Yesterday’s photo of Hamburger’s department store sent me down an Elks fraternity rabbit hole, which took me to this photo. It was taken the same year – 1909 – which was when Elks Lodge No. 99 opened its new headquarters (aka “temple”) pictured here on Olive St next to Angels Flight funicular in downtown LA. The Elks convention ran from July 11th through 17th, and this building had opened in May of that year, replacing the Crocker mansion, which was one of the most prominent and well-known 19th century homes in LA. The convention attracted thousands of Elks and their families. One report I came across said that Angels Flight handled 60,000 passengers that week. Each car only holds 20 passengers, so the line must have been very long all week. (Source: Water & Power Assoc)
I was recently sent this photo asking if I could confirm it was Hamburger’s department store at 801 S. Broadway in downtown Los Angeles in 1909. Using Google image search and TinEye, I could find it posted nowhere else. Hamburger’s at Broadway and 8th St didn’t have seven towers on its roof. (It did, however, have the first escalator west of the Mississippi River!) That tower in the foreground has the letters “BPOE” which are the initials for the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, as well as the BPOE logo. Fraternal conventions were a very big deal back then, so maybe those seven towers were put up temporarily because there was an Elks convention in town. Whatever its origin story, it’s a very striking image.
There are certain iconic LA buildings that I never get sick of seeing: Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, Hollywood sign, Richfield building, Garden of Allah Hotel. On that list is also the Los Angeles City Hall because it’s a landmark that proudly states “THIS IS LA!” This color shot is from 1954, by which time television viewers across the country (and world!) knew it as the Daily Planet building from “Adventures of Superman.” The caption for this photo said it was taken from Union Station, but I don’t recognize those pylons in the foreground so I suspect it may have been taken on the Los Angeles St bridge that crosses the Hollywood Freeway.
We’re looking north up Broadway in downtown Los Angeles from 7th Street. According to the caption for this photo, those crowds of Angelenos packing both sides of the street came to see President Franklin D. Roosevelt. It was 1938, which was the year of the mid-terms and apparently Roosevelt actively campaigned for candidates who were more supportive of New Deal reform. So I assume that’s what was happening here. In the background, we can see the blade sign for the Palace Theatre at 630 S Broadway, which was the third Orpheum Theatre to open in downtown LA. (Source: Noirish LA)
In this photo, we’re looking north up Culver Blvd at the Culver Hotel at the intersection with Washington Blvd. This photo was taken in 1938, and we can see how the 6-story triangular-shaped hotel must have stood out. So I’m guessing that when it opened in 1924, it must have been visible for miles around. Conveniently located between MGM and the Selznick studio, it has played host to many film personalities, including most notably, the performers who played the Munchkins in “The Wizard of Oz.” That movie was filmed between October 1938 and March 1939, so it’s possible that they were guests when this photo was taken. (Source: Culver City Historical Society)
These days, it’s unlikely that you’d find a big-city hotel with so much lawn around it—land is too valuable! But back in the early 1920s, when the Ambassador Hotel was being built on Wilshire Blvd (between Mariposa and Catalina, it officially opened on January 1, 1921) empty land so far away from downtown .LA was plentiful. So why not set it back from the boulevard and give it a vast lawns around it? All this grass gave the hotel a sense of space and a resort type feel, which contrasted with the other luxury hotel, the Biltmore, which was smack-dab in the heart of downtown.