In 1923, the two main social clubs of Long Beach, California merged to form the Pacific Coast Club. In June 1925, construction was started on the club’s impressive, castle-like headquarters at 850 East Ocean Blvd, and on October 27th, 1926, the place opened and duly impressed the locals. (This photo is from 1938.) The place offered its members guestrooms, an Olympic-sized indoor swimming pool, a beauty shop, a barber shop, basketball court, sauna, haberdashery, gym, women’s tea room, padded wrestling room (!!), library, dining room, and a private beach. Whatever they charged for membership, it wasn’t enough to cover the cost of all this luxury because within a year, the club verged on bankruptcy. However, the far more successful Los Angeles Athletic Club came to their rescue and the club continued on until the 1960s, when this style of living eventually petered out.
Unfortunately the place is now long gone. A big condo complex now stands in its place. This image is from February, 2021:
This 1940 aerial view gives us a whole different perspective of the Ambassador Hotel which stood on Wilshire Blvd at Alexandria Ave. The hotel opened in 1921, when the land along that part of Wilshire Blvd was cheap and plentiful, but I’m surprised by that huge chunk to the left of it is still empty. The apartment block in the center of the photo is the Gaylord, which is still there. The small dome to its left is the Brown Derby, which is long gone. To the left of it is the Chapman Park Hotel, with its large grounds and bungalows. Farther to the left we can see a large white tower which is now the Oasis Church. The grounds of the Ambassador is now the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools. So, 80 years after this photo was taken, some buildings are still around and some, inevitably, have gone the way of the wrecking ball.
In this aerial photo taken by Life magazine, we get to see what a chunk of the Universal Studios backlot looked like in 1963. If you’ve not been to a movie studio backlot before, the castle in the bottom right corner gives you a pretty good idea. Impressive from the front, but at the back? Just wooden scaffolding and some ladders. Those two Navy boats moored in the lake on the left, I’m fairly sure they were there for “McHale’s Navy” which filmed at Universal in from ’62 to ’66.
Back in the day when Hollywood Blvd was decorated for the holiday season with electric Christmas trees, the street looked very festive. But this nighttime photo from 1948 looks almost film noir with the puddles of rain water scattered across the road. The photographer was at around Whitley Ave looking east toward radio towers atop the Warner Bros. theater and the Broadway-Hollywood department store, whose neon sign we can see in the distance.
This photo offers us a glimpse into early 1900s life in downtown Los Angeles as two women stroll down Spring St 
This photo is undated, but I’d say it’s from the 1920s—mostly because everybody is dressed up in hats and coats and suits while at the beach. Something big was happening that day on those bleachers rigged up in front of the Venice Pier on Venice Beach. My guess is that it’s a swimsuit beauty pageant, but being the 1920s, there would have been more swimsuit to see than skin. In the background to the left we can see the word “SHIP” strung up high in the air between two masts. That was the famous Ship Café—famous because it wasn’t hard to get illicit booze during Prohibition at the place built in the shape of a Spanish galleon.
In late 1910, the Hyman Theatre (part of a mini chain of six theaters) opened at 802 S. Broadway in downtown Los Angeles on the southwest corner of 8th and Broadway. This is a photo of the opening night crowd as it gathered before (or after?) the show. Within a year, the theater would be rechristened the Garrick. It was demolished in March 1927 to make way for the historic Tower Theatre, which opened in October of that year. For me, though, the most interesting part of this photo is that elaborate 7-bulb streetlight on the left. Talk about fancy!
From 1953 to 1972, the Hollywood Bowl had a half-moon-shaped reflecting the pool in front of the stage. It also came with dancing waters and an elaborate fountain that entertained audiences during the intermission. They dismantled it because the moisture wreaked havoc with some of the musical instruments. Plus, let’s be honest, it allowed them to build boxed seating which they could charge a premium for because they offered the best view. So I don’t blame for getting rid of the pool, but as this 1959 shot shows, it must have been awfully pretty the way it reflected the Bowl’s concentric circles. (That light in the top right corner is known as the Hollywood Cross, which is a 32-foot cross above the Ford Amphitheater, which was built in 1923.)
Before NBC opened its famous at the northeast corner of Sunset Blvd and Vine St in Hollywood, its home was in this building at 5515 Melrose Ave, near Gower St and Paramount Studios. It opened on Wednesday December 25, 1935, which I found to be an odd date. It guess NBC Radio personnel worked on Christmas day that year. At any rate, the very quickly found that the premises were way too small, and so almost immediately began drawing up plans for much larger premises on the stretch of land that used to house the Famous Players-Lasky Studios.
In the 1930s and 40s, McDonnell’s was a chain of more than 15 restaurants around Los Angeles. This one was called McDonnell’s Fairfax restaurant and stood near the corner of Wilshire Blvd and Fairfax Ave (which puts it near the iconic May Company department store.) Apparently their signature dish – or at least the one they were pushing in 1941, when this photo was taken – was called “Chicken in the Rough.” Does anyone reading this remember what that was? It was only 50 cents, which sounds like a pretty good deal to me. And check out that huge arrow they had up on the pole. You couldn’t miss it!