In this photo we’re looking along Brand Ave toward Wilson Ave in Glendale. The pale green de Soto is from 1959, so this shot is from the very late 1950s. Maybe it’s the colors of the cars or the style of the stores’ facades (JJ Newberry’s five-and-dime is one of them) but I love the whole leave-it-to-beaver-ness vibe of this photo. In truth, life in the 1950s probably wasn’t the life-as-a-bowl-of-cherries as depicted in TV shows of the era, but you’d never know it from images like this.
I crossed my fingers when I looked up this angle on Google Maps, but alas, no. All those stores are gone. This image is from March 2019.
That new building looks like four different buildings crashed together.
Tower of Alex Theater stands as landmark on the right. (Empire Strikes Back played there when location mattered.) Webbs was an old line department store. Leeds and Richman Brothers were both commonly known chain names. (Bought my first adult size suit at Richman in Glendale.) Time took its’ toll on those names, and the ones that helped bury ’em are now gone or twisting in the wind.
Please tell me more about Glendale. I love it