This partial view of Lick’s Pier in the Ocean Park section of Santa Monica (next to Venice), California, was taken in 1929. It shows two different ballrooms—the Egyptian and the Bon Ton—as well as a few thrill rides. This is the second Lick’s Pier. The first one only lasted from 1922 to 1924 before it burned down, as so many piers used to do back then, and rebuilt. But look at the beach in the foreground. It’s wall-to-wall umbrellas. How did anybody get to the shoreline and splash around the in Pacific on what must have been a hot day?
This is the full panorama shot. If you click on it, you’ll go to a larger version in which you can see more detail.
Here is an advertisement for the Bon-Ton Ballroom on Lick’s Dome Pier from the “Evening Vanguard”, June 3, 1922
After posting yesterday’s photo of the Signal Hill oil field near Long Beach, California, someone sent me this photo, also taken circa 1937. It’s the same oil wells, but this time we’re seeing them from across the Sunnyside Cemetery at 1095 East Willow St. It’s a good thing the deceased didn’t have to listen to all that noise or breathe in that heavy, oil air. I can only guess that the locals were used to them and didn’t mind visiting their relatives, but it strikes me as being a little off-putting to have all that going on in the background. Source: LAPL
In yesterday’s photo of Vine St in 1960, I commented that I could almost hear the sounds and inhale the smells. This photo similar, but not in quite the same way. In this aerial photo, we’re seeing the forest of oil derricks that blanketed the Signal Hill oil field in Long Beach south of Los Angeles. Oil was important to the local economy back in 1937, when this photo was taken, but it can’t have been pleasant to work in or live near these oil wells. I’ve never been near one, but I imagine they would have been noisy and stinky—especially in this area where there are so many wells it’d be nearly impossible to count them. Source: pbssocal.org
There are some photos you can look at and almost hear the sounds, smell the traffic, and taste the air. For me, this is one of those photos. We’re looking north up Vine St from Sunset Blvd, Hollywood, circa 1960, when the street still featured many of the businesses whose signs lit up the night: Wallichs Music City, Santa Fe railway, Plaza Hotel, The Broadway-Hollywood department store, Taft building on the southeast corner of Hollywood and Vine, and at the far right NBC television studios. Those studios would be razed in 1964, so this photo captures it during its final years. (Source: waterandpower.org)
Here’s a building I had never encountered before I was sent this 1964 photo. These days, it’s hard to miss the Director’s Guild of America building on Sunset Blvd on the southwest corner of Hayworth Ave. It’s around 5 or 6 stories high, circular, with a bronze-tinted exterior. It opened in the late 1980s, but I hadn’t ever given much thought to what it replaced. Sitting on the same block was their previous headquarters, a far more modest one-story structure with what looks like a theater at the back (with the sloping roof.) I could find no details on this building, but I do love that white patterned facade at the front. It’s got a very mid-century Palm Springs vibe about it.
In order to film “The Thief of Bagdad” Douglas Fairbanks bought several acres of land behind the Pickford-Fairbanks Studios south of Santa Monica Blvd in West Hollywood, which he co-owned with his wife, Mary Pickford. They needed that land for the spectacular set that we can see in this photo. And no wonder, too, as it required 700,000 feet of lumber. Back in 1923, when this photo was taken (by Captain A.W. Stevens for the US Navy) much of West Hollywood would have still been undeveloped, so this mammoth set would have REALLY visible from all directions.
During the heyday of LA’s drive-in restaurants (roughly 1930s to 1960s—would you agree?) one of the biggest chains was Stan’s, who at one point had over a dozen locations. Four of them were on Sunset Blvd (which is a very long street), and one of them is the restaurant pictured here. This is the Stan’s that stood on the southeast corner of Sunset Blvd and Highland Ave in Hollywood, which put it kitty-corner from Hollywood High School. That neon sign must have really stood out at night, and I love those three public phone booths next to it. This photo is circa 1966.
This shot gives us a soon-to-be-demolished glimpse of what Bunker Hill at the northernmost end of downtown Los Angeles looked like in 1955. The two streets we can see here are Olive St and 2nd Street, where downtown was still residential. But this stage, most of the homes had been divided up into boarding houses and the like. As we can see, the area was becoming rather rundown and neglected, and not long after this photo was taken, the razing and leveling of Bunker Hill got underway. But as we can see in the background, Los Angeles City Hall dominated the skyline, no matter which direction you were looking in.
Here’s a gem of Los Angeles architecture I didn’t know about until yesterday. Imagine this being your local movie house – it almost looks like a medieval church. It opened at 857 S. La Brea Ave (on the corner of 9th St) in 1926 as Chotiner’s La Brea (the Chotiners were brothers), but by 1934 it had been taken over by Fox West Coast Theatres and became known as the Fox La Brea. Since then, it has gone through a number of incarnations, including during the 1960s, when it became the Toho La Brea Theatre and ran Japanese films, which seems at odds with that ornate architecture.
