**UPDATE** – See Jeff Hamblin’s comment about this photo being taken in 1941.
If anyone needed proof that LA traffic gridlock was only a modern-day phenomenon, look no further back than this 1939 photo looking west along Wilshire Blvd. The photographer was standing just east of Commonwealth Ave. That two-toned building on the right was the swanky Town House Hotel. But the real landmark was the Bullocks Wilshire department store. Its ten-story tower could be seen for miles around—which was kind of the point. The store opened on September 26, 1929, a month before Black Friday sent the stock market into an horrific plunge. Oops! Bad timing! But it weathered the Depression, and by the time this photo was taken, it had earned its place as the primo department store in Los Angeles. But on this day, getting to it might have been a challenge. That traffic doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere.
This is roughly the same view in August 2016. The Bullocks building is still there – it’s now a law library. The Town House is also still around, and is now low-income housing.
My interpretation is a general panic over that thing emerging from just under the billboard on the left. The Blob? Jabba the Hutt’s tongue? Or maybe, The Amazing Collossal 70 foot Giant Gila Monster Subway Sandwich from 1000 Fathoms Below the Surface of the Moon? That’s what happens when you’ve started the week off watching Roger Corman’s 1979 Rock & Roll High School. Now, back to the real Don Steele. Hey, Ho, let’s go!
Does anyone know what stood where the two lion statues on the lower left hand side of the 39 photo? Also I wonder why so many people were out in front on the Town House?
My guess is that they are at the front of garden path that leads up to a private residence. I’ve seen ones just like it in Angeleno Heights out front of a late 1880s mansion.
No clue what the lions are in front of, but there’s another large group of people on that side of the street as well, perhaps going to use the crosswalk to go over and join the others. Also, at the crosswalk someone is getting out of a car, right next to what appears to be a convertible with the top down and two people sitting up on the back. Something’s going on! On the right side, rather than going to the Town House, it kind of looks like the crowd is amassing two doors down. Anyone know what was there?
Walking down this part of Wilshire Blvd was very popular on Easter Sunday when Angelinos would parade in their Easter finery. Maybe that’s what’s going on?
Wow! So many cars and people! I love this picture. People really got out in those days. It is kind of nice. Although, I am sure if you lived in LA, you did not like the traffic!!
This congestion resulted when the City Council instructed the City Traffic Engineer to discontinue the off-center lane treatment to have four lanes west and two lanes east during the PM peak hour. The off-center treatment was successful in relieving congestion but it required that left turns be prohibited. The City Council believed that the left turn prohibition was harmful to retail business.
This Dick Whittington photo seems to get dated as 1939 wherever it appears, but it’s definitely 1941 from the license plates. You can view a high enough resolution version of the image here to clearly see the plates (https://www.gettyimages.in/detail/news-photo/traffic-jam-along-wilshire-boulevard-and-pedestrians-also-news-photo/969015588).
The billboard on the left (maddeningly cut off!) is for something involving The Merry Macs. They were in 3 films for Universal Pictures in 1941 so I’m guessing it’s an ad for one.
Whittington used a pretty long lens the way the image is so foreshortened.
Another photo you posted years ago is reported to been shot on Easter Sunday, 1941. I’m wondering if this one was too. Lots of similarities, just different locations on Wilshire.
https://martinturnbull.com/2016/05/25/traffic-snarl-along-wilshire-blvd-at-kenmore-ave-1941/
Thanks, Jeff. I see what you mean. And yes, I thought of that Easter parade photo when I saw this. Now that we know they were both taken in 1941, these two images were probably taken at much the same time.
One of my former co-workers, a gentleman who was in his early 60s when I began working with him the late 1980s, had a job parking cars at Bullock’s Wilshire when he was a teenager. The customer would pull under the porte cochere and he would then drive the car back to the parking lot. He remembered parking Spencer Tracy’s car once!
Wow! Back in the days of ‘gracious living’!
This is a location in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep. Private Investigator Philip Marlowe meets with “Agnes” at the Bullock’s Wilshire, east parking lot, with the “green-tinged tower” far above them. Book published in 1939. Marlowe drove there from the Fulwider Bldg (Western & Santa Monica).