Most examples of mimetic architecture are just big examples of what they sell: a lemonade stand in the shape of a lemon, a florist in the form of a flowerpot. But the Mother Goose Pantry, which stood at 1959 E. Colorado Blvd, Pasadena in the 1920s and ‘30s. It had two levels of dining – seating on the ground floor as well as an upstairs dining room. I don’t know what they cooked but this photo is circa late 1920s so I’m guessing it was what we now call ‘comfort food.’ The building itself lasted into the late 1940s/early 50s finishing out its life as a motorcycle shop.
Here’s a view from the other side:
Even its menu was shoe-shaped!
This is how that site looked in March 2019. At least it’s still serves food.
In this circa early 1940s photo, we’re looking north up Vista del Mar Ave in Hollywood, toward the Hollywoodland sign. On the left, we can see the Hollywood Tower apartment building. It’s in the National Register of Historic Places, so it’s still around. But what’s not still around is practically everything else in this photo. As far as I can make out, the photographer is standing where the Hollywood Freeway plowed through in the 1950s, bisecting Vista del Mar Ave into two short stretches of street between Franklin Ave and Yucca St. What a difference a 10-lane freeway makes!
In this color photo from 1944, we’re given a glimpse into wartime life at one of Los Angeles’s busy intersections – Wilshire Blvd and Fairfax Ave, where the popular May Company department store stood on the northeast corner, with its iconic gold-tiled cylinder. It is now the home of the Academy Museum. Across the street was the equally popular Simon’s Sandwiches drive-in restaurant. Next to it appears to be a green-and-white Art Deco building I’ve never noticed before, so now of course I’m on the hunt for a clearer photo of it!
For as long as I’ve lived in Los Angeles, the Angels Flight funicular railway on Hill Street in downtown Los Angeles has been sitting out there on its own. So it’s odd to see it hemmed in like this with office towers on one side and the Third Street Tunnel on the other. These days, you also have the option of walking down the stairs that parallel the track but I don’t see any here. Nor would I want to take then if I was hauling bagsful of shopping from the Central Market across the street. I’m also impressed with that 5-bulb “Winslow” electrolier street light at Angels Flight base station.
Here we have an aerial view of the Los Angeles Central Library, downtown L.A. (or as the neatly typed caption says an “Aeroplane view.”) Someone has written “New Library” which indicates this photo is from the mid to late 1920s because the building opened in 1926. Next door, is the Bible Institute (famous for its large “Jesus Saves” neon sign), which is no longer there, and behind it is the Biltmore Hotel (still there) and the Biltmore Theater (now the site of an office tower designed to blend in with the hotel.) From the surrounding view, we can see that downtown L.A. was still relatively low-rise. These days, of course, the Biltmore is lost in a jungle of skyscrapers.
This grand building is the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. The photographer was standing on the corner of 5th and Olive in 1943, when the world was fighting WWII. This was a time when Los Angeles was flooded with servicemen en route to and from the Pacific. The hotel overlooks Pershing Square, which was the center of L.A. at the time. The hotel made mini dormitories out of some of their hotel rooms so that servicemen on shore leave had a place to sleep. On the other side of those three domed windows on right was the Biltmore Coffee Shop, which at its wartime peak served 5,000 people per day. I sure hope those waitresses had comfy shoes.
I love finding vintage photos of movie theaters like this because it reminds us that movies starring Linda Darnell, Claudette Colbert, and Don Ameche didn’t always just play on rotation on TV. They were enough of an attraction to lure people into theaters and not just as part of the TCM Film Festival. The Apollo Theater was a 600-seat house at 5544 Hollywood Blvd, open from 1916 to 1976. This photo was taken in 1945 with a United Artists double bill, “The Great John L.” with “Guest Wife.” We tend not to associate movie-going with healthy food but next to the lobby was ‘Apollo Natural Foods’ which has me wondering what 1945’s version of natural foods might have been.
In this 1930 photo, we’re looking east along Wilshire Blvd to what was then the new Westwood Village development, which we can glimpse in the left-hand-side background. As we can see in the foreground, there is a lot of wide-open space, so I’m impressed that the city had already put up so many of those gorgeous dual-lamp electroliers to light the way.
The original caption of this 1931 photo of people walking toward the northwest corner of Fairfax and Drexel Avenues was the dual-lamp streetlight. But what really caught my eye was (a) the Richfield gas station regular gas for 8½ cents per gallon and ethyl for 11½, and (b) the billboard for Laura Scudder’s Mayflower potato chips. I associate Laura Scudder with peanut butter but evidently she pioneered the use of bags to keep chips fresher longer (initially using wax paper, which her workers would seal using an iron.) Also, that tall grass on the sidewalk could do with a weed whacker.