In this circa 1927 photo, we’re looking west along Hollywood Blvd from the Hillview apartments (at 6533 Hollywood Blvd, now known as the Hudson apartments) on the Hudson Ave corner. Built in 1917, it was the first apartment building that would rent to those denizens on the bottom of the social totem pole: movie actors. Apparently, some of the early residents include Mae Busch, Stan Laurel, Barbara La Marr, Joan Blondell, Clara Bow, and Mary Astor. As we can see, the Boulevard was much less packed, with far fewer cars and buildings crowded along it. We can even clearly see the tower of the First National Bank of Hollywood building in the background.
The Hudson Apartments in December 2020. They’re actually quite nice apartments inside but someone told me there’s also a lot of noise.
This photo shows us an important moment in Grauman’s Chinese Theatre’s history: CinemaScope had arrived to lure moviegoers away from their TV screens. The first movie to be shown in the wide-screen format was “The Robe.” The theater closed down for three days (September 21 through 23, 1953) to install the necessary equipment. We can see part of the sign of the previous film, “Gentlemen Prefers Blondes,” which had enjoyed an 8-week run, ending September 20. On the 24th “The Robe” had its splashy premiere ahead of a 13-week run during which time it was the only cinema in L.A. to run CinemaScope’s first outing.
I always get a kick out of finding a photo of Schwab’s Pharmacy on Sunset Blvd that I’ve never seen before. This one is dated 1945. Past the palm tree on the right was the Garden of Allah Hotel. If the photo was a little bit wider, we could probably see it a little more clearly. I do like seeing those public phone booths next door, and I assume that contraption on the left is a weighing machine. (Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, though.) For the record, that big sign and the vertical one were dark blue with a light blue border and white writing.
This is an early 1920s shot of the Hill Street station for Pacific Electric, which was the railway company that ran the streetcars known as Red Cars. I’m not entirely sure, but I think this station was on the west side of Hill Street between 4th and 5th Streets in downtown Los Angeles. From this station you could take a Red Car out to the beaches or over to Hollywood, and out to Burbank and Glendale. And as we can see from the huge sign on the building next door, you could take a Red Car to Mt Lowe, a getaway resort in the San Gabriel Mountains north of Pasadena. Actually, you’d take the Red Car to the base of Mt Lowe, then a rather precarious railway up the mountain, and then a steep incline railway to get to the top.
Evidently Angelenos dealing with traffic jams aren’t a modern bane of L.A. life, not if this circa 1931 photo is anything to go by. Most photos of L.A. from the 1930s show wide-open streets with lots of elbow room and free parking spaces everywhere, but something must have gone wrong at the corner of Wilshire Blvd and Western Ave I’m not 100% sure, but I think this view is looking east, in which case that’s the Wiltern Theatre going up on the right. It opened in October 1931, so the timeline fits. I love the irony of the “GO” traffic signal—those cars don’t seem to be going anywhere any time soon.
In this 1928 photo, we’re looking west along Hollywood Blvd from around Las Palmas Ave. I don’t often get to say this, but much of what we can see here is still with us. Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre (even the vertical blade sign is there) as is its neighbor, the Pig ‘N Whistle Café are still around. The high rise was the Hotel Christie, which is now a Church of Scientology building. The tower with the turret is the First National Bank of Hollywood building, currently empty, but still there. The blockish building in the distance with the radio tower on top was the El Capitan Theater, which became the Hollywood Paramount in 1942, and then in the 1990s, Disney bought it, renovated it back to its former glory and restored the El Capitan name. All in all, that’s a pretty good preservation ratio over a 80+ year time span.
In a city like Los Angeles, where everything always seems to be in a state of flux and change and “progress”, it’s nice to know there are some places that rarely change and look pretty much as they did 100+ years ago. The Beverly Hills Hotel is one of those places. This photo was taken circa 1925, but apart from the cars parked along the driveway and the height of the palm trees, you’d be hard pressed to know what year it was. Let’s hope it never changes.
This is one of those photos that makes me want to climb through my computer screen and walk around for a day or two. This was taken in downtown Los Angeles in 1910 on Hill Street looking west up 5th Street. On the other side of those trees on the left is Pershing Square, which at the time was called Central Park. (It was renamed after the WWI U.S. Army General John Pershing in 1918.) That building in the distance with the turret was the Normal School, which was a teacher training college. I love the genteel feeling of this photograph, but most of all I love that 5-globe street light on the right. This model was known as a Llewellyn, and they were installed in downtown L.A. around the turn of the century.
Looking west along Hollywood Blvd past Grauman’s Chinese Theatre to the Roosevelt Hotel, Hollywood Blvd, Hollywood, February 1954This photo looking west along Hollywood Blvd was taken from the corner of a street that no longer exists. Orchid Ave used to run from north of Franklin to Hollywood Blvd where it formed the eastern side of the Grauman’s Chinese Theatre parking lot, which we can see at the forefront. I assume the “20” we can see in the sign refers to a 20-cents-an-hour parking fee. 20th Century-Fox’s “Kings of the Khyber Pass” starring Tyrone Power played Grauman’s the whole month of February 1954, but I wonder who was playing at the marvelous Cinegrill cabaret room at the Roosevelt Hotel.