There was a lot going on in this Victorian building on the southwest corner of 8th and Olive, downtown LA, with its five bay windows and its square turret with the fancy ironwork crowning the top. I assume the “YOU DRIVE” sign refers to a rent-a-car operation, although I’m not sure what “Lail’s Auto Livery” were selling. There’s also the London Luggage Shoppe, and the “D and S Buffet Eastside” which begs the question: Was there a westside one too? And off to the distant right, we can see the First Congregational Church at 841 S. Hope St.
** UPDATE ** – In the early days a livery was a place where you rented horses and carriages. The idea carried over to autos, as they began to replace horse drawn vehicles. This article is from the Los Angeles Times, dated June 20, 1929 shows that “Lail’s Auto Livery” was now a car rental company.
As expected, that building is long gone with a huge skyscraper now standing on that site. This image is from January 2022.
However, First Congregational is long gone, but here is a photo of it from 1905.
What brought back a flood of memories to me in this photo is the public scale in the center of the photo to the right of, and behind the fire hydrant. These were common in the commercial areas and were activated by putting a coin in the scale to weigh oneself. As a kid I always wanted to do that, but rarely got the chance. I don’t remember if it cost a penny or a nickel, but either was a lot of money when the family had little to spend. One get around was for the lightest family member to get on first, then the next in weight step on and the first one step off – if you could fool the machine you could weigh two people for the price of one. Sometimes it worked. Only the wealthy had a bathroom scale, so this was the go-to place to find out if you put on too many pounds.
Gosh, Alan, I didn’t even notice the scale parked outside the front door!
The church in the background is the 1902 building of First Congregational, located on S. Hope. The building on 6th Street was not completed until 1931.
The church tower in the photo has two lancet windows on each side, whereas the 1931 building has three.
Believe Eastside was a beer. On the right wall we might make out Good Food over Eastside with something below about yada and y”aught”?