I was yesterday years old when I learned of The Choo Choo diner. Rosanne S. sent me this photo, asking if I had ever come across it, which I hadn’t. I’m guessing those waitresses took your order and it would arrive via the model train that chugged along the inner perimeter of the counter? It’s a cute idea, but I’m wondering how the train knew whose seat to stop in front of. Or were you expected to grab your plate as it rolled past? The Choo Choo was at 6324 Van Nuys Blvd, Van Nuys in the San Fernando Valley. I don’t know when it opened, but it closed in 1962. If this photo is anything to go by, it was a popular place for kids parties, so now I’m imagining the din of excited children. I doubt this was the spot was your best choice if you wanted to go somewhere for a quiet coffee and donut.
Mary Ann VS says: “I went there as a kid! I grew up in The Valley. You ordered and that train magically stopped right in front of you! Wonderful and delightful!!!”
Leonard W. says: “It opened some time in 1954.”
Don G says: “From my small child memory, there was a raised platform, probably from where this photo was taken, where the manager or whatever he was (my dad called him the “engineer”) sat with his hand on the transformer which controlled the trains. After you took your seat on a stool at the counter, he would send a train with an order card and pencil on one of the train’s flatcars which you would fill out to place your order. He would then send the train on to the order taker at the kitchen counter. When your order was ready, it was put onto an open flatcar and the “engineer” would send the train to stop so the flatcar with your order was exactly in front of you. It was so fun they could have served you cat food on a hard roll and it would still have been a great experience. I wouldn’t call it a place where you could enjoy a quiet cup of coffee. Whenever we went it was packed with kids with the accompanying din. It was so fun. Certainly not without technical flaws. There were many times I saw French fries fall off the flatcar onto the tracks and derail the train, or at least make a mess. I wouldn’t have wanted to work there to have to clean off the debris and grease from the trains and tracks at the end of each day. But it was a brilliantly fun idea and brought those of us who loved trains and burgers a lot of childhood joy and some unforgettable memories.”
Like most downtown areas of large cities, downtown LA is a jungle of high rises, offices, stores, and parking lots. It’s nice to be reminded every now and then of how it used to be, and this photo gives us a taste of that. We’re seeing a home built by successful brick maker, Reuben G. Simons, which stood at 2433 S. Flower St, a few blocks south of Washington Blvd. This photo is dated 1910, by which time he had sold the place to lawyer Wiltcie B. Ames, who appears to have been early adopter of the automobile. (The Automobile Club of Southern California was founded in 1900.) But look at the texture of this home: the arches, those small indented windows, the way the corner of the front room curves toward the ground. It’s really something, if you ask me.
This photo looking north up Broadway from 5th St shows that circa 1908 downtown LA was a lively and bustling place—and also a bit dangerous. Ducking around the streetcars are those new-fangled horseless carriages on roads with neither lanes nor traffic signals. Also, those sidewalks look like they’re packed shoulder to shoulder. Underneath the streetlight that appears to have seven lamps is a mother with a young child and a baby carriage. I hope they all made it safely to the other side of Broadway!
I know modern-day apartment buildings are probably more efficient and everything works better, but they can’t hold a candle to the atmosphere to the apartment buildings of yesteryear. This are the Los Altos apartments which stand on the northeast corner of Wilshire Blvd and S. Bronson Ave, which puts it near the Wilshire Country Club. Look at those windows on the corner and those south-facing Juliet balconies. The Los Altos opened in 1925 and so was only a year old when this photo was taken. In fact, it was so new that as we can see, Bronson Ave was being paved.
The exterior set for Tara, the mansion from “Gone With The Wind,” was built in 1938 (principal photography began on January 29, 1939) and yet it was still standing 20 years later, when this aerial photo (I assume that dark thing on the left was part of the aircraft) was taken during the summer of 1958. David O. Selznick owned the backlot known as “Forty Acres” from 1935 to 1957, after which it became part of the Desilu empire. (Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball would own it for another 10 years.) As we can see, Tara was in a fairly sad state of weathered disrepair by 1958. It was disassembled and removed in 1959, and a few years later that spot became Stalag 13 in the TV show, “Hogan’s Heroes.”
In this atmospheric circa 1940s image, we’re looking northeast across Wilshire Blvd toward the Beverly-Wilshire Art Galleries, which was at 8813 Wilshire Blvd in Beverly Hills. Unlike the building next door, the gallery made sure that all the lights were on so that people could see what they’ve got for sale. Near the far right, we can see the neon lights of a drive-in restaurant on the northeast corner of Wilshire and Robertson Blvds. In the 1930s, it was called McDonnell’s, but now it looks like it was called Webb’s. However, I can’t find any trace of a Webb’s drive-in online. Does anyone remember it? (BTW, this image is a screenshot of a remastered video taken while driving around LA in the 1940s. It has been colorized with sound added and gives us a pretty good idea of what it was like to cruise around LA back then! You can see it 
Once upon a time, there was a hallowed and legendary hotel known as the 
During Hollywood’s heyday, the movie studios had large ranches in the San Fernando Valley, where land was still cheap. It gave them lots of room to create expansive backlot sets. In this aerial shot, we’re looking at RKO’s ranch in Encino. (For the record the ranch was located approximately between Louise Ave on the west, Balboa Blvd on the east, Burbank Blvd on the south, and Oxnard St on the north.) On this property their Western street intersected with New York street (It’s all about where you point the camera!) The building on the right with the three pointed arches was Notre Dame in “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.” (1939) This is also where Frank Capra built 4 acres of sets for “It’s A Wonderful Life.” I don’t have a date on this photo but I’ve see other photos from the early 1950s that looked similar to this one.
Starting in the 1930s, the windmill-topped Van de Kamp bakeries were a common and welcome sight for hungry Angelenos in search of delicious baked goods. (And let’s face it, who isn’t?) But I suspect this one at San Fernando Rd and Fletcher Dr. in Glendale was the very first one they built because that long, pale building behind it was the company’s headquarters (built in 1930.) So I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to suppose that they would build their first windmill café next to their factory. This photo is dated 1936, proving traffic jams existed back then, too!
