A friend with a Denzel wrote me and asked about Arthur B Zwebell... who was an importer of Rometsch and Denzel cars from around 1955 to 1958. This reminded me of my earlier research which I have never really posted anywhere. I think this may be of great interest to Rometsch owners and others.
Arthur Zwebell and his brothers invented a tire retreading machine and made a lot of money in the early years of the 20th century. later they built a business making model t Speedster bodies in the early 20's called "Bub Body Corporation... selling speedster bodies for your model T Ford. This was in Wisconsin USA. In the 1920's Arthur moved to LA and decided to build courtyard housing with his wife Nina in the Spanish Colonial style. His first building was quite a success. From this success he and his wife were contracted by the famous hollywood director Cecil b Demille to build several more of these courtyard housing projects in the spanish Andelusian style. (these can all be seen in the book "courtyard housing in Los Angeles" if you look that book up online) All of these apartment buildings are now on the National Register for Historic Architecture in the USA. Zwebell is known as the father of the los angeles courtyard housing movement. Demille housed many of the actors and actresses for his movies in these amazingly beautiful courtyard apartment complexes. Movies were often shot in these complexes as well.
Anyway... after a while Zwebell's brothers also moved to LA and started making furniture. Arthur and his wife were working as set designers for hollywood directors like Demille. The Zwebells brothers furniture company made furniture in the same style as the set designs.
in the mid 1950's Arthur Zwebell became the Rometsch importer. He used his connections in hollywood to get the "right" people to buy the cars! My Beeskow... was originally owned by Paramount Pictures...( I don't know what for or who drove it...) and then it was later sold through hollywood sports cars again to a hollywood film editor. I bought it from the neighbor of the film editor who had acquired it when the editor stopped driving it. It was originally imported by Arthur Zwebell.
As a side note... Zwebell's architectural photographer was a well known fellow by the name of Julius Shulman. Shulman is most famous for shooting the homes designed by all the austrian modernist living in Los Angeles in the 1920's through 1960's. Richard Neutra, Rudolph Schindler etc. He also shot for Frank Lloyd Wright. He is probably the most famous architectural photographer of the 20th century. One of the biggest customers of these modern architects was Max Hoffman. that same hoffman so well known to American VW, Porsche, Mercedes and Jaguar owners as the biggest importer of foreign cars in the 1950's. Frank Lloyd Wright drove a 300SL provided to him by Hoffman.
Zwebell knew the hollywood elite... the architectural elite... and I am guessing also knew Hoffman through Schulman. I was scheduled to interview Schulman several years ago... as he was coming to the town where I live to give a talk to the architectural school here where I know most of the professors. He could not make his visit as he became ill. He was in his 90's. He later passed away... and I was never able to interview him about zwebell, hoffmann and the cars.
for more info see:
https://www.coachbuilt.com/bui/b/bub/bub.htm Eric Meyer
Edited by user
13 years ago
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