It’s not often that a mid-1950s Hollywood view doesn’t look a whole lot different to an early 2020s view, but this one does. We’re looking south down Vine Street from the corner of Yucca. The Capital Records building opened in 1954 so it was a still an unusual and photo-worthy sight (and still is.) The Vine Manor Hotel on the left is gone, but the Equitable Building on the northeast corner of Hollywood and Vine is still with us, as is the Broadway Hollywood building on the southwest corner. South of Hollywood Boulevard, the cityscape really begins to change but at around Yucca street, you can still what Hollywood used to look like.
The Largest Mailbox in the World, South Los Angeles, 1917
I’d love to know the reason behind someone building the largest mailbox in the world. Especially in 1917 Los Angeles, when there really weren’t very many people around, as we can see by the vast stretches of open land in the background. The most likely explanation is that it really wasn’t a mail box at all but a publicity gimmick for a new development South Los Angeles, which is directly south of downtown L.A. I have to wonder, though, if any numbskull actually bothered to climb those stairs to post his letter…and if it actually got delivered.
Advertisement from the Los Angeles Evening Herald, August 24, 1916:
The Piggly Wiggly at 7912 Santa Monica Blvd, Los Angeles, 1934
I was quite surprised when I saw this 1934 photo of a Piggly Wiggly market in West Hollywood. I’ve always associated Piggly Wigglys with the South and had no idea that they were in Southern California. So imagine my surprise when I looked in the Los Angeles City Directory of 1933 to find there were nearly fifty of them! Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised – the sign does say “All Over The World.” This one stood at 7912 Santa Monica Boulevard. Not only that, but the building is still there and pretty much intact. I call that an L.A. miracle.
From the Los Angeles City Directory of 1933:
Andie says: “There was a Piggly Wiggly on Vanowen St. in Canoga Park in the late ’60s and I shopped there because they carried some canned goods from southern producers that I couldn’t find anywhere else in the area. In about 1971 the SoCal stores were bought by AlphaBeta and the stock changed so I no longer shopped there. Sad. Our house was on Owensmouth Ave and a block and a half from the Ralph’s market on the corner of Sherman Way and Winnetka so I had to go out of my way to shop at Piggly Wiggly and I think it was just over the border in Reseda, instead of Canoga Park.”
The same building in 2019:
Birdseye view of Pershing Square looking southeast from the corner of 5th Street and Olive Street, Los Angeles, circa 1926
This photo gives us a bird’s-eye view of Pershing Square in 1926, back when it was a leafy green space giving Angelenos respite from the relentless Californian summer sun and the unremitting hustle and bustle of downtown Los Angeles. Back then, downtown was the epicenter of L.A. and the sidewalks and roads thrummed with activity all day long. Downtown L.A. needed more parking spaces and to put it under Pershing Square made a certain amount of sense, but what a shame that in the process we lost an oasis of calm and tranquility.
Out of curiosity, I tried one of those automatic coloring sites to see what this view might have looked for the person who took this photo. These sites don’t always do a good job (in fact, they rarely do) but I was quite impressed with this one:
The Cream Can dairy café, Los Angeles, California, 1928
I couldn’t find out where the Cream Can was located other than it was somewhere in Los Angeles. This photo was taken in 1928, when L.A. was still fairly sparsely populated, so it’s fairly likely that this miraculous building really stood out. From what I can see, it served all things dairy: ice cream, buttermilk, cottage cheese, milkshakes. I have another photo (see below) that shows a sign that it also sold orange juice and root beer. I don’t know that a dish of cottage cheese goes well with root beer, but it case that was your thing, the Cream Can was the joint for you.
Looking west from City Hall showing Hill Street between 2nd & 3rd Streets, downtown Los Angeles, 1900
It’s not often we get an elevated view of downtown L.A. at the turn of the century, so this shot from 1900 is a rare chance to see what the city looked like. We’re looking at Hill St between 2nd and 3rd Streets as seen from City Hall. These days this block is filled with high-rise housing, but back then it was a jumble of houses gouged out of the hilly terrain that has long since been flattened out. They’re mostly two-story houses, some on fairly big lots, so it looks like a fairly affluent area, which means they’d also have had a carriage house for the horses and carriage, and room for the guy who looked after them.
The Tony Duquette-designed showroom at Adrian’s salon, 233 North Beverly Dr., Beverly Hills, circa 1940s
When MGM’s lead costume designer, Adrian (last name: Greenberg) left the studio in 1941, he opened his own salon. Smartly, he chose to relocate to Beverly Hills and took over the building that had formally housed the Victor Hugo restaurant at 233 North Beverly Drive, which had been an upscale eatery, very popular with the Hollywood set. When he asked artist Tony Duquette to design his showroom, he told Duquette to come up with whatever he wanted. This photo shows the result. I can’t decide if it’s fabulous or over the top. What do you think?
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Tagged Automobile Showroom, Beverly Hills, MGM, Stores and Shopping
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The first Los Angeles Times Building at Broadway and First Street, downtown Los Angeles, 1886
This is one of the earliest photos I’ve ever posted. It shows us the Los Angeles Times building at Broadway and First Street, downtown Los Angeles before it gained its iconic tower, and before the whole thing got destroyed by a bomb in 1910 (which, I imagine, kinda put an end to the building’s nickname: The Fortress.”) But back in 1886, which this shot was taken, it housed what would have back then have been a modest paper for a modest town. I doubt that any of the Angelenos captured in this photo would ever have guessed that their home town would become the behemoth it is today.
The rebuilt LA Times building in 1926, now with its tower.
Orchestra playing the Hollywood Bowl in 1927
I couldn’t find much information on this night shot of an orchestra playing on the stage of the Hollywood Bowl. But what I do know is that we’re looking at the second incarnation of the bowl. The first version wasn’t successful, aesthetically or acoustically, and only lasted one year. In 1927, Lloyd Wright (son of Frank Lloyd Wright) designed a new pyramidal-shaped bowl and that’s the one we’re seeing in this photo. Visually, it’s quite arresting and apparently it was the most acoustically successful of the bowls—perhaps because of that enormous flattened dome suspended above the musicians. But it was considered a little too avant-garde and was replaced two years later by the famed concentric circles.
The 3,800-foot-long Rainbow Pier in Long Beach, California
The aptly named Rainbow Pier in Long Beach, California was actually a breakwater. Opening in 1931, the pier extended a quarter of a mile into the Pacific and was so wide with that vehicles could drive along it. For more than thirty years it gave the Sunday drivers of Long Beach a lovely day’s outing. Contained within it was the 40-acre Rainbow Lagoon that protected swimmers and sailors from the choppy ocean. By the mid-60s though it wasn’t in great shape and huge land reclamation project that gave Long Beach a convention center and Aquarium of the Pacific spelled its doom.
Driving on the Rainbow Pier, Long Beach, California, 1940
