Even in the mid 1920s with no other cars on the road, Angeleno drivers can fall victim to road rage. One the left we have a circa 1924 Dodge roadster and on the right a circa 1923 Yellow Cab. I don’t know what the two of them were doing but they were sitting there long enough for someone to take their photo. Without a traffic light to tell them who’s got the right of way, it looks to me like they’re playing a game of “Get Out Of My Way No YOU Get Out of MY Way.”
***UPDATE*** – Mystery location solved: This was taken at the corner of Kramerwood Place and S. Canfield Ave in the Cheviot Hills area of LA. That yard in the background belongs to the then-new Hamilton High School.
I do love me a shadow-soaked, neon-drenched LA noir photo. This one is of the Maxwell House Coffee and Mayflower Doughnuts at Broadway and 8th, downtown Los Angeles in 1937. All that blazing electric light looks like a beacon to night owls and insomniacs…not to mention femme fatales plotting wicked revenge. By day, however, the place looks like any old regular diner—as always, in Hollywood, lighting is everything:
The Pantages Theater opened on 1930, as part of the Pantages Theatre Circuit, which was a vaudeville circuit. But as the Depression ground on, Alexander Pantages hedged his bets by alternating first-run movies with vaudeville acts. This photo is dated at 1930 so this is how the theater looked when it opened. The space on the corner was usually some sort of restaurant. In most of the photos I’ve seen, it was the Vallera Italian Kitchen restaurant but this photo shows that the first one in that location was the Effie Dean Café.
The caption on the bottom reads: Exterior at Hollywood Blvd. at Argyle Ave. Taken in 1930 – theatre is straight movie house now. Also home of the Academy performance anually –
Even though the idea of a Sunset Boulevard had been around
since 1887, and several isolated parts of it was built, work on the main artery
from downtown Los Angeles to Hollywood didn’t start until the spring of 1903. It
took a year and the spring of 1904 it was ready for traffic. To celebrate, an
LA Automobile Club sponsored parade of about six open-air vehicles were the
first to drive the boulevard. This photo is looking east from approximately
where Glendale Blvd crosses Sunset. Although why they’re driving along the sidewalk
is anybody’s guess.
This nighttime shot looking east down Hollywood Blvd was taken at Christmas 1946. The famous metal Christmas trees were different colors, which isn’t something you see in the black-and-white photos. It must have been such a pretty sight to see. This photo was taken from the Highland Ave corner—we can see the vertical neon sign for the Hollywood Theater, which is still there but now houses the Guinness World Records Museum.
Huntington Beach is a lovely ocean-side community just south of Long Beach but back in the 1930s it was dotted with oil wells pulling from the large reserves that lay underground. It can’t have been a very pretty landscape so it’s nice to see that someone decided to pretty things up by turning one of them into a Christmas tree. It kind of reminds me of the Wi-Fi towers we now see all over the place disguised as trees. I wonder if the decorations for this one came down after the 1939 holiday season was over. I found this gem on the always interesting 1939 Southern California blog
Looking at LA’s weather these days, you’d be excused for thinking that Southern California never sees snow. And it doesn’t anymore but up until the 1960s, LA got a snowstorm about once a decade. This photo was taken on February 7, 1948 and shows snow on the Cahuenga Pass that connects Hollywood with the San Fernando Valley. These days the pass is all freeway (the Hollywood 101) but back then, streetcars used to run down the middle of it. I pity that sole passenger waiting at the stop in the snow.
I guess that people from the northern and north-eastern
states must look at the metal Christmas trees with the painted-on snow that
used to dot Hollywood Boulevard during the holidays and think “What on heck…?”
But when you live in a place that never sees snow but makes movies like “White
Christmas” and “It’s a Wonderful Life” filled with the fake stuff, it doesn’t
seem so nutty.
We’re looking west down Hollywood Boulevard from Cherokee. This shot was taken at Christmastime 1958 so everybody was singing along with Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.” At the New View Theatre, “April Love” and “The Three Faces of Eve” are playing and across the street next to Musso and Frank is “Peyton Place.” I’m glad this shot was taken at night because we get to see how pretty those metal Christmas trees lit up. Wouldn’t it be nice if they were still around.
Sawtelle Veterans Home opened on Wilshire Blvd in 1887 on300 acres donated by a couple of senators. A year later, another 200 acres were added. As we can see, it was a lovely campus with lots of space and greenery to assist soldiers in their recovery from war. The place has morphed into different things over the years and is now known as the West Los Angeles VA Medical Center. All these buildings are gone now, except for one: the chapel, which is the building with the two towers near the upper left of this photo. It’s still there and still visible from Wilshire Blvd.
Even in the mid 1920s with no other cars on the road, Angeleno drivers can fall victim to road rage. One the left we have a circa 1924 Dodge roadster and on the right a circa 1923 Yellow Cab. I don’t know what the two of them were doing but they were sitting there long enough for someone to take their photo. Without a traffic light to tell them who’s got the right of way, it looks to me like they’re playing a game of “Get Out Of My Way No YOU Get Out of MY Way.”
I do love me a shadow-soaked, neon-drenched LA noir photo. This one is of the Maxwell House Coffee and Mayflower Doughnuts at Broadway and 8th, downtown Los Angeles in 1937. All that blazing electric light looks like a beacon to night owls and insomniacs…not to mention femme fatales plotting wicked revenge. By day, however, the place looks like any old regular diner—as always, in Hollywood, lighting is everything:
