A night shot of Berkel’s Music Store, 446 S. Broadway, downtown Los Angeles, July 1, 1914

A night shot of Berkel's Music Store, 446 S. Broadway, downtown Los Angeles, July 1, 1914I don’t know when George Berkel opened his music store at 446 S. Broadway in downtown LA, but this photo was taken on July 1, 1914. So George, quite sensibly, decided to feature his most popular product in the biggest, brightest sign. Pianolas were upright pianos that used a paper roll to play the keyboard automatically. Before the advent of record players, they were the most popular way of making music in your home. Who needs to mess around with all those tedious piano lessons when you can get the pianola to do it for you? The first few decades of the 20th century were the pianola’s peak years, so I’d think that being located on Broadway, Mr. Berkel did a roaring trade. He certainly made sure night-strollers knew where he was.

And when you ordered your piano, it would show up in Berkel’s delivery truck!

It appears that there’s no specific building at 446 Broadway, so this is roughly where Berkel’s used to be. The image is from February 2023.

 

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Night shot looking east along Hollywood Blvd from Highland Ave, past Hollywood Theatre, Hollywood, circa 1939

Night shot looking east along Hollywood Blvd from Highland Ave, past Hollywood Theatre, Hollywood, circa 1939We’re looking east along Hollywood Blvd from Highland Ave on what looks to be a dark and inky night. I love how the Hollywood Theatre is lit up like a beacon tempting moviegoers. They probably didn’t have to try very hard with an A-list double feature pairing “Love Affair” with “Three Musketeers.” Both those movies came out in the first half of 1939, so I’m calling this “circa 1939.”

This is roughly how that view looked in July 2024. Until recently, it was a Guinness World Records Museum, but I think that has now closed.

 

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Passengers riding the Thompson Switchback Gravity Railroad from the Arcadia Hotel into Santa Monica, California, circa 1887

Passengers riding the Thompson Switchback Gravity Railroad from the Arcadia Hotel into Santa Monica, California, circa 1887The building in the background of this circa 1887 photo was the Arcadia, a luxury-for-the-time oceanfront hotel in Santa Monica (open from 1886 to 1909) on Ocean Ave between Colorado Ave and what is now known as Pico Blvd. In the foreground we can see the “Thompson Switchback Gravity Railroad” which looks like an early version of a rollercoaster, but was how hotel guests were transported from the Southern Pacific railway station that was 500 feet from the hotel. As I understand it, using gravity to propel the carriages meant the railroad didn’t need to use coal. And it would have given guests a bit of a thrill, too.

See also this similar shot of the railway.

 

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Color photo looking east along Hollywood Blvd of a Red Car streetcar traveling west at around El Cerrito Place, Hollywood, circa mid 1950s

** UPDATE ** – This photo was taken on September 25, 1954, just before Red Car service ended there.

Color photo looking east along Hollywood Blvd of a Red Car streetcar traveling west at around El Cerrito Place, Hollywood, circa mid 1950sOh, how I enjoy a color photo of yesteryear Hollywood. And that goes double if it’s got a Pacific Electric Red Car punctuating the scene with vivid red. We’re photo looking east along Hollywood Blvd from around El Cerrito Place, where the street car is heading west. In particular, I love seeing the sign for the Gotham Deli, which had opened in 1923 and I believe closed sometime in the 1950s. I don’t have a date on this one, but I’m guessing from the cars that it’s circa mid 1950s.

This is roughly how that same view looked in July 2024. Not quite so interesting, is it?

 

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Open-air A&P grocery store on the southwest corner of Sunset Blvd and N. Fairfax Ave, Los Angeles, circa early 1940s

Open-air A&P grocery store on the southwest corner of Sunset Blvd and N. Fairfax Ave, Los Angeles, circa early 1940sHere’s something we don’t see much of anymore: the open-air grocery store. This A&P (a popular chain) stood at the southwest corner of Sunset Blvd and N. Fairfax Ave. With the summers in LA being so long and hot, I’m kind of surprised that these stores existed at all – didn’t the celery wilt and the tomatoes shrivel? But stores like this did have greater curb appeal, along with the Streamline Moderne decoration on the roof. This particular A&P shared space with a Thrifty drug store, which possibly made for convenient one-stop shopping. Apparently the newest car in this shot is a 1939 Pontiac, so let’s call it circa early 1940s.

Looking northwest from that corner in 1962:

This is how that corner looked in August 2022. The Rite Aid Pharmacy has zero curb appeal, but it continues the Thrifty tradition (Rite Aid acquired them in 1996.)

 

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Streetcars and automobiles and pedestrians jam the intersection of Broadway and 6th Street, downtown Los Angeles, June 1919

Streetcars and automobiles and pedestrians jam the intersection of Broadway and 6th Street, downtown Los Angeles, June 1919Here’s some gridlock I’m glad I wasn’t caught up in. A couple of Pacific Electric streetcars (the front one is heading to Glendale) block the intersection of Broadway and 6th, downtown Los Angeles. The motorist in the center of the photo looks like he’s about to hit the streetcar. Or maybe he’s trying to get out of the way of the second motorist, who is blocking the path of the third one, who has zipped in front of the streetcar. But is he now blocking it from moving forward? This photo is from June 1919, so I doubt there are any traffic signals to obey—or ignore, so I guess those pedestrians are crossing the street whenever it suits them. (Also note the Silverwood’s menswear store in the background.)

I don’t know exactly which intersection we’re looking at in the vintage photo, but here’s what that intersection looked like in June 2024.

 

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La Cienega Municipal Swimming Pool, 300 S. La Cienega Blvd, Beverly Hills, 1930

La Cienega Municipal Swimming Pool, 300 S. La Cienega Blvd, Beverly Hills, 1930And from the Why Can’t We Have Nice Buildings Like This Anymore file comes the La Cienega Municipal Swimming Pool. It stood at 300 S. La Cienega Blvd, in Beverly Hills. The photo was taken in 1930, when the trees were still being planted and you could nab a decent parking spot. I really love those three peaked arches and wish I could find a photo taken much closer; I bet the tiles around each arch was gorgeous in real life.

** UPDATE ** – Thanks to Gregory K’s sleuthing, we now have a close up of that tiling:

La Cienega Municipal Swimming Pool, 300 S. La Cienega Blvd, Beverly Hills, 1930

Here’s an interior shot:

Interior shot of the La Cienega Municipal Swimming Pool, 300 S. La Cienega Blvd, Beverly Hills

A busy day at the La Cienega Municipal Swimming Pool:

The facilities seem to have closed around 1976.

The building is no longer with us. This is what’s there now: the main building for the La Cienega Park and Community Center. This image is from August 2022.

In this satellite image was can see the large triangular piece of land the park sits on. In the bottom right corner we can see the building with the roof and the tower. In the 1930s, it housed the Beverly Hills Water Treatment Plant; these days it houses the library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. This image is from December 2023.

 

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The lights of theaters illuminate the night looking north up Broadway from near 6th Street, downtown Los Angeles, 1916

The lights of theaters illuminate the night looking north up Broadway from near 6th Street, downtown Los Angeles, 1916I do like an atmospheric shot with loads of lighting illuminating the night—and this is a doozie. We’re looking north up Broadway from near 6th Street. It’s probably just the slow aperture of the camera lens to let in as much light as possible, but it almost looks like every electric bulb and neon in downtown Los Angeles was switched on that night in 1916. In this stretch of Broadway alone we can see three theaters on the 500 block of Broadway: Pantages, Clune’s Broadway, and Quinn’s Superba. I can’t help but wonder if the Angelenos who went to see a show that night enjoyed themselves.

 

 

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Looking south from Sunset Blvd past Pandora’s Box down Crescent Heights Blvd, West Hollywood, circa early 1960s

Looking south from Sunset Blvd past Pandora’s Box down Crescent Heights Blvd, West Hollywood, circa early 1960sThis post follows on from yesterday’s post about Pandora’s Box. Gary Helsinger, frequent contributor to my Facebook page, posted this shot on Facebook and I thought I’d feature it today. We’re looking south from Sunset Blvd down Crescent Heights Blvd in West Hollywood. We can see more clearly here that Pandora’s Box coffeehouse/nightclub was on a triangular island (which was bigger than I imagined.) That white pavilion on the right with the dome housed the Garden of Allah Hotel model outside the Lytton’s Savings and Loan bank branch that Bart Lytton commissioned after buying and tearing down the hotel in 1959. Gary didn’t include a date for this photo so I’m guessing circa early 1960s.

** UPDATE ** – Alison Martino just told me that the photo was taken in 1966 by Ed Ruscha.

Jon P. says: “That triangular island was the flashpoint in the Sunset Strip Riots in November and December 1966. The problem was traffic flow. Back then you couldn’t go straight from Crescent Heights onto Laurel Canyon Blvd. You had to make a sharp dog-leg turn. That jammed up traffic at the intersection, so they demolished PB and shaved off the side of the triangle.

The underlying issue that caused the riots was a generational struggle between the Strip’s old guard (Silent Generation) and the young rock ‘n roll fans (Boomers) who crowded the sidewalks shoulder to shoulder and packed the boulevard’s music venues. The Old Guard won and the Sheriff’s Dept imposed a curfew on kids under 18, which was half the crowd. But it was the announcement in November ’66 that triggered the rioting. The riots had nothing to do with Civil Rights or the War, but were, as the Beastie Boys would say, about the right to par-tay!

The riots went on sporadically at night through late November and into December 1966. On the last night Pandora’s Box was open, Stephen Stills debuted on the stage his song about the riots, “For What It’s Worth,” with the memorable lyric, “There’s something happening here, but what it is ain’t exactly clear. There’s a man with a gun over there telling me I got to beware.”

 

This is roughly the same view in May 2024. The island is still there (now empty) and the site that used to be home to the Garden of Allah Hotel and later a mini mall is now a vacant plot of land that had been earmarked for a Frank Gehry mixed-use development which was suddenly cancelled.

 

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Color photo looking east along Sunset Blvd toward Pandora’s Box nightclub/coffee house at Laurel Canyon Blvd, West Hollywood, 1967

Color photo looking east along Sunset Blvd toward Pandora's Box nightclub_coffee house at Lauren Canyon Blvd, West Hollywood, 1967In this photo we’re looking east along Sunset Blvd toward Crescent Heights Blvd, which is the eastern end of the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood. It was taken in 1967, and that striped building was Pandora’s Box, a nightclub and coffeehouse in a triangle-shaped island, and had been ground zero for a late-1966 counter-culture protest known as “the hippie riots.” In the background we can partially see the sign for Schwab’s Pharmacy, as well as a red sign for a place called Steak’n’Stein, which was a later incarnation of Googie’s Coffee Shop. And on the left we can see part of the sign for the Lytton Center of the Visual Arts which, along with the bank, occupied the old Garden of Allah Hotel site.

Here is the exit door of Pandora’s Box. Those colors and the lettering are so 60s, aren’t they?

Exit from Pandora's Box nightclub at the corner of Sunset Blvd and Laurel Canyon Blvd, West Hollywood

This is a photo taken during “the hippie riots.” They were protesting perceived authoritarian overreach.

Protest at Pandora's Box nightclub late 1966

Here’s another shot taken outside outside the Lytton Savings and Loan building with the zigzag roof:

Rioting along Sunset Blvd outside the Lytton Savings and Loan

For more information on the protests, see the LA Public Library’s blog article on it.

After Pandora’s Box closed, it became the office for the Hollywood Realty Company.

The old Pandora's Box nightclub now the office for the Hollywood Realty Company, Sunset Blvd at Laurel Canyon Blvd, West Hollywood, circa late 1960s

This is how that view looked in May 2024:

 

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