Some vintage photos are teeming with so much activity that you can just about hear the commotion. We’re looking north up a bustling Broadway from around Fifth Street in downtown LA. One of the banners stretched across the street reads: “Opening, Grand Midwinter Carnival and Oriental Exposition, Venice, Jan 14, 1906” so we can date this photo to around then. This is a Los Angeles largely reliant on horse-drawn transportation, a burgeoning streetcar network, and pedestrians’ legs, and I love how many multi-globe streetlights there are. The building on the right with the pyramidal roof was the LA City Hall, but my favorite feature is the big boot sign on the left. I assume Cummings was a bootmaker and cobbler—though I doubt how many people could see that sign eight or so floors from the sidewalk.
Leonard W. says: “W. E. Cummings was quite successful in the shoe business from the late 1800s to the early 1900s. He built and owned the building where his shoe business was located. He sold the business about 1908, at which time where was scandalous divorce, where his wife was accused of having an affair with his chauffeur.”
Here’s another photo taken of much the same view, but a little farther south down Broadway, probably taken on the same day by the same photographer:
This is how that view up Broadway from 5th looked in February 2023.
We see an early location of The Owl Drug Company on the left side. They would eventually become an enormous operator on many well known corners.
It’s hard to see, but looks like Broadway goes uphill in the distance, which it certainly doesn’t now. I’m not that familiar with the lost hills of downtown Los Angeles, but wondering if that was one of them.
Yes, that would be Bunker Hill that as flattened out in the 60s and 70s.
Amazing! I can’t believe they did that.
One of the “Lost L.A.” episodes on PBS a couple of years ago covered the lost hills of downtown. I hadn’t known how many there had been. Sad that most of them are all gone.
Thanks Paula! I found it online.
Yay!
Does anyone know when the building with “Parmelee” written at the top was demolished? I have a foggy memory of having seen that building, but that could definitely be a false memory.