This circa 1915 photograph shows us Orange Grove Ave in Pasadena. It gained a “Millionaire Row” nickname when people with money (often from back east who’d come to Pasadena to escape the brutal Northeastern winters) built large estates. We can see one in the background with a distinctive domed turret. It belonged to the impressively named Professor Thaddeus Sobieski Constantine Lowe. According to Wikipedia, he was “an American Civil War aeronaut, scientist and inventor, mostly self-educated in the fields of chemistry, meteorology, and aeronautics, and the father of military aerial reconnaissance in the United States.” He was also that Lowe that Mt Lowe north of Pasadena was named after.
(My thanks to Johnny Yuma for his help with this post.)
Here are some clearer photos of The Blossoms:
This December 2020 view of Orange Grove Ave shows us how high those palm trees have grown in the intervening 100 years.
** UPDATE ** – Rick S says: “They are not the same trees. The palm trees in the historic photos are California Fan Palms and were undoubtedly lost for street widening. They are barrel-trunked and grow to about 30′. They line the down-town streets in Palm Springs with their manicured beards. The palms in the current photo are Mexican Fan Palms and look to be about 20 years old. They can grow upward to 90′. The cluster of palms on the left are Phoenician Date Palms. Here is a pic of both a Mexican (left) and California Fan palms.”
There’s a lot of life going on in this pre-horseless-carriage photo taken in the late 1800s of downtown Los Angeles. Specifically, we’re looking west along 2nd Street from Spring St, only a couple of blocks south of where Union Station is now, but back then was home to Chinatown. How different the city must have felt back then with streetcars and horses providing most of the transportation, and the quickest way to reach someone was to pop into the telegraph office on the left and send a message to your cousin in Boise.
The caption on this photo read “Twenty-Five Mile Ocean Drive, Santa Monica” but Ocean Dr is only a few miles long and it doesn’t hug the Santa Monica coastline like the road in this photo does. So I’m guessing it was actually taken just north of Santa Monica on the road that is now known as PCH (Pacific Coast Highway) which is a six-lane highway that runs along the water all way up to Point Magu. This photo is circa 1915, so I don’t know what this intrepid motorist would do if his car broke down.
The Bullocks Wilshire department store opened at 3050 Wilshire Blvd in September 1929 (a month before the stock market crashed—timing is everything!) It was the first store of its type to intentionally cater to what was then called “the carriage trade” which meant “shoppers with their own cars” (as against “shoppers who rode on streetcars.”) This 1938 photo from Life magazine shows us three Bullocks shoppers lining up to part with their cash. The store had a wonderful system whereby when customers bought an item, they didn’t have to lug it around the store with them; it would be taken directly to their car. How civilized!
This 1961 photograph by William Claxton is reeking with atmosphere. It was taken at Audrey’s Hotdog stand at the corner of Olympic Blvd and Alvarado St at 3am when the glamorous couple in the foreground had obviously been to some swanky soiree and needed a little nosh on the way home. Maybe they’d been dancing all night and had worked up a hunger. I’ll bet that girl had tamales, otherwise she was taking a big chance of spilling ketchup or mustard on her ballgown.
You’d never know it, but these six people were picking poppies at what is now around the intersection of Woodbury Rd and Lake Ave in Altadena, north of Pasadena. I don’t know if this was a poppy farm or these people were randomly picking poppies because there was nobody around to stop them…except perhaps the people in the horse-drawn buggy in the background. This photo was taken in 1895, so naturally these people were dressed from neck to ankle in layers of Victorian clothing—not exactly comfy gardening wear, if you ask me.
In 1940, it was decided that the Hollywood Public Library should be moved from its current location at 6357 Hollywood Blvd to 1623 Ivar Ave—so they picked it up and moved it! It looks so stripped down that I have to wonder if it was worth the effort. Wouldn’t it have been easier to start from scratch? According to one report I found, the cost of the whole operation was $72,000, so maybe it was the cheaper option. In the background, we can see the Broadway-Hollywood department store on the corner of Hollywood and Vine. It’s still there, but is now a loft apartment building.
I don’t normally post vintage photos as late as 1970, but the Brown Derby is an exception to the rule. This is the original, hat-shaped Derby that stood on the northeast corner of Wilshire Blvd and Alexandria Ave from 1937 to 1980. That’s a 1969 Buick Skylark, so I’m guessing this photo is circa 1970 and had another 10 years before it abruptly closed.]
This natty group of Angelenos was photographed beside a Pacific Electric streetcar on what was known as the Santa Monica Air Line, which was took people from the Pacific Electric Building at Sixth and Main Streets in downtown Los Angeles, to Santa Monica via Culver City. (Most of the route is now used by the Metro E Line.) The line was in operation from 1909 to 1953. This photo was taken circa 1909, so these people may have been among the first passengers. The streetcar has “U.S. MAIL” emblazoned across the front, which makes me wonder if it was also carrying the mail out to the beach.
Yes, perhaps Los Angeles had outgrown it, and yes, perhaps it hadn’t been maintained well, or perhaps it was damaged by the Long Beach earthquake of 1933, but still, it’s a shame this magnificent building is no longer with us. It’s the Old County Courthouse at the corner of Temple Street and Broadway in downtown L.A., circa 1900. It really must have been a sight to see at the time.