In this stretch of 1931 Broadway in downtown L.A. (around 7^th Street) we can see signs for a number of very popular stores: Bullocks (department store), Silverwoods (men’s clothing), Eastern Columbia (department store), Desmonds (hats), Kress (five-and-dime department store), as well as probably the grandest of all the Broadway movie palaces, the Los Angeles Theater. This photo was taken January 30, 1931 for the opening of the Los Angeles Theater. Broadway was at its peak in popularity in the 1920s and 30s when this photo was taken—if they ever did invent a machine, this is the exact time and place I’d go back to. (Either that or late 1939, around the time of the premiere of “Gone with the Wind.”)