I don’t know what to look at first in this photo. Is it the gaping whale mouth that decorates the Fish Shanty restaurant that used to stand at the diabolical four-way intersection of La Cienega Blvd, San Vicente Blvd, Burton Way, and 4th Street? Is it that sleek, gorgeous 1938 Lagonda Rapide V-12 convertible parked out front? Or is it the valet parking guy who may or may not realize it’s a British car and therefore has the steering wheel on the right?
A fully restored 1938 Lagonda Rapide V-12 convertible:
A color photo of the exterior of the Fish Shanty restaurant
A close up of the whale-shaped front door of the Fish Shanty restaurant:
I wonder of the colors really were as vibrant in real life as portrayed in this color promotional postcard of the interior of the Fish Shanty restaurant:
** UPDATE ** The photo below is taken from a 1965 movie called The Loved One. We can see in the background that same car. In this movie, the Fish Shanty is used as the location of a British ex-pat club, so it’s quite possible that the image at the top of this post is actually from the movie.
In this circa 1938 shot of the Vine Street Brown Derby in Hollywood, we can see that it was still sandwiched by the Eddie Cantor gift shop to the north and the Satyr Book Shop to the south. But if you look more closely to where the awning stretches the width of the sidewalk, we can see two large white dots, about the size of dinner plates at around knee height. Is that a derby-shaped silhouette we’re seeing? Were they always there? I’ve never noticed them before!
Apparently, it pays well to spread the good word. This is a circa 1930 shot of the 4,400-square-foot Moorish Revival castle on Lake Elsinore (southeast of Los Angeles) that Aimee Semple McPherson built as a retreat in the late 1920s. At the time, she was a very popular and influential Pentecostal evangelist and media celebrity, and famous for her Foursquare Church in the Echo Park area of Los Angeles. McPherson lived in what became known as “Aimee’s Castle” until 1939. In the 2000s it underwent a complete restoration by Foursquare International, a modern incarnation of McPherson’s Foursquare Gospel. The L.A. Times did a story on it which has some rather fabulous photos of how it looks now: 
By the late 1910s, Charlie Chaplin had become so big that he built his own studio on La Brea Ave, south of Hollywood Blvd, which included six English-style buildings described by the Los Angeles Times reported as “arranged as to give the effect of a picturesque English village street.” The project was completed in 1919 and is where Chaplin filmed many of his classic films. This photo was taken circa mid 1920s and the buildings have—miraculously—remained unchanged during the intervening 100 years. It’s how home to Jim Henson’s Muppets.
As much as I wish L.A. still had its extensive network of Pacific Electric Red Cars, I don’t know that I’d have enjoyed living in either of these two buildings that backed right onto the Hollywood Boulevard line. The residents would have had to endure the regular sound of a streetcar shunting along right outside their window from early in the morning until well into the night. On the other hand, it would have made for a convenient way to get into Hollywood or downtown Los Angeles. And the people in the white building got to live with a turret, so there’s something to be said for that.
In this photo from 1915, we’re looking east along Santa Monica Blvd from the Canon Drive corner in the heart of Beverly Hills. At the time, the boulevard wasn’t even paved over yet. I also can’t see any street lighting, but that expanse of lawn on the left is still there and now known as Beverly Gardens Park. Also, there is what looks like a newly installed line of telephone poles, so civilization was coming to them thar soon-to-be golden hills of Beverly.
When the Warner brothers moved west to make pictures in the late 1910s, they built a studio at 5800 Sunset Blvd in Hollywood at the corner of Bronson Ave. Known as “The Barn,” it’s where they filmed their early successes, including the highly popular and profitable Rin Tin Tin movies, which boosted the rising career of Darryl F. Zanuck, as well as The Jazz Singer in 1927. This circa 1920 photo shows us that the surrounding land was still open scrub land. That site is still a studio and is known as the Sunset Bronson Studios.
When you see this 1912 photo of Orange Grove Boulevard in Pasadena, you can see how turn-of-the-century Northerners fled here to escape the winters. Wide-open streets, shady trees, lawns, smooth sidewalks, regularly-spaced street lighting, no over-crowding, no tenements, no snow storms. Honestly, it’s a wonder any of them went back.
In this photo from 1955, we can see the excavation site for the soon-to-be iconic Capital Records building, which opened the following year. The photo, which I assume was taken from the roof of the Equitable Building on the northeast corner of Hollywood and Vine, also shows us how sparse that area was. Opposite the excavation site is empty lot. To the north, over Yucca St, the Vine Manor Hotel is the only structure on the block. To the north of that, the newly completed Hollywood Freeway has lots of empty land around it. The only building that’s still with us is the one on the left with the central tower, which now houses the AMDA College and Conservatory of the Performing Arts.
Here’s some L.A. history in the making. After two years of construction as a Works Progress Administration project, the U.S.’s third planetarium, the Griffith Observatory on Mount Hollywood opened with a ceremony for 500 invited guests on May 14, 1935. It looks like the early birds in this photo nabbed the best seats.