In the mid 1920s, the city of Beverly Hills decided it needed a water treatment plant. But instead of building a utilitarian monolith, what did Beverly Hills do? They built something that resembled a monumental Spanish Romanesque style church with a soaring Moorish bell tower that housed the water purification spraying system. The facility opened in 1927 (this photo is from 1931) and was affectionately called the “Public Water Cathedral.” It came under threat of demolition in the 1980s but was instead adapted in 1991 by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as a library and film archive. Today it is known as the Fairbanks Center for Motion Picture Study. So the lesson is: If you’re going to build a water treatment plant, make it classy people.
In 1927:
A close up of the main entrance (1928):
And how it looks in 2019:
Hollywood has never been known for its subtly, as evidenced by this 1920s store. People passing by the Hollywood Flower Pot florist at 1124 N. Vine Street (southeast corner of Banner Ave) would never have been confused by what was for sale.
I can’t imagine a Sunday drive down Atlantic Ave in Long Beach would have been a particularly pleasant way to spend an afternoon in 1948, when this photo was taken. The closest I’ve been to an oil well is watching James Dean strike it big in “Giant” (1956) but I imagine there would be some clunking metal-on-metal noise and the heavy stink of crude oil that rolling up your windows wouldn’t keep out. And the most pleasant things to look at would have been those billboards.
Most of us (avid golden-era Hollywood film fans) know the front façade of David O. Selznick’s studio from the logo that appeared at the start of a Selznick International Picture. Judging from the car parked out front, this photo appeared it be taken around 1940. Selznick leased this studio from RKO between 1935 and 1946, so this is where he shot: A Star is Born (1937), Gone with the Wind (1939), Rebecca (1940), Since You Went Away (1944), Duel in the Sun. (1946) After a stint being owned by Howard Hughes, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz’s Desilu Productions, purchased the studio lot in 1956 and television soon became the primary business. These days, this studio is called The Culver Studios and its main lessee is Amazon Studios.
These days the intersection of Melrose Ave and Normandie Ave is dominated by two gas stations, a liquor store and the nearby on-ramp to the Hollywood Freeway. But it was an entirely different scene in 1906 where there were just a couple of houses, a sprinkling of trees and clear view north to Mt. Lee where the Hollywood sign now stands.
This photo captures a slice of California history—dubious though it may be. In 1954 in San Bernardino, Maurice and Richard McDonald, the founders of McDonald’s, pose in front of their temporary sign (see how it’s weighed down with sand bags) advertising their coming attraction: America’s first drive-in hamburger bar. By this stage, they had been in business for six years and when this photo was taken, had no idea how ubiquitous their name would become. This is the year that Ray Kroc came to see their operation for himself and the rest is fast food history.
They certainly don’t make hotel lobbies like this anymore. This is the lobby of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills in 1929. When this photo was taken, the place had only been open a year (it was built on the site of the former Beverly Hills Speedway, a 1.25-mile wooden board track for automobile racing) so this gives us a good idea of the sumptuousness of the place. Look at the detail in the ceiling and at the tops of the columns. This would have been considered the height of late 1920s elegance.
In this shot from 1925, the photographer was probably standing just south of where Charleville Blvd crosses South Beverly Drive and is looking north toward Wilshire Blvd. Amid that clump of buildings on Wilshire, we can see the distinctive onion-dome of the Beverly Theatre, which would have only just opened. (May 18, 1925.) Interestingly, what we’re seeing is the beginnings of development along Beverly Dr. – they’ve started to pave it and street lights have been erected in anticipation of all those stores that would eventually fill in the entire block.
I had never heard of Beverly Hills Heights before I came across this 1926 photo. I assume it’s a publicity photo because they’ve got the mandatory pretty girl in it. (She is identified as “actress Dorothy Dunbar” who I had to look up on IMDB. Turns out she only did nine movies, none of which I’d never heard of, but she did play Lady Greystroke in 1927’s “Tarzan and the Golden Lion” which also featured a pre-Frankenstein Boris Karloff.) I had trouble finding where Beverly Hills Heights was but it appeared to be south of Wilshire Blvd, which is ironic considering the land there is quite flat. You’d think it’d be up in the famed hills of Beverly.
In this circa 1902 photo, we’re seeing a man parked on Spring Street in downtown Los Angeles at 8th Street. He’s sitting in a car called a Waverley Electromobile. I found it amazing that we’ve had electric cars all this time but went with the air-polluting gas-guzzlers—and look what that’s led to. In fact, according to my friend at the Petersen Automotive Museum, there were more electric cars on the road when this photo was taken than there were gasoline-powered vehicles. And typically these vehicles rode around on solid rubber tires because they shared the roads with horses and so horseshoe nails littered the streets, causing punctures to pneumatic tires. I’m also guessing it would have been a bumpy ride!