Wow! Talk about recycling! In around 1887, the original building for L.A. High School (built in 1871) was moved from Poundcake Hill (around 1st and Temple Streets) to Fort Moore Hill (near the historic plaza. Both those hills have gone now.) This photo shows the school being moved. I’m not sure what, exactly, is going on here. Did they raise it up on a platform and then move the platform? However they managed it, it’s a jaw-dropping sight to see.
Below is an 1873 photo of the Los Angeles High School building in its original location on Poundcake Hill:
According to the caption on this photo, we’re looking at workers laying street car tracks along what was then (in 1899) Prospect Ave but what would later become Hollywood Blvd. The project took five months and in May 1900, the first electric railcar from Los Angeles rolled down Prospect Ave. But you wouldn’t know where this was taken from just looking at this photo—there are no landmarks familiar to us. In fact, there aren’t any landmarks at all!
In this glorious aerial shot, we’re treated to the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio’s Lot One showing the back lot where all that movie magic was shot. European castles, wild west streets, Anytown USA store fronts, and pirate ships, it was all there in Culver City. This photo was taken in 1932 when a lot of the land around the studio was still empty. I assume it’s 1932 because down at the bottom, we can see a billboard for “Grand Hotel” which was MGM’s biggest movie that year.
In the late 1800s, the most prominent mansion in Los Angeles belonged to Margaret Crocker. It sat at the corner of 3rd and Olive streets. This photo was taken from the veranda looking down 3rd. The building on the left with the tower is the 
Although 766 Vine Street is in the heart of Hollywood (just south of Waring Ave), I love how small-town-local this photo feels. It’s probably from the very late 1920s, and shows us a two-pump Texaco gas station teamed with a Magnus Root Beer restaurant. Personally, I do love me some root beer, but I’m not sure how you build a restaurant around it. It all looks very new so maybe this was taken on opening day.
Most photos of the famed intersection of Hollywood and Vine are taken at the street level. This aerial shot from 1931 shows us a bird’s eye view. We can see the Equitable, Taft and Broadway buildings in the lower right part of the photo, all of which are still with us. It’s interesting to see how many private homes dotted and open land dotted the cityscape, especially the apartment building that stood where the iconic Capitol Records building now stands in the center of this image.
In this photo we’re treated to a bird’s eye view looking north up Hollywood Blvd from the roof of the Roosevelt Hotel. It was taken in April 1932, so Grauman’s Chinese would have been gearing up for the lavish premiere of MGM’s all-star “Grand Hotel” on April 29th ahead of an 11-week run. We can also see the parking lot next to the theater, and across Orchid Avenue (now gone) the Hollywood Hotel (also gone) sits nestled among a thicket of trees. On the north side of the Highland Ave corner is the Hollywood First National Bank building, which is still around but stands empty, which is surprising considering its prime location.
Beginning in 1928, a one-mile stretch of Hollywood Blvd between Vine St and La Brea Ave transformed into in “Santa Claus Lane.” This atmospheric shot was taken during the holiday season of 1933 on a rainy night when the wet road gave the image an almost film-noir texture. The two towers of the Warner Brothers radio station, KFWB, on top of their theater really stand out. Those triangles were electrified metallic Christmas trees, and that large circular thing on the left had the portrait of a movie star in the middle. It sure must have been a delight to walk down Hollywood Blvd that time of year.
Snow falls across Los Angeles so rarely that when it does, it’s newsworthy. It’s also worth stopping what you’re doing and go outside and play in the snow because it probably won’t last long. That’s what these seven people are doing out front of Universal Studios (plus an eighth to take the photo.) I’d love to know who these people were. This is only three years after the studio lot was renamed from “Oak Crest Ranch” to “Universal City” so maybe they were the entire front office.
Filming a scene with hundreds of extras is enough of a headache, but Frank Capra had the additional challenge of filming this scene from Warner Bros. “Meet John Doe,” at night AND in the rain. Being Hollywood, it was of course fake rain, which we can see pouring from huge spouts. This scene was shot in 1941 at Wrigley Field, which was a baseball stadium that stood near University of Southern California from 1925 to 1969. I bet everybody in this photo was glad when Capra decided he’d shot what he needed and sent everybody home.