In honor of Columbia Square’s last day of broadcasting (which will be marked by a final barbecue dinner courtesy of Paul Magers and some farewell words by Pat Harvey tonight after the 11 p.m. newscast, if I read the internal email correctly), I went on to YouTube in search of some of the old newscasts at Columbia Square over the years. I also found an old article about Columbia Square by fybush.com – written before KNX even moved out – and this recent blog post by Michael Linder that reassures us all that Columbia Square will not be torn down, but will instead be renovated as a mixed-use development.

Columbia Square postcard courtesy of Zilf

Today was my last day at Columbia Square. I feel almost like I wasn’t able to appreciate our last week as much as everyone else on the web team, since my week starts on Tuesdays.

So I of course took some pictures to memorialize the historic building. This area may look like its merely storage, but notice that step? The area actually used to be seating for the shows they used to film here. It’s now home to discarded CBS and KNX promos, files, frames, etc.

I almost wanted to take one of these typewriters home. Talk about old school – I imagine the one on the left, which bore the name Royal, was used when the station was opened in 1938. Man! These are going to be collectors items someday – actually, they probably are already – and you may want to kick me for leaving it behind. Sadly, I’m not sure what will happen to these old typewriters, even the one with the missing keys. I believe all the left behind furniture will be donated or left to the possession of the new owners of Columbia Square.

I also love these old signs. What the heck is Hit Radio? These must be old.

Check out this old promo poster. I think the only thing on it that is still around in the same form is Jack in the Box – there’s no more The Nanny, Robinson’s May, or Plymouth Neons.

KNX moved out a long time ago – before I got to Columbia Square, but the floor we worked on was like the KNX staffers left yesterday – they literally left everything behind.

There was a lot of old stuff about the building that cracked me up. Like this old school Tampax dispenser. No Belts, No Pins, No Pads! Ouch.

The porthole windows off our staircase, one of the architectural details that made Columbia Square so unique. If you look closely, you can see the House of Blues building through the window.

And my desk before I broke it down. I was the last one on shift for the web tonight, so I got to break all my stuff down by myself. It’s been a long time since I’ve broken down a tower for moving.

And after. Awww!

I’m not sure what’s going to happen to Columbia Square. I really hope that some remnant of it will still be around 20 years from now. It is such a cool, old building – even despite the apparent asbestos problem (which I only read about on Wikipedia recently) it should be preserved. I mean, dude – wasn’t it the first radio station in Los Angeles?

Ah well. Fare thee well, Columbia Square, and good night and good luck.

Moving always means you’re going to find scores of little things you once put away for a reason, but can no longer remember what that reason was. For a station that goes all the way back to 1938, you can probably triple that sentiment.

I was wandering around the station earlier, testing a new digital camera, when I came across these plastic CBS 2 visors. Anyone want one? They may be collector’s items down the line. Ahem. But then again, they may have gotten tossed already.

Of all the things set aside that I’ve seen in the midst of this moving, this was probably the most interesting – about six pallets of magnetic tape on the fifth floor, where our HR offices are. What are they of? I’m not sure.

But I just had to get a peek. This one, I believe, was labeled Dinah and had a date on it – 1973. They were super heavy too. It’s so amazing that we’ve gone from these heavy rolls of magnetic tape to beta to digital tape to pretty much no tape at all.

The end is nearing, though, at least for the Web team, so Friday will probably be the last day for me to get any pictures of Columbia Square. If you want to know more about it, Seeing Stars has slightly better (not better spelled) and more interesting information than Wikipedia.

Man! It was like Christmas at the Columbia Square parking lot yesterday. No fighting! No waiting! Plenty of non-bird zone spaces available for the taking at 3 p.m.

A lot of other people have already moved to the new Radford Lot station. All our tape libraries are empty and boxed up, plus desks are actually clean! The web department, by the way, will be moving this weekend, so this is literally going to be my last week at Columbia Square.

I’m kinda going to miss the place – it has so much character and any place that has ghost stories associated with it has got to be cool. In fact, Bob Crane is said to haunt our humble little web loft. I’ve never heard or seen the dude, but that’s kind of cool. Plus I’ll miss being in the middle of Hollywood. Can’t walk around at night, but seeing it from the roof is still awesome.

I’ll try to blog a little more later this week about the move. Gotta go to work!