Visiting the Martini Home ... for real. One of only two real locations from the film that you can actually still visit.

   Obviously a lot of this blog is referencing my love of the film (what I call an experience) with connection to the villages and items I set up every year around CHRISTmas. One of my favorite pieces already documented was the building from the 4th series, the Martini House. What I have only recently found, was that that house has been located and is well documented. Several sites are available to see shots of the building as it stands today and it seems virtually unchanged with the same house number still in the same location across the door Mary and George stood at in the famous scene. The address of the home location is 4587 Viro Rd La Cañada Flintridge, California. Below is the street view picture bringing it to full color and life.

Via Google Streetview: The Martini home today

   I will not steal or go into details available on various sites but check out the following for tons of information on the location today. 

This page has a ton of information and many great then and now pictures, as does this one.  The poster also even has pictures of the other buildings caught in the scene and their locations today. She highlights just about all aspects from the scene in regards to how it appears today. The author, Lindsay Blake, seems to run a blog that focuses on movie locations you can visit. All credit goes to her, her site can be found here. This other site has some of the same but also has some pictures of the roadway George and Mary parked on and how it looks today, as well as the location of the tree that the Bailey Park sign was hung as well. Very cool! 

Those outside the Enesco family ... Potter's Mill from the Target Bedford Falls collection.

  The Enesco series is just one of at least five villages that are based on the It's a Wonderful Life film. I believe (obviously) that the best of these is the Enesco collection but one of its limitations is the number of buildings in the collection as they stopped after only five releases. Thus, there are some buildings that I wanted for my own Bedford Falls that required stepping outside of the Enesco universe. They had to be a building that wasn't part of that collection, yet filled a gap in the town I wanted to recreate. Thus, one of those was the Potter's Mill building that offered a unique look at some of Mr. Potter's method of income outside the banking element so visible in the film. It does not have a specific reference in the film, but one does not have to stretch very hard at all to imagine the Potter family owning and operating a Mill, likely connected to keeping workers paying his rents in the actual referenced Potter's fields. The closets thing relating to the film would be George's reference to Sam about some of the older employers in Bedford Falls, specifically a machinery and tool shop. During their famous exchange on the phone George mentioned:

"Oh, I don't know . . . why not right here? You remember that old tool and machinery works? You tell your father he can get that for a song. And all the labor he wants, too. Half the town was thrown out of work when they closed down."

Now the Mill is labeled for lumber supply but given that Bedford Falls used to have a tool and machinery works, that infrastructure probably was related or connected to our Potter's Mill. So goes my logic and line of thinking.

Anyway here are some quick looks at that the Mill. .

Front facing