In this one, we’re looking east down 4th Street from Hill St toward the U.S. Grant Hotel on the corner of Broadway in downtown Los Angeles. The photo was taken circa 1890, and as we can see the three modes of transport is the streetcar, horses, and human legs. The sounds (and smells) of this 4th Street would have been a world away from what you’d encounter if you walked down 4th today.
Here’s another view probably taken around the same time:
Along with the vintage image, I also found this one that had been colorized and enhanced by Richard Holoff who used AI in some way. It does a pretty good job of bringing this scene to life.
This is how that same view looked in February 2023.
This photo harkens back to the days when developers built theaters with soaring tower designed to catch the attention of moviegoers. They also added variety and verticality to an otherwise horizontally minded cityscape. This theater under construction is the Leimert at 3341 W. 43rd Place, Los Angeles, which puts it roughly halfway between downtown LA and Culver City. It opened on April 21, 1932, so this photo of it under construction — along with the obligatory pretty girl — was taken probably late-ish 1931.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we still had these local markets with fresh produce on display out front and a place to park your car right out front? Ivar Market (I love those red letters spaced along the overhang) was at the corner of Ivar Ave and Yucca St in Hollywood which puts it a block from Vine St and two blocks from Hollywood Blvd. Going by the car in this photo, the closest I can date this photo is circa 1940s.
This photo came to me spiderwebbed with a lot of ghostly lines so I’ve cleaned it up a bit so that we can more clearly see the appeal of this place. Le Roy’s Sandwich Stand stood at the corner of Crenshaw and Jefferson Blvds in the Crenshaw neighborhood of Los Angeles when this photo was taken in 1939. It looks like it was a perfect little drive-in place and I wish the photographer stood a little further back so that we could see the lit-up tower that reached into the night sky.
Long before Los Angeles became a city of automobiles, it was—like all cities—filled with horse-drawn wagons, carriages, and buggies. It’s the size of those wheels that surprise me. Some of them are nearly as tall as the men are. This line-up was on Spring St between 1st and 2nd Streets in what we now refer to as downtown Los Angeles, but back in 1878, when this photo was taken, it was simply “Los Angeles.”
Night shots like this one are taken with a slow shutter speed, so it makes the lights seem brighter than they actually were. Even so, it does make for a gloriously atmospheric shot, doesn’t it? We’re looking up Broadway past the Rialto Theatre at 812 S Broadway in downtown Los Angeles. At the time, a movie called “Today” starring Conrad Nagel was playing, which dates this photo at 1930. At the time, downtown LA was the center of city, and Broadway a golden thoroughfare of cinema palaces. The Rialto was one, and just past it was The Tower, where “The Jazz Singer” was first shown before its revolutionary New York premiere.
This image is a screen shot from a 1958 movie, “Anna Lucasta.” At one point, Eartha goes to Royal Room, which was a jazz joint that stood at the southwest corner of Hollywood Blvd and Las Palmas Ave. The image was sent to me by a regular commenter on this site, Martin Pal, after he and I talked about a remarkable photo of this place in Kathy Kikkert’s new photo-book, “
Here we have a bird’s-eye view of Hollywood High School. That main road running from left to right near the bottom of the picture is Sunset Blvd, crossing with Highland Ave at the bottom right corner. The school no longer looks like this. One site I found said it was rebuilt with funding from the Public Works Administration (PWA) between 1934 and 1935. From the look of the surrounding nice homes and apartment buildings and the baby palm trees lining the north side of Sunset, I’m guesstimating this photo to be circa late 1920s. (If you can help narrow that down for me, I’d love to hear from you.)
Let’s file this circa 1933 shot under “They Sure Don’t Make Gas Stations Like They Used To.” This was a Richfield Oil Station that used to stand at 1215 Westwood Blvd in the Westwood area of Los Angeles (near UCLA.) I love the clean lines and those triangular decorations. But I especially love that soaring tower. Yes, it made sure that everybody could see there was a Richfield gas station in the area, but it also added verticality to an otherwise fairly horizontal cityscape, so they get extra points in my book. (No “now” photo today because Google Maps made it hard to pinpoint where the Richfield station was.)