This photograph in the June 12, 1980, issue of the Park Labrea News showed the Spruce Goose – the largest wooden airplane ever built – accompanied by a story about the famous plane possibly being displayed in the Pan Pacific Auditorium. The H-4 Hercules Flying Boat, or Spruce Goose as it was more popularly known, was built by 20th century business magnate, filmmaker and aviation expert Howard Hughes. The plane made only one flight during a test in 1947, sailing above the water with Hughes at the controls for one minute at an altitude of 70 feet, according to the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum in McMinnville, Oregon, the aircraft’s current home. With a shift in aviation to jet propulsion in the late 1940s, the Spruce Goose was quickly deemed to be obsolete. However, Hughes kept it in a climate controlled private hanger, out of public view for 33 years, until his death in 1976. Hughes’ estate gifted the plane to the Aero Club of Southern California, which displayed it in a hangar in Long Beach from 1976-92, when it was moved to the museum in Oregon. Local preservationists in Los Angeles had hoped to rehabilitate the Pan Pacific Auditorium – a once iconic venue on Beverly Boulevard that closed in 1972 and eventually burned down in 1989 – and proposed the idea of moving the Spruce Goose to the site as a main attraction. That plan never got off the ground, according to the article.