The soaring, iconic tower of the Bullocks Wilshire department store has long been such an indelible landmark on the Los Angeles cityscape that I’ve never really wondered what had once been on the southwest corner of Wilshire Blvd and Wilshire Place. This photo shows us: a large, tree-filled garden with a densely leafy archway. This stretch of Wilshire used to be an elegant boulevard of beautiful mansions, so I’m guessing what we can see in this photo was someone’s front yard. Bullocks Wilshire was built in 1929; this photo was taken in 1928, so this is what the site would have looked like just before the construction crew arrived.

Andrew S. says “In 1922 Bullocks purchased a house on the southwest corner of   3200 Wilshire and Vermont from Mr William Lacy. To be the site of their store, the Lacy house that stood on that corner was moved by Kress movers to Windsor sq. and later became the home of John G. Bullock on S Plymouth. Bullocks decided the Vermont site they purchased in 1922 had too much traffic and then finally built the store on the corner of Wilshire Place in 1929. But still used the Vermont corner for billboard advertisements. Unfortunately the store opened the same year of the giant crash of 1929. In Sep. 1933 John G.Bullock died in the lovely house he moved to 627 S.Plymouth blvd. It is still there, right behind the 1961 Millard Sheets designed Scottish Rite Masonic Temple.”

This is how that same corner looked in March 2020: