Right before the Ventura/Hollywood/101 Freeway opened in the early 1960s, photographer Leigh Wiener took this photo of his son Devik playing on the off-ramp to Laurel Canyon Blvd in Studio City. It was probably the first and last time any child played on that freeway! I’ve taken that off-ramp quite a lot and it’s shocking to see it so deserted as that freeway is now one of busiest in the whole Los Angeles freeway network.
This is how that off-ramp looked in April 2021. Sign-gone. Railing-gone. Little kid-gone. Nothing stays the same.
I wonder if the top picture was taken on a June gloom day or if it was just a typically horrendously smoggy day in ’59
I hadn’t noticed the haziness in the top photo. Possibly a mixture of both?
I would ride the red car to Notre Dame High school in the valley. Once the freeway opened it made it easier. Our neighbor, Norman Mathers (Father of Jerry Mathers – star of Leave it to Beaver), began teaching at my high school and I could ride with him.
Where were you catching the red car from? I assumed NDHS students all came from the surrounding neighborhood.
You might be right Martin, however I seem to recall they had different standards for their enrollees. I don’t even recall, was it even a LAUSD school?
That’s a question for James Knott.
First kid maybe, but last? You’re killing me. My brother and I were tossing a ball back and forth on a road over the Hollywood freeway in the mid-’60’s. He purposely threw it over my head and sent me down into that traffic to recover it under threat of a good a** whoopin’ if I refused. Therein is how you really play dodge-ball…with autos (trolleys in Brooklyn IIRC). Best part…he stole the darn ball from a local school playground! Sheeesh!!
I would have risked the whoopin’ rather than risked the traffic.
So you’d think. But this was the guy who took you to the top of Whitley Avenue, placed you in a shopping cart, and then promised to control the ride. Then he’d let go! No “E” ticket at Disneyland could match that game. Hollywood was a thrill-a-minute place to grow up…assuming you survived it.
The key words there are the final four.
Wonderful. The best thing ever was the construction of freeways and highways in the 50s. The only thing it all became a race track, at least here in LA, but still thankful you can get to any place a whole lot quicker. It’s also neat to see some of the ORIGINAL brick landscaping when you cross from North Hollwood into Hollywood via the 101, it has that 50s era look. The vintage Studio City offramp pix is amazing, like something out of the Twilight Zone. Thanks, Martin.