In this photo we’re looking east along Wilshire Blvd where it bends at Lafayette Park, which was known as Sunset Park when this photo was taken circa mid-1910s. I love the woman who is posing in front of what looks like newly planted palm trees that are so short that she could touch the fronds. Assuming they’re the same trees that are there now, she couldn’t touch them with a ladder. In the background, we can see the top of the Bryson Apartments, which opened in 1913 and is still there. These days it’s most closely associated with Raymond Chandler, whose private eye, Philip Marlowe visits it in his 1943 novel, “The Lady in the Lake.”
Roughly the same view in February 2021:
The Bryson is still looking pretty snazzy!
Judging by the lady’s clothes, I’d guess this picture was probably taken in the 1920s. In the teens, her skirt would still have covered her entire leg.
Sometime in the fall of 2019, I was in the neighborhood of the Bryson, so I went inside and looked around. A beautiful building, inside and out. (Sadly, I did not see Philip Marlowe.)