I have no idea where in Los Angeles this photo was taken, but that’s beside the point. It’s a wonderful close-up of the semaphore traffic lights that controlled L.A. traffic until the three-light signal replaced them in 1956. The La Salle and Buick in the background dates this photo to circa 1928. But two things I had never noticed about semaphores before is the third, smaller light at the bottom. Can anyone tell me what that was for? And that box on the pole—was that used to adjust or fix the light? It kind of looks like one of those call boxes used to contact the police or get a taxi. I’d love to get some confirmation about what it actually did.
Susan M said: “The bottom, smaller light was a yellow light indicating caution. They usually were a flashing yellow in Los Angeles. The box contained the wiring/controls for the signal. They needed adjusting often.
You also used to see flashing yellow lights after say 9 or 10pm at some intersections. This was an indication of lower your speed and proceed with caution, knowing there might be multi cars with right of way in the intersection. Never made much sense to me to have a flashing yellow intersection in the later hours of a typically slower intersection vs just use the signal lights in an ongoing manner. Before all railroad crossings had cross guard arms that raised and lowered, some had yellow flashing lights to indicate proceed through the crossing with caution. Those are the main things I can recall about the old Acme and other automated signals that flashed yellow. Not all the Acme signals had a yellow light by the way. You’d run into some of the older ones put in pre-mid 30s that only had the red green lights. Most of the busier traffic areas replaced those however with the ones that had the little yellow bottom light. I can remember some of the old red green lights left for years however. Areas out by Mine Fields/LAX, down into the outskirts of Torrance, Gardena areas didn’t change out to newer signals until post war. Then those were retired lickity-split for the red-yellow -green lights that are more typical of those seen today.
On the Acme signals like this one, which is what most of the LA area had from the 30s on, the yellow light flashed before the red light would come on. They added the flashing yellow lights to cut down on running red lights by accident. In LA on a flashing yellow light, we could proceed into the intersection with caution, same as a green light. Some areas of the country, laws were different, and a yellow light meant almost the same as a red light. If the intersection was compromised by an accident or road work, the cops or roads dept usually turned the the signals for the intersection to flashing red for a 2-3 or 4-way stop. The only time you usually saw the flashing yellow was about 30 seconds before the signal changed to red. The timing sequence could be altered based on traffic patterns and how large the intersection was. Before all the meters in the streets and cameras in the sky, we used to have road dept employees called traffic counters! They sat at intersections (at the curb), and collected stats, timed signals and counted cars.”
Andie P said: “There were often older, usually deskbound cops who directed traffic at intersections when there was an accident – or a water main break, which happened once when I was with my stepmother in Hollywood. The cop arrived on a bicycle! Opened the box and set it to 4-way stop. The box on the pole could be accessed by Police or Fire to call in problems and also to SET the signal to ALL STOP, like the flashing red lights we have now. Drivers were expected to come to a full stop and wait until a TRAFFIC DIRECTOR waved them on, sent them down the side street or made them do a U-turn and go back the way they had come.“
Chris S said: “The Acme traffic signal operated normally during the day flipping out its Stop and Go along with the red and green lights, respectively. The amber light at the bottom would not operate until night. It would go into flash at night. With fewer cars on the road, the timer would tell the arms to “park” themselves inside the signal and the bottom light would start flashing. The next morning, the amber light would stop flashing and the arms would start their waving at traffic again. The box in the post contained the signal controller and timer along with manual police controls.”
This photo was taken on a clear, sunny L.A. day looking north up Vine Street toward the Hollywood and Vine corner from Huntington Hartford Theatre (now The Montalbán) in 1955. I’m so glad that this shot is in color because we don’t often get to see awning and blade neon sign of the Brown Derby across the street. That red color is quite eye-catching which is, of course, the whole purpose.
When the city of Los Angeles decided it was time to bring all three major railway lines (Santa Fe, Southern Pacific, and Union Pacific) under one roof, they agreed that best location for the new station was where Chinatown stood and that Chinatown would be relocated to the northern end of downtown. I always assumed that Chinatown was razed before work began on the new railway station, but this photo, dated 1937 shows the shape of the now-iconic clock tower taking form while the Chinatown’s buildings were still standing.
This 1959 photo reeks of cruising down Hollywood Blvd on a Saturday night looking for trouble in all the wrong places—and probably finding it at the Movie Town Motel. Past the 
In this photo we’re looking west along a busy and bustling Hollywood Blvd from around Wilcox Ave. MGM’s “Ivanhoe” is playing at the Iris Theater at 6508 Hollywood Blvd. It came out in summer of 1952, although I don’t think the Iris was a first-run theater. That huge neon Coca-Cola sign that dominates night photos of Hollywood Blvd was in place. It’s a big more striking when it’s lit up, though. By the look of the bus, this is the period where they had started to replace the streetcars. The tracks are still in the road, which indicates the beginning of the end was within sight.
The Music Center at the top end of downtown Los Angeles (or the Performing Arts Center of Los Angeles County, as it’s officially known) is where a lot of theater happens: musicals, plays, opera, ballet, and in the 70s and 80s, the Academy Awards. But until I came across this photo, I never gave a thought about what once stood in its site. I don’t know if the St. Angelo Hotel was still standing in April 1955, when Dorothy Chandler began fundraising for a permanent home for the L.A. Philharmonic, but I’d say chances are good that it was. This photo was taken in 1928, and it was a fairly typical type of hotel of its era. I love the big, wide balcony where guests could sit and catch a cool evening breeze as there would have been no air conditioning for these people.
I don’t know if it was legal for these kids to ride their Go-Kart on an unfinished stretch of the 101 (Hollywood) Freeway near Woodman Ave in Sherman Oaks in the San Fernando Valley, but you can’t blame them for wanting to ride an empty freeway while they could. The sign in the distance says the upcoming exits are Woodman, Coldwater Canyon, and Laurel Canyon which means the photo was taken looking southbound.
For those of you who indulge in daydreaming about what it would be like to sit poolside at the Garden of Allah Hotel (where my 
I don’t know about you, but personally, I would be dubious about buying a house through a reality company who operated out of an office shaped like the Egyptian Sphinx—even if the name of that company was called Sphinx Realty. It seems an odd name for a realty company, even for the early 1920s. Did they call it that so they’d have an excuse to build the sphinx at 537 N. Fairfax Ave (opposite what would later become Fairfax High School)? Whatever the reason, if that “FOR RENT” sign is anything to go by, it didn’t seem to have worked.
Sherry’s restaurant, at 9039 Sunset Boulevard was one of the Sunset Strip nightspots of the late 1940s, not just popular with movie stars, also with mobsters. In July of 1949, those movie stars learned that mixing with the mob was dangerous to their health when, in the wee hours of the 19th, an assassination attempt was made on the head of the national crime syndicate’s gambling and vice operations in Southern California. Mickey Cohen and his party were leaving Sherry’s at 3:55 a.m. when shots rang out across Sunset Blvd. It was a scene from a real-life Warner Bros. picture! Cohen survived the assassination attempt but I pity the owners of the car in the foreground with five bullet holes. Or maybe it was a story they dined out on for years.