This shot is about as Beverly Hills as a shot could be. The 1957 Ford Thunderbird was zooming by so fast the photographer was lucky to capture him at all. Every street in Beverly Hills has different trees. So although I don’t know exactly where this circa 1960 photo (the blue car is a circa 1959 Peugeot 403) Beverly Drive has a mixture of tall and short palm trees on it so I’m guessing it was there.
This isn’t the same spot, but the vintage photo was taken along here somewhere.
Clifton’s was a mini chain of cafeterias that opened in Los Angeles in 1931 at the depth of the Depression. At first glance it might seem that opening a restaurant at a time when people could barely afford to feed themselves might sound crazy, but Clifford Clinton opened the first of his cafeterias shown here at 618 S. Olive Street (this one was called “Pacific Seas” and had a wild façade) with a “pay what you wish” policy, including eating for free if you had no money. Clinton realized that people may not have much, but they still had their dignity and wanted to pay their way if they could, even if it meant handing over one single penny. Many Angelenos may have starved had it not been for this generous man. This photo is dated 1960.
Color postcard showing the exterior of Clifton’s Pacific Sea’s Cafeteria:
It really must have been a sight to see in person!
Electric palm tree inside Clifton’s Pacific Sea’s Cafeteria:
Postcard of Clifton’s Pacific Seas Cafeteria,
When a building like the Los Angeles City Hall becomes an iconic part of a city’s skyline, it can be easy to forget what came before it. This building, which stood on the southwest corner of Main and Temple Streets in downtown Los Angeles, was demolished in the mid 1920s to make way for the gleaming white skyscraper we all know. I love how the biggest sign on the building says “Painless Dentistry.” This photo was taken in 1920, so I’m not sure how painless it really was—unless he knocked you out first with a baseball bat.
Roughly the same angle looking up at LA City Hall, February 2020
It looks like Californians were out in force doing their Christmas shopping on Pine Ave in Long Beach when this photo was taken. The blue car in the foreground is a 1949 Chrysler, so I’m guessing this was taken in the early 1950s, but you’ve got to love how the vivid color photography makes the Chrysler’s blue pop! Does anybody recognize these buildings? I’d love to be able to narrow down the location.
This is roughly the same view in March 2019:
It’s hard to imagine that downtown Los Angeles ever had as much character as this. As a city grows—especially one that expanded as quickly as L.A. did in the first half of the 20th century—so does the demand for space, so it can be unrealistic to wish that things never changed. But gosh oh my, wouldn’t it be lovely if Main Street in downtown L.A., seen here looking north from Fifth Street, still had those lovely trees, stately homes, and interesting Victorian architecture? Oh yes, and room for those horses and carriages, too.
Roughly the same view in May 2019:
This 1914 photo looking north up Vermont Avenue from Hollywood Blvd reminds us that once upon a time the streets of Los Angeles were wide and quiet and unpaved, and you could park pretty much wherever you like because there was no competition for parking spaces. And look at the license plate on the car to the left: four numbers. These days it’s a combination of seven numbers and letters, and therefore harder to remember. (Or am I the only who can’t remember the license plate of the car he’d driven for the past 20 years?)
**UPDATE** – a couple of people on Facebook suggested that the vintage photo was actually looking south.
Jesslyn says: “1914 – California had only been requiring drivers licenses for one year, at that time. And they didn’t require that you pass a test until 1927!“
I don’t know where exactly the 1914 photo was taken but this is Vermont Ave north of Hollywood Blvd in May 2019:
There’s something about a well-framed night shot that reeks with atmosphere, isn’t there? This is the Hollywood Palladium nightclub at 6215 Sunset Blvd in 1946. The draw that week was Buddy Rich, a virtuoso jazz drummer who led his own orchestra after serving with the U.S. Marines during WWII. You can tell how big of a draw he was by the size of that vertical banner—it’s almost as big as the blade neon sign spelling out “PALLADIUM.”
The Palladium is still there – and so are the dancing figures on each side of the vertical sign. This image is from May 2019.
This must have been a sight to see: a Japanese submarine captured at Pearl Harbor. I don’t know why it was set up out front of CBS Columbia Square studios at 6121 Sunset Blvd in Hollywood in 1943, but I sure would have been one of those people lined up to take a peek inside. (I’m surprised the line wasn’t longer.) I don’t know the context of what was going on here. Was the sub on tour? Was this the only place it was shown? Where did it end up? That booth on the left probably has some answers but the writing is too blurry to read.
Susan M said: “There were a few Japanese subs that toured the US during the war as part of the war bond effort. I don’t recall if I went to see this one at Columbia Square, but I did see the one at the LA Coliseum in ’42. They paraded it around the track during the SC-UCLA game that year. The really popular ones to see were the mini subs.”
See also: How one of Japan’s ‘secret weapons’ at Pearl Harbor ended up being the US’s first prisoner of war
That building is still there. NeueHouse is a shared office space company. This image is from May 2019:
Where would Hollywood movie premieres be without powerful searchlights needling the night sky? This shot was taken at the premiere of Fanny Brice’s movie debut, “My Man” at the Warners Theatre on Hollywood Blvd. The movie opened during the messy transition from silents to talkies, so this movie had a silent debut (December 1928) and a talkie debut (January 1929) – this shot was taken on the night of the silent version. The neon blade sign on the far right intrigues me: “Postal Telegraph.” Was that a certain sort of telegraph, or is the sign advertising two different services?
The Warners Theatre is still there but it has stood empty for decades. On the plus side, there are now more trees along Hollywood Blvd!
Quite honestly, it amazes me that they can chop a house in two, lift it up on a truck, and drive it to some other location where they can set it down again. But I can’t even begin to imagine how they do that when the route involves going up Marmont Lane behind the Chateau Marmont Hotel near the start of the Sunset Strip. It’s is a narrow street, barely two cars wide, so how this truck managed negotiate it with a load like that beyond me. I imagine it was done very slowly and very carefully. This photo is from 1950, and I’m glad somebody thought to take it, otherwise I never would have believed it.
The vintage photo was taken right out in front of the hotel – which is the easiest part. All those twists and turns farther up the hill would have been much harder to navigate! This image is from May 2016:
Here’s a pretty good auto-colorization of that shot:
