I love casual “slice-of-life” photos like these because someone thought to capture a moment of what was a regular old day in (circa) 1928. But to us in 2018 it shows us a bunch of things that are no longer around: Desmond’s Department Store, Schaber’s Cafeteria, and Ford Model A automobiles. We still have the Palace Theatre, though, so that’s something. (built 1911) But when look at this photo, what I’m really wondering is what those two people on the sidewalk were talking about.
Most photos of Venice Beach taken early in its life (the development opened in 1905) are kind of grainy, so a crisp shot like this one is a rare find. We can see Hotel St. Mark where Windward Avenue terminates at the boardwalk along the beach. By circa 1912, when this photo was taken, motorcars were making it easy to go to the beach for the day, so it’s good that Windward was so wide and could accommodate what would only become an ever-increasingly difficult fight for parking.
I’m sure the driver of this circa 1949 Oldsmobile didn’t get to park at the Main Gate entrance for very long. But given the whole parking-and-security gamut you have to go through these days, he sure was lucky. Especially as this photo was taken on Disneyland’s opening day on July 17, 1955.
This photo could just be an unremarkable shot of a booth at a restaurant (with a tablecloth that could do with a decent ironing) until you look at the light shade over the table and you see that it’s shaped like a derby hat and you realize this is a photograph taken inside the Brown Derby. How cute is that?
It looks like every available light was trained on the Los Angeles City Hall for this nighttime shot taken in 1929. The building had only opened the previous year and was a pretty big deal. From then until 1973, it was the tallest building in LA and a source of great civic pride. This view is looking northeast from Bunker Hill (back when there was an actual hill to stand on!) I have a Facebook album of photos I recently took inside the LACH – no wonder they were proud of it! http://bit.ly/LACityHall-AUG2017
There’s always something vaguely forbidding and foreboding about nighttime photos taken on the streets of Hollywood. Maybe it’s all those film noir movies on TCM. But this circa 1960 photo is a case in point. We’re looking south from the top of the Vine Street hill, past the Capital Records building toward Hollywood Boulevard and beyond. There are a lot of bright lights illuminating Vine Street, but outside of that, there are a lot of inky shadows…
If the walls of this place could talk, they’d tell us 10,000 stories—literally! This is the Ladies wardrobe department at MGM Studios, Culver City. It was three stories tall, which isn’t surprising because by the 1960s, it had around 300,000 costumes in storage, and that’s not counting the ones it had discarded over time. I can only imagine the complex system they had in place to keep a track of all these items!
This photo of the Dolores Drive-in near the northwest corner of Wilshire Blvd and La Cienega Blvd shows us LA’s drive-in restaurant culture as it was reaching its zenith. I would have loved the chance to wolf down a cheeseburger, slurp a chocolate thick shake, and shove a handful of Suzie Q fries while sitting in one of those roomy gas guzzlers we can see here!
Technically, Dolores was at 8531 Wilshire, which put it on the corner of Le Doux Road. But it looks like there was a Richfield gas station right next door – how convenient!
As with so many of the great cinema palaces of the 1930s, the opening of the Fox Wilshire Theater at 8440 Wilshire Boulevard was a big deal, with the obligatory Hollywood searchlights raking the night sky and crowds of movie fans out front. This movie house was a flagship in the Fox chain, so this was an especially big night on September 19th, 1930. The film chosen to christen the place was “Animal Crackers” starring the Marx Brothers, who were fresh off the success of their previous film, “The Cocoanuts.” (1929) The theater is still around and is now known as called the Saban.
Check out the stunning Art Deco interior!
A daytime shot taken in 1933:
Construction of the Fox Wilshire Theatre, Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, May 8, 1930:
This photo shows us the signs for the haberdasher and hairdresser inside Sunset House, which was the Hollywood Reporter Building at 6715 Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles. I wish I’d found this photo 10 years ago—one of my novels protagonists works at the Hollywood Reporter and I may have set a scene or two at the in-house salons. How terribly convenient it must have been for publisher Billy Wilkerson to have a haberdasher and a hairdresser in the same building! The building is still around and might possibly soon attain Historical Cultural Monument status.
This photo wsa taken much later:
How it currently looks after a stint as the headquarters for LA Weekly:
I love casual “slice-of-life” photos like these because someone thought to capture a moment of what was a regular old day in (circa) 1928. But to us in 2018 it shows us a bunch of things that are no longer around: Desmond’s Department Store, Schaber’s Cafeteria, and Ford Model A automobiles. We still have the Palace Theatre, though, so that’s something. (built 1911) But when look at this photo, what I’m really wondering is what those two people on the sidewalk were talking about.
Most photos of Venice Beach taken early in its life (the development opened in 1905) are kind of grainy, so a crisp shot like this one is a rare find. We can see Hotel St. Mark where Windward Avenue terminates at the boardwalk along the beach. By circa 1912, when this photo was taken, motorcars were making it easy to go to the beach for the day, so it’s good that Windward was so wide and could accommodate what would only become an ever-increasingly difficult fight for parking.
I’m sure the driver of this circa 1949 Oldsmobile didn’t get to park at the Main Gate entrance for very long. But given the whole parking-and-security gamut you have to go through these days, he sure was lucky. Especially as this photo was taken on Disneyland’s opening day on July 17, 1955.
This photo could just be an unremarkable shot of a booth at a restaurant (with a tablecloth that could do with a decent ironing) until you look at the light shade over the table and you see that it’s shaped like a derby hat and you realize this is a photograph taken inside the Brown Derby. How cute is that?
It looks like every available light was trained on the Los Angeles City Hall for this nighttime shot taken in 1929. The building had only opened the previous year and was a pretty big deal. From then until 1973, it was the tallest building in LA and a source of great civic pride. This view is looking northeast from Bunker Hill (back when there was an actual hill to stand on!) I have a Facebook album of photos I recently took inside the LACH – no wonder they were proud of it! 
There’s always something vaguely forbidding and foreboding about nighttime photos taken on the streets of Hollywood. Maybe it’s all those film noir movies on TCM. But this circa 1960 photo is a case in point. We’re looking south from the top of the Vine Street hill, past the Capital Records building toward Hollywood Boulevard and beyond. There are a lot of bright lights illuminating Vine Street, but outside of that, there are a lot of inky shadows…
If the walls of this place could talk, they’d tell us 10,000 stories—literally! This is the Ladies wardrobe department at MGM Studios, Culver City. It was three stories tall, which isn’t surprising because by the 1960s, it had around 300,000 costumes in storage, and that’s not counting the ones it had discarded over time. I can only imagine the complex system they had in place to keep a track of all these items!
This photo of the Dolores Drive-in near the northwest corner of Wilshire Blvd and La Cienega Blvd shows us LA’s drive-in restaurant culture as it was reaching its zenith. I would have loved the chance to wolf down a cheeseburger, slurp a chocolate thick shake, and shove a handful of Suzie Q fries while sitting in one of those roomy gas guzzlers we can see here!
As with so many of the great cinema palaces of the 1930s, the opening of the Fox Wilshire Theater at 8440 Wilshire Boulevard was a big deal, with the obligatory Hollywood searchlights raking the night sky and crowds of movie fans out front. This movie house was a flagship in the Fox chain, so this was an especially big night on September 19th, 1930. The film chosen to christen the place was “Animal Crackers” starring the Marx Brothers, who were fresh off the success of their previous film, “The Cocoanuts.” (1929) The theater is still around and is now known as called the Saban.
Check out the stunning Art Deco interior!
This photo shows us the signs for the haberdasher and hairdresser inside Sunset House, which was the Hollywood Reporter Building at 6715 Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles. I wish I’d found this photo 10 years ago—one of my novels protagonists works at the Hollywood Reporter and I may have set a scene or two at the in-house salons. How terribly convenient it must have been for publisher Billy Wilkerson to have a haberdasher and a hairdresser in the same building! The building is still around and might possibly soon attain Historical Cultural Monument status.
