This unremarkable café with the forgettable name holds a unique place in Hollywood history: it was the first restaurant in Hollywood. According to one source I read, it started with a guy (John, I assume) serving hot dogs to the commuters en route to Universal Studios. In 1916 it opened at 6750 Hollywood Blvd as John’s Chop House. Then, in 1919 he moved two doors along to 6754 and reopened as John’s Restaurant. Two years later, he was on the move again, now at 6382 Hollywood Blvd as John’s Café, which is what we can see in this photo. (In case you’re wondering, the longest-running still-open restaurant in Hollywood as Musso & Frank Grill opened in 1919.) My thanks to Al Donnelly for piecing together John’s Café’s history. One of the sources for this info came an interesting website of miniature recreations of places in yesteryear Hollywood. It’s worth your time checking out: Ghosts of Hollywood.
The Wilcox building which housed John’s Café came down in the late 1930s. This is what 6382 Hollywood Blvd looked like in August 2022.
One Los Angeles driver had a bad day on May 5, 1948, when their car plowed into a streetlight out front of the Westlake Drug Store at 600 S. Alvarado St on the corner of 6th Street. This intersection is the northeast corner of MacArthur Park, which was once known as Westlake Park, hence the name of the drug store. What I find most interesting about this photo (other than the semaphore traffic light appears to be unscathed) is that it allows us to see how big the tops of those streetlights were. It’s almost a tall as the cop!
Here’s a long-gone scene we don’t see anymore. A horse-drawn carriage awaits the Red Car at the Hotel Redondo in Redondo Beach, which is about half a dozen beaches south of the more famous Santa Monica. That streetcar line was an important way to transport Angelinos from Los Angeles (what we now call “downtown LA”) out to Redondo for a seaside vacation. But they needed to get their traveling trunks and hat boxes from the Red Car to the hotel, hence the horses. I have no date on this photo, but I’m guessing it was taken circa turn of the century?
Union Station on the edge of downtown Los Angeles is one of my favorite buildings in LA, so I’m always happy to come across a hitherto unseen (by me, at least) photo of what remains to this day a prime example of pre-WWII railway architecture. The person who sent it to me said that those cars are early 1940s, so this shot would have been taken not too long after the station opened with great fanfare on May 3, 1939.
The building housing the Vista Tea Room by the Santa Monica pier looks to be very interesting. It has cute, decorative balconies, so I’d say the upper floors were a hotel. I love the sign opposite: Over The Waves Lunch (
When CBS Radio opened their new Columbia Square studios at 6121 Sunset Blvd on April 30, 1938, they invited as many as would fit into their forecourt. Or maybe that crowd was just the public hoping to glimpse a celebrity or get a balloon. I gave a photo of the 
In this color photo (probably a postcard) we’re looking north up Vine St toward the Hollywood and Vine intersection. The Capitol Records building is open, which means it was taken after 1956. We can also see scaffolding on the northeast corner; it looks like 
These days, the people who live near the Hollywood sign actively discourage tourists walking through the Hollywood Hills trying to get to the sign. They have people traipsing up and down their streets all day long trying to find the perfect angle for the perfect selfie, so I don’t blame them. These three women had no such concerns as they were hiking up the bare canyons toward the sign that back then still read “Hollywoodland.” The caption for this photo dates this as circa 1938.
From the “They Sure Don’t Build Office Buildings Like That Anymore” file come this shot of the gorgeous building that housed the Los Angeles First National Trust and Savings Bank. It stood at the corner of Lake Ave and Colorado Blvd in Pasadena. This photo is circa 1928. And while it may not have been a big building, it’s loaded with charm. Just look at that band of detailing that enveloped the building above the arches. But also note the network of electric lines for the streetcars. I wish LA still had streetcars, but these lines made for an unattractive cityscape.
Yesterday’s photo of snowfall in Van Nuys prompted Joel Sanoff to post this photo in the thread. It’s so great that I thought I’d feature it today. These two gas station workers are shoveling snow on the corner of Ventura Blvd and Topanga Canyon Blvd in the Woodland Hills area of the San Fernando Valley. This photo was taken in January 1949, back when I bet those two guys would clean your windshield and check your oil while they pumped your gas.