When the Ambassador Hotel opened on January 1st, 1921 on Wilshire Blvd, its location was so far out of downtown Los Angeles, that Angelenos considered it a resort hotel. All that wide-open space would have been relief from the crowded, noisy city streets. Judging from the early 1920s motorcars parked out front and from the sparse vegetation, I’m going to guess that this photo was taken not long after the hotel’s opening, when its Cocoanut Grove wasn’t yet the new epicenter of Hollywood social life.
I ran this photo through an auto-colorize website just to see how it might turn out, and I think it worked pretty well, giving us an idea of what this viewpoint looked in real life. (Well, except that it covered Wilshire Blvd with a nicely manicured lawn…)
When the Ambassador Hotel opened on January 1st, 1921 on Wilshire Blvd, its location was so far out of downtown Los Angeles, that Angelenos considered it a resort hotel. All that wide-open space would have been relief from the crowded, noisy city streets. Judging from the early 1920s motorcars parked out front and from the sparse vegetation, I’m going to guess that this photo was taken not long after the hotel’s opening, when its Cocoanut Grove wasn’t yet the new epicenter of Hollywood social life.
And once again, I would sell my soul to the Devil to be about 15 years old in this time frame.