Here we have an early example of Hollywood already demolishing its history to make way for new history. In this shot, we’re looking at the demolition of one of Hollywood’s earliest studios. Christie’s had been around since the 1910s, located on the northwest corner of Sunset Blvd and Gower St in Hollywood. But the 1929 stock market crash and the Great Depression that forced the studio into receivership in 1933. In 1936, the CBS radio network bought the site and tore down the studios, which is what we’re seeing here, in order to make way for their West Coast radio studios, known as Columbia Square, which is where they relocated their flagship station, KNX.
Here is what the Christie studios looked like on May 7, 1927. (Note the Mission bell on the sidewalk. The Mission bell signifed the El Camino Real and were first set up in 1893. That bell now sits roughly a block away between the Chase bank and the old Motown/House of Blues building.)
And in this photo we’re seeing the groundbreaking ceremony for CBS’s KNX radio station which took place on April 27, 1937. The multi-million dollar facility opened on April 30, 1938 to great fanfare.
And this is how that corner looked in June 2022.
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.
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.)
