In this aerial shot taken 1920, we can see why the early movie studios moved west to Los Angeles. It offered the two things they needed most: sunshine and land. That white building is United Artists, the studio formed by Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, and D. W. Griffith at the corner of Santa Monica Blvd and Formosa Ave in Hollywood in 1919. With those cast swaths of empty land, they had all the room in the world to expand. This studio later became the Samuel Goldwyn Studios and these days is known simply as The Lot. Oh, and all that wide, open space is now completely filled in.

** Update** – United Artists was formed in 1919, but as distribution for actors who produced their own movies. Pickford and Doug made their their studio there in 1922, and Mary didn’t make a film there til 1923.