This home looks like a fairly typical Southern Californian dwelling with lots of windows and wide verandas. But this house at 1749 N. Cherokee Ave, Hollywood on the corner of Yucca St didn’t belong to just anyone. It was home to L. Frank Baum, the author of “The Wizard of Oz” who moved to Hollywood when it was still a sparse village filled mostly with citrus groves. He built the house in the early 1900s and called it “Ozcot.” Baum died in 1916, long before MGM premiered its film version in August 15, 1939, at Grauman’s Chinese Theater only three blocks away. Ozcot was razed in the late 1950s.
This is what stands on that corner today. It’s a shame the house is no longer there. It would make a wonderful museum who a man who led a rather extraordinary life. Aside from writing the Oz books, he also kept exotic birds and was a highly skilled horticulturalist. (This image is from May 2016.)
From our 21st century eyes, this photo looking east along Sunset Blvd from Vine St in Hollywood is filled with what we think of as classic American cars. But of course back in the early 1960s when this photo was taken (one of those cars is a 1960 Ford Fairlane and another is a 1960 Ford Falcon) they were all just regular cars that filled the streets of America from coast to coast. In the background, behind the two red ones, we can see the sign for Moulin Rouge, which is the nightclub that the Earl Carroll Theatre became in 1953.
You probably didn’t wake up this morning wondering how they moved palm trees in Los Angeles in 1913, but in case you did, this photo is for you. This palm tree was being moved from 1608 West 7th St in (what we now refer to as) downtown Los Angeles, and was bound for the Doheny Mansion at 10 Chester Place near the campus of the University of Southern California, south of downtown. Edward Doheny is the guy who discovered oil in California, so employing ten men and six horses to move a tree was easily affordable.
The Casino restaurant in the Ocean Park part of Santa Monica wasn’t a “casino” as we think of it today. Back in 1905, which is around the time this photo was taken, a casino simply referred to a building used for social amusements. This Casino restaurant also had tennis courts and a stage where bands could play. By the looks of the crowd packed shoulder to shoulder, whoever was playing that day were popular—although those four women in the bottom left corner, all decked out in white, seem to be over it. Perhaps they went for a walk along the pier that we can see in the background.
I don’t know if that circa 1960 Thunderbird in the foreground of this photo was cruising Burbank on a Saturday night, but that sure is the vibe I’m getting from this image. Bob’s Big Boy with their “original double deck hamburger” is still around at 4211 W Riverside Dr, in Burbank. It’s the oldest remaining Bob’s Big Boy location and was declared a historical landmark by the state of California in 1993. I doubt that hormonal teenage boys still cruise the boulevards of the San Fernando Valley on the weekends, but the big tradition at Bob’s is on Friday nights when dozen of classic car enthusiasts meet there to show and check out each other’s classic American cars. You can see pics of it 
I do like the way this photographer has framed this shot. It’s a circa 1900 photo of the California Limited train during its stop at the Pasadena depot of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway en route to Chicago. He was standing in the waiting room facing north, and that building on the left was the Hotel Green. At this time, the trip from L.A. to Chicago took around 68 hours, which is a long time to be sitting around in those tight Victorian clothes, but still, I’d love to have experienced it just once.
The (third) Los Angeles Times building on the corner of Broadway and First Street in downtown Los Angeles looked more like a dance hall on a pleasure pier when it was lit up at night. The locals certainly knew where they were. (circa 1912)
When William Selig moved his Selig Polyscope moving picture company from Chicago to 1850 Allesandro St (later Glendale Blvd) in the Edendale section of Los Angeles in 1909, he created In L.A’s first permanent movie studio. (Among other firsts, he also made the first movie version of “The Wizard of Oz.”) In this photo we see what is most likely a circa 1910 Cadillac or Studebaker pulling out of the studio and onto a unpaved road. Behind the high wall we can see a filming stage with all-glass walls. Before effective lights were developed, early filmmakers had to rely on sunshine, which is what helped make California such an attractive place to film.
I’m impressed that the Young Women’s Christian Association had a seven-story building on Hill Street in downtown Los Angeles. On second thoughts, single women trying to make their way in the world in the early 1900s when this photo was taken would have faced all sorts of obstacles; a place like this would have filled a need for shelter, food, and companionship. And if the YWCA took the trouble to build a seven-story facility, I’m guessing there was a great need. I tried to find out how much they charged back then, but couldn’t find any information. I do, however, like that mixture of horse-drawn and horseless carriages parked out front.
Most photos we see of the Crossroads of the World (America’s first outdoor shopping mall) are taken from the main entrance on Sunset Blvd, so it’s nice to find one taken at the northern end on Selma Ave, looking south. (We can see the entrance’s iconic globe peeking over the roof on the left.) Crossroads opened in 1936 and by the staged look of this photo, my guess it was taken around the time of the opening as a promotional shot. It does look like a tranquil oasis in the middle of busy Hollywood.
