CAFE: Artifacts Salvaged From Egyptian : Artifacts From Fantasy Cafe Donated to Disney
Artifacts from the Egyptian Village Cafe, Glendale’s famous fantasy-style restaurant of the 1920s which was torn down last year, have been donated for use in another fantasy kind of place--one of the theme parks owned by Walt Disney Productions.
The Glendale Historical Society acquired and stored architectural features from the cafe after it lost a long battle to preserve the building. The cafe was on Brand Boulevard, north of Broadway, on a block cleared for a high-rise office redevelopment project.
A total of 349 ornate architectural pieces salvaged from the cafe have been donated to WED Enterprises of Glendale, a Disney subsidiary that designs and fabricates exhibits for Disney theme parks in Anaheim, Florida and Tokyo. Another Disney park is planned for construction near Paris.
The pieces have been catalogued and stored at a WED warehouse in North Hollywood.
Orlando Ferrante, vice president of WED, said the production company learned about the artifacts from one of its employees, show designer Robert Weiss, who is a member of the historical society.
Ferrante said the company is “thrilled to get these artifacts,” which he described as “very hard to find.”
The elaborate friezes and capitals, which architects say more closely resemble Greco-Roman style than Egyptian architecture, decorated fluted columns in the cafe, built in 1921 above an arcade of ground-floor shops. The cafe was a popular dining spot for entertainment personalities during its heyday from 1921 to 1927, when it was believed to have closed, possibly because of high operationating costs.
The cafe had been used only for storage since then, so the original features were left untouched through the years, according to Carole Dougherty, a society member who led the unsuccessful fight to preserve the building.
George Rester, director of architectural design and construction for WED, said he expects the pieces will be used as molds in the design of a new structure at one of the theme parks. However, he is not sure how or where they will be used.
