The back lot carried sets that were used over and over again. Marc Wanamaker records this in Remembering the Hal Roach Studios for the Culver City Historical Society (1 April 2006).
By May of that year a pool water tank had been installed, along with some other departmental buildings.
In the Los Angeles Times of 26 July 2014, Susan King writes that a Hollywood Museum exhibition on Hal Roach included a recently discovered plaque from 1954. The plaque names this studio water tank Lake Laurel and Hardy.
She writes that it was so called because the tank had been used to drench the comedians in such films as Babes in Toyland (1934). The plaque, she reports, had been missing since the studio was torn down in 1963.
Wanamaker dates the end of the lot more closely. In April 1959 the studio was closed due to bankruptcy. Hal Roach Sr. tried to get it going again, but by December 1962 the studio was permanently closed. In August 1963 it was demolished after several auctions and sales of the company's assets.
Wanamaker also notes that in 1980 the studio site was marked with a historical plaque as one of Culver City's most famous and important studios.