This aerial view from 1930 shows us how big the Hollywood Bowl actually is. The area in the center of the photo is Whitley Heights, which I posted about yesterday, and that major road snaking through the landscape is Cahuenga Blvd as it heads into the Cahuenga Pass and into the San Fernando Valley. It’s not quite so prominent now because the 101 Hollywood Freeway dominates the view.
Roughly the same view in January 2020:
Sometimes it seems like every hilltop development in Los Angeles put up a sign. This one is new to me. Whitley Heights was a residential subdivision developed by Hobart Whitley in the hills opposite the Hollywood Bowl in the early 1920s. Its relative inaccessibility became a draw for privacy-hungry stars like Dietrich, Swanson, and Valentino, who helped turn Whitley Heights into the Beverly Hills of L.A. before there was a Beverly Hills. I don’t have a date on this photo, but the area looks very well developed, so I’m guessing circa 1930s but of course I’m open to being corrected.
A few months ago, I posted a circa late 1800s photo of the grand (and lamentably long-gone) Bradbury mansion near the corner of Court and Hill Streets in downtown Los Angeles. This one was taken 30 years(ish) later, and we can see how all the greenery around it made it look like a much more established and lived-in place. Plus, the world now had automobiles for the people who lived in this incredible home to get around a rapidly growing Los Angeles.
I think the auto-colorizer did a pretty good job bringing this photo to life:
California doesn’t always knock down its important historical architecture! Case in point: this McDonald’s Hamburger fast-food restaurant is the third one built for the chain (it opened on August 18, 1953) and is now the oldest one still in existence. It’s at 10207 Lakewood Blvd in Downey, which puts it around halfway between downtown Los Angeles and Disneyland. But the main reason why I like this photo from September 6, 1954 is how striking the neon lighting is, especially those swooping arches, and silhouette of that car parked on the far left.
The restaurant hasn’t changed too much. This image is from March 2021.
No wonder they called it the Roaring Twenties with this sort of shenanigans going on. This shot was taken at the Lido pool at the Ambassador Hotel on Wilshire Blvd. It’s undated, but by the looks of the clothes, I’d say this is from the 1920s. I don’t know who the musicians were, but my guess is that it was the house band at the hotel’s popular Cocoanut Grove nightclub. The guy second from the left appears to have nothing to do. I wonder if he was the piano player.
It’s hard to imagine that any part of downtown looked like this, let alone 20 years into the 20th century. (The cars we can see are circa late 1920s.) The road we can see in this photo is Spring Street (see below for update) which runs alongside what then would have been the newly opened Los Angeles City Hall (which opened in 1928) that we can see in the background. It’s amazing that Spring St was still a meandering dirt road. I’m guessing this stretch was around about where the 101 Freeway now cuts across the top of downtown L.A. The “Auto Park 15 cents” sign refers to Sunset Blvd ends just north of the 101.
** UPDATE ** – Jack F says: “As you can see in photo below this was not Spring Street but a dirt road just east of the Broadway Tunnel. We’re looking at the intersection of Sunset and North Broadway.”
Whenever I come across the name “Googie’s” I inevitably think of the restaurant next to the famous Schwab’s Pharmacy on Sunset Blvd that lent its name to a whole architectural style. So I was surprised to find this (undated) photo of another Googie’s restaurant. This one stood at the corner of Fifth and Olive Streets in downtown Los Angeles. That’s quite very central location—it overlooked Pershing Square, in the heart of the city. That lush green vegetation we can see would have been part it—this is back when Pershing Square was actually a park and not the stark square it is today. But that kooky angular, striped awning would have caught the eye of hungry passersby, which of course was the whole point.
That corner is completely unrecognizable now. This image is from June 2021:
This photo gives us a chance to see what Grauman’s Chinese Theatre looked like before it opened in May 1927. Not all that different from what it looks like now, it’s the surrounding environment that’s changed. The empty lots to the immediate west and east later became parking lots and are now highly developed. Orchid Ave on the right is gone completely, and the wing of the Hollywood Hotel past it is, of course, long gone. More interesting than that, though, is the sidewalk out front of the theater. These days it’s where the stars on the Hollywood Walk of fame stretch for blocks and blocks, but back then it was an interesting checkerboard of dark and light squares.
I always assumed that the opening of the new Max Factor building at 1666 N. Highland Ave in Hollywood on November 27, 1935 was probably a big deal, but until I came across this photo and started digging a little deeper, I didn’t know the opening was a gala attended by so many stars and celebrities. It makes sense, doesn’t it? After all, Max Factor was one of the go-to makeup guys in Hollywood with an A-list roster of clientele. But this photo taken on the big night makes it look more like a movie premiere.
This is an advertisement placed in the Los Angeles Times the following day announcing that the makeup studio is now open:
This one was also placed in the Los Angeles Times, on November 14, 1935:
This advertisement appeared in the January 1935 issue of The Screen Guilds Magazine:
This article appeared in Variety on November 26, 1935:
Max Factor’s upcoming opening also made the L.A. Times on November 17, 1935:
Even more amazing is that a scroll of celebrity names was made for the evening, the MAX FACTOR’S SCROLL OF FAME:
In this photo, Max Factor is holding an ink pot for Barbara Stanwyck as she signs the scroll with a quill:
Here’s some of the people who were there that night:
And here’s a few more shots of the building:
From some time in the mid-to-late 1930s:
From 1938 (this one looks like it was taken from a motion picture)
And this one is from circa 1952:
The building is still around and in great condition. It now houses the Hollywood Museum and Mel’s Diner. This image is from November 2021:
~oOo~
My sincere thanks to Judithe Raimist Hilton Factor for most of the photos and information she generously shared with me for this post.
~oOo~
This was the Merrill store and apartments building that stood at 812 American Ave (now Long Beach Blvd) in Long Beach – the photo was taken in 1936. I’m posting it for two reasons. Firstly, it’s a striking example of Art Deco architecture—look at beautiful detailing. We rarely see that anymore, and it’s great that it appears to have survived the Long Beach earthquake from three years earlier. But secondly, look at the name of the business on the left side: Love Garment Manufacturing Co. Hmmm…it does make me wonder what constituted a “love garment” in 1936. Was this place Long Beach’s answer to Frederick’s of Hollywood?
This is how that building looked in Feb 2022:
