In this nighttime panoramic shot, we’re Looking north from 3rd Street toward Vermont Ave. The two main hotspots along Vermont was the Fox Belmont Theatre (opened 1926) and the huge Rainbow Gardens ballroom. The Rainbow Gardens opened in 1925 as El Patio (admission was 40 cents for gentlemen and 25 cents for ladies) and later became the Palomar. Whatever name it went by, it was a popular fixture on LA’s social scene and played host to all the big-name orchestras, including Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw, Jimmy Dorsey, and Kay Kyser. One of the billboards in the foreground is for a movie called “Aloha” which came out in April 1931, so we can assume that’s when the photo was taken.
Piggly Wiggly Market, Beverly Drive, Beverly Hills, 1929
Beverly Drive in Beverly Hills runs parallel to – and one block over from – its more upscale sister, Rodeo Drive. It’s where you shop if you can’t afford Rodeo Drive prices. This shot is from 1929, not long after Beverly Drive converted from being a residential street to a commercial one. And as we can see, right there in the middle of the action is a Piggly Wiggly market.
Joyce says: “America’s first true self-service grocery store, Piggly Wiggly, was founded in Memphis, Tennessee in 1916 by Clarence Saunders. In grocery stores of that time, shoppers presented their orders to clerks who then gathered the goods from the store shelves. This is a picture of that first store. You entered and went through all the aisles till you got to the check out.”
Pellissier Building at Wilshire Blvd and Oxford Ave, Los Angeles, 1931
The Pellissier Building on Wilshire Blvd is usually photographed from the Western Ave end, because that’s where the spectacular Wiltern Theatre stands. But it’s easy to forget that the building extends along Wilshire to Oxford Ave. It’s a block-long monument of Art Deco gorgeousness decked out in eye-catching glazed blue-green terracotta tiles. This photo was taken in 1931, the year that it opened, so it would have been a striking jewel in LA’s architectural crown as, indeed, as it still is.
Roughly the same view in April 2019:
The Oxford Ave end is now a Denny’s – but at least it’s still there.
Warner Bros / First National movie studios, Olive Ave, Burbank, California after a snowfall in 1932
Recently, I was researching how many times it has snowed in Los Angeles, and came across this photo showing a sprinkling of snow across of Olive Ave in Burbank in front of the Warner Bros. studios in 1932. Whenever you see snow at a Hollywood movie studio, it’s fake. Movie snow has been made from different materials over the years, but this is the first time I’ve seen the real thing—at least at a movie studio. And for the record, it has snowed in LA ten times: 1882, 1913, 1921, 1922, 1926, 1932, 1944, 1949, 1957, and 1962.
Roughly the same view in April 2019 (without snow)
Early Columbia Pictures logo – “Gems of the Screen” (1932)
When Columbia Pictures segued into television production, their company was called “Screen Gems.” But I just discovered that the 1932 incarnation of the logo included “Gems of the Screen.” This image is on Columbia Pictures’ Wikipedia page.
Looking north up Vine Street from the NBC Studios on Sunset Blvd, Hollywood, circa mid 1940s
The photographer who took this shot was standing on the steps of the NBC radio studios that stood on the northeast corner of Sunset Blvd and Vine Street in Hollywood. On the far left, the “CORDS” sign is part of Capitol Records, which started out on the floor above Wallichs Music City. Two doors up from it is Alexander Stationers—we don’t see much anymore, do we? Next to them is Tom Breneman’s restaurant, which became famous when Breneman started hosting his “Breakfast in Hollywood” radio show there on the Blue Network from 1941 to 1948.
Roughly the same view in April 2019:
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Streetcars line Broadway at 7th St, downtown Los Angeles, 1943
There seems to be quite a log jam of streetcars along Broadway in downtown L.A. at 7th Street. Maybe it’s because this photo was taken in 1943, when America was in the depth of WWII. Gasoline was strictly rationed and so people were more reliant on public transport. With LA being flooded with war workers and servicemen, there was a lot of bodies to be moved around. Or maybe a really terrific picture was playing at the Loew’s State Theatre, whose marquee we can see at the extreme left.
Union Station, downtown Los Angeles, circa 1939
Los Angeles’s Union Station opened in 1939, gathering together under one roof the three main railway services: Union Pacific, Santa Fe, and Southern Pacific Railroads. There was no date on this photo but all the cars in the traffic out front are circa mid 1930s, so I’m guessing this photo was taken in the first year after the opening. These days, there are more trees and greenery, but other than that, the place looks pretty much the same.
This is how Union Station looks now:
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Tagged Downtown Los Angeles, Trains and Railways, Union Station
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Wilshire Blvd looking east from the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, Beverly Hills, circa 1940s
In what looks to be a circa 1940s photo taken from the dashboard of a car heading east along Wilshire Blvd in Beverly Hills, we can see the Beverly Wilshire Hotel on the right. It isn’t much different these days, except for the line of trees in the center divider along Wilshire. In the distance, we can see the tower the Warner Theater, which used to stand at Wilshire and Canon. On the left is Victor Hugo’s, a very popular French restaurant, where, if patrons were lucky, they might have found themselves dancing to the music of Ozzie Nelson and his orchestra.
More or less the same view in April 2019:
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Tagged Beverly Hills, Hotels, Restaurants, Theaters, Warner Bros., Wilshire Blvd
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By the mid 1920s, one of the biggest names in Los Angeles wasn’t a movie star but an evangelical Pentecostal preacher named Aimee Semple McPherson. In 1923, she started her Foursquare Church (drawing its name from Jesus Christ the Savior, Baptizer, Healer, Coming King) and quickly gathered a huge following by harnessing the a new technology called radio, which she used to broadcast her weekly sermons. This is a circa mid 1920s photo of her Angelus Temple, which could seat up to 5,300 eager followers. The building is still there and is currently the home of the Angelus Temple Hispanic Church.