This color photo was taken in 1958, when Western Federal Savings were moving into the office building of the southeast corner of 6th and Hill Streets in downtown Los Angeles. The workers with window offices would have looked out on Pershing Square, which was behind the photographer. That sign for the Cunard Line makes me wonder if their offices were in the same building. (Aside from that mint-green Plymouth on the far right) what really sticks out in this photo is that woman in pink. She sure knew how to stand out in a crowd.
** UPDATE ** – Leonard W on my Facebook page sent me this advertisement, which confirms that Cunard did, indeed, have offices in that building. It’s from the Los Angeles Times, dated April 9, 1958, showing their offices were at 606 S. Hill Street.
This is how that corner looked in February 2023.
I wouldn’t say no to living in a Los Angeles that still has Currie’s Ice Cream parlors dotting the landscape. From what I hear, their ice cream was very good. Especially their famous 10-cent “Mile High Cones” which they advertised by placing a huge sign on top of their stores. This one (the photo was taken in 1942) looks like it’s taller than the building! This particular one stood at 12101 Ventura Blvd, Studio City, which places it on the northwest corner of Ventura Blvd and Laurel Canyon Blvd.
Back on January 27, I posted a 
This is a mid-60s shot of Los Angeles if ever there was one. We’re looking east along Sunset Blvd from Cahuenga Blvd, past a Texaco gas station toward the Cinerama Dome. The Dome opened November 1963 (with the premiere of with “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.”) and this shot was taken in some time in 1965, so Angelenos were probably still getting used to the novel sight of a dome-shaped movie house in the midst.
This is the sort of photo I want to jump into as we look up Westwood Blvd from Bullock’s department store in Westwood Village, which is near UCLA. That tower is the 110-foot Holmby Hall tower and stands on the corner of Weyburn Ave. This photo was taken on July 9, 1941, so six months later, the people we can see in this image were living in a country at war. But on that day, they were at peace, and what a genteel tranquility it looked to be.
I do enjoy seeing a prime Googie-style Los Angeles diner, and this one certainly is that. In 1958, the Wich Stand drive-in/restaurant opened at 4508 W. Slauson Ave in the Windsor Hills area of Los Angeles, around halfway between downtown LA and LA International Airport. I don’t know how tall that spike is (20 feet?) but I’m sure it was an instant local landmark, especially at night when it lit up. According to wichstand.com, the place was a the-boys-meet-the-girls “hot rodders’ paradise” which doesn’t surprise me in the least.
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: 
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.