In this photo we see six merchants in East Hollywood lined up with their automobiles outside a general store called Hasting’s Place. The store stood at the corner of Vermont Avenue and Hollywood Blvd, at the eastern end of the Pacific Electric Red Car line. Apparently they’d line up like this every Sunday and take visitors to Griffith Park for 10 cents. You can see a sign on the front of each vehicle. Would they still have called them “horseless carriages” by the time this photo was taken in around 1915?
** UPDATE ** – Gregory H says: “Searching newspapers, the use of the phrase horseless carriage peaked in 1899 with 10,200 mentions. By 1915 the term “horseless carriage” pretty much always has quotes around it in reference to the introduction of them in the 1890s in articles looking back at that time. There are only about 900 mentions of the phrase in 1915.”
And here is a shot of Hasting’s Place store. We can see the streetcar tracks running along the bottom of the photo. It looks like they were also an agent for Wells Fargo. And that El Merito sign on the left most likely refers to a brand of cigars.
Looking at photos I am guessing that that the bottom pic is older or it is at a different location. Bottom pic building is smaller and sign is different.
It’s a bit tricky to look at, but this was a triangular reserve area. The second image faces southwest to Hollywood Boulevard where it has been cut diagonally along the Olive Hill area. The first image is over on the Vermont side with the “To Montrose” sign indicating the route up past Griffith Park through Glendale (unless there’s another Montrose?). You can see the higher roof of the main store through the trees, so this is like the back door side. The last of the three legs was the old Prospect Avenue alignment running west to east in a straight line meeting Vermont off to the right side of image one. Later on, the reserve was altered and cars parked on the north side of that short Prospect section which was also marked as Hollywood Boulevard (which is confusing). I believe it had been re-named Prospect at some point in later years. As far as I can tell, Hastings was gone within a few years after this. (Wells Fargo @ Co. stopped being the express carrier for Southern Pacific as the American Railway Express was brought into existence due to government actions following the 1913 postal changes. Since SP owned PE, the same applied.)
So given everything you’ve figured out, where do you think the pic with the 6 cars was taken?
On the Vermont side, before parking switched to the Prospect section (north leg) in later images. The circa 1910 photo you previously posted looking up Vermont with a small pharmacy on the east side had a car parked on the west side just below the old Prospect convergence. That car would have been about where the car on the far right of image 1 is seen here. No one really knew what that old photo represented but we do now. (BTW-Mickey Mouse was reportedly first created by Walt just a short walk from here.)
In today’s world, those cars are basically on top of a north-south pedestrian crossing. I guess they’ve installed a small planting area in the reserve triangle which is much smaller than it was in 1915.
Wow, thank you Al, great info. My grt grandma lived close by there, with my grandpa, and his siblings, I have a pic of their home dated 1904 but have not been able to find it. I wonder if they went to Hasting’s.
Details in the second image of the frontage facing the PE tracks…a heavy weigh scale near the right post, and advertising on the window below the Hastings name which reads “Money Senders” in the center (maybe related to Wells Fargo services). I wonder if this guy is equipped with a phone line or if he has a telegraphy key in there?
El Merito is also a brand of oranges from Ventura County (Sunkist in Santa Paula). I collect orange crate labels from Santa Paula (guess why!), so this name pinged my memory.
Here is a link to one of the images:
https://calisphere.org/item/ark:/86086/n22r3r1v/
A few more details of image 2. On the post next to the scale is a porcelain sign for Bishop’s Rough House Chocolates. The main door is lettered Ice Cream over Candies, matching what’s advertised in the Vermont side. Above El Merito is possibly a service window. Up above it has PIPPINS spelled out, next to a 5-cent (?) cigar sign. What looks like a view around the building end on the far right might actually be a reflection in glass showing Olive Hill (Barnsdall Park) back behind the photographer. Info that came from listings of these family images by a grandson indicate that the Hastings were there from the early 1900’s until 1918. Aerial photos after that have it completely vacant at first (probably a result of street widening on both sides). Photos of his VIM-built express truck are seen on worthpoint.
Finding an image taken from Olive Hill, I was able to see the configuration of these buildings. The second image is facing directly south as the rail line crosses on the diagonal extension of Hollywood Boulevard. In the first image on the far left of the telephone pole we see the doorway again with the words Ice Cream over Candies just next to it. The roof sign facing us in the second shot is also seen from a side angle in photo one, right of the pole and behind a tree branch. The larger open area of the triangular reserve was behind these buildings on the western half. That became car parking at the time that Hastings was gone…most available shots being around 1925.