It took me a while of living in Los Angeles to figure out that most of the wider streets around town were the ones that used to have streetcar lines running down them. In this photo we’re looking south down Main St in downtown L.A. It had two lanes for parking, two lanes for driving, and two lanes for streetcars – that’s a lot of coming and going. The cross street is Seventh St, which had a Liggett’s Drug Store on the northwest corner and an Owl Drug Store on the southwest corner. I expect they would’ve competed heavily for business. My guess is that the Owl’s huge four-leaf clover neon sign helped attract customers. I wonder if it was bright green. (Overell’s on the left was a furniture store.)
Roughly the same view in January 2020:
Owl (local/regional) & Liggett’s (nationwide) were both tied in to the same system of Rexall predecessor companies. Notice that Owl’s name appears in older smaller letters on the building just above the newer bigger name that seems to be playing keeping up with the Jones’. And the fountain/grill became a major feature for both chains.