This view looking north up Vine St from Sunset Blvd, Hollywood on July 27, 1948 makes me want to go for an after-dinner stroll just so that I could take in all those lights in real life: NBC radio, the Brown Derby, the Hollywood-Broadway department store, Tom Breneman’s Hollywood restaurant. We can even see the sign for Benson Fong’s first restaurant – Ah Fong’s – which opened in 1946 ahead of a second location in Beverly Hills. On my stroll, I’d also spend a moment to enjoy that atmospheric street light and semaphore traffic signal. Anyone care to join me?
We’re looking north up Westwood Blvd to the Holmby Building on the northwest corner of Weyburn Ave in the Westwood section of Los Angeles. On the southwest corner is Desmond’s, which someone described to me as an upper middle class menswear store. Look at all those buildings, freshly painted gleaming white, so pristine and bathed in all the endless Californian sunshine. Goodness gracious, what a utopia must have felt like, especially to people who had moved to the crowded, cold cities back east.
There is no shortage of photos of the famous Hollywood and Vine intersection. Color photos are less plentiful, but you can still find them. But how many of them feature a gleaming white Jaguar XK-120 parked out front of the Broadway-Hollywood department store? My friend at the Petersen Automotive museum said the car falls somewhere between 1948 and 1954. The Capitol Records building opened in 1956, so I’m guesstimating this photo at circa mid-to-late 1950s. Whatever the actual year, I’m just jealous of the Jaguar owner because he found a parking spot so close to Hollywood and Vine.
I always enjoy seeing a photo of a Hollywood movie premiere, especially if it’s in color. This one was taken looking west along Hollywood Blvd from around Cahuenga Blvd. On October 21, 1961, Universal Studios held the premiere for their new movie, “Back Street” starring Susan Hayward and John Gavin at the Warner Bros. Theater. Those searchlights were powerful enough reach deep into the night sky – you wouldn’t want to accidentally stare into one!
Yesterday’s post featured an 
In the 1930s, even LA’s dogs and cats got a lovely Art Deco hospital to go to. Moxley’s dog and cat hospital at 940 N. Highland Ave, Hollywood, just south of Santa Monica Blvd. Dr. Moxley built this hospital in 1930 and he and his family lived in the apartment on the 2nd story. I do love the little touches on the exterior, such as the groups of three dots, the chevroning across the balcony, and if you look closely, you can see the bas-relief animals along the front of the building.
Given how relentlessly urban and gritty Hollywood Blvd is these days, it can be hard to conceive that an afternoon perambulation down the boulevard could ever have looked as genteel as this. The view in this 1909 photo is Hollywood Blvd looking west from Wilcox Ave. Get a load of all that full, lush greenery on both sides of the sidewalk, not to mention those kids dressed up in their Edwardian finery.
It takes some imagination to picture a building like this existing in downtown Los Angeles, but thankfully we have this Kodachrome photo taken on June 10, 1957 to remind us what the heart of LA looked like once upon a time. We’re looking south down 7th St from Flower St. That lovely building on the left was called 
As an Angeleno motorist who regularly drives through the Hollywood and Vine intersection, I’d love it if once—just once!—it was this empty. In this 1932 photo, we’re looking west down Hollywood Blvd past the CoCo Tree Cafe on the northwest corner of Vine St. As far as I can tell, the Richard Neutra-designed CoCo Tree Café had opened that year and would occupy the corner spot until 1940, when Melody Lane took over. The white circle hanging from the lamp post was how Hollywood Blvd was decorated during the Christmas season when it was transformed into “Santa Claus Lane.” Each circular decoration featured a different motion picture star.
Loew’s, the parent company of MGM, opened the Loew’s State Theatre on one of the most prime (i.e. most highly trafficked) intersections in America: where Broadway meets 7th Street in downtown Los Angeles. It opened in 1921, and this photo was taken across the street in 1922. The movie playing there at the time was a flapper comedy called “Gay and Devilish” but it’s the banner at the top — PAGEANT OF PROGRESS AND INDUSTRIAL EXHIBITION — that has me wondering what sort of new gadgets and inventions were on display.
