This vibrant Kodachrome color photo is of the Pantages Theatre (back then the “RKO Pantages”) at 6233 Hollywood Blvd half a block east of Vine St. The billboard and marquee advertises movies from three different years: Divorce Italian Style (September 1962) and Yesterday Today Tomorrow (March 1964) and The Pawnbroker (April 1965) so this photo must have been taken ’65. I love checking out the neighboring stores: a personnel agency, and optical company (eyeglasses, I assume?) the Frolic Room (which opened in 1934 and is still around) a greeting cards store, and then much farther down the block is AE England, a Pontiac dealer. I also love that shade of green on the Pantages blade sign.
This is roughly how that view looked in July 2024. (Note the Pantages sign is now red.)
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This image gives us an idea of what the view across the northern end of downtown LA looked like in the late 1920s. From left to right, we’ve got the Hall of Justice, Old County Courthouse (the corner of Temple & Broadway), and the Hall of Records. And looming in the background is the “new” City Hall. It opened in April 1928, so I’m putting this at circa late 1920s. I don’t want to be Mr. Everything Was Always Better Back Then, but this collection of buildings do make for a more interesting skyline with each building quite different from its neighbor.
I could find scant information about this color photo of a Pacific Electric red car. It was taken on April 13, 1954 as the streetcar was trundling through Beverly Hills. I assume it was running along the Santa Monica Blvd track because those hills in the background look like the Hollywood Hills, which makes sense because the destination sign reads “Hollywood.”
In this May 1932 photo looking east along Wilshire Blvd from Detroit St, a few things catch my eye. Look at all that gorgeous detailing along the top of the building on the right. It almost looks like it’s wearing a crown. And on that streetlamp – they were called a Wilshire Special and were only on Wilshire Blvd – the “Detroit” street sign points north and south is in a style I don’t recall seeing before. And that big white building on the left is the only one in this photo that I recognize. It’s the E. Clem Wilson Building and was only three years old when this photo was taken. It caught my eye because I recently read that it was used as the headquarters of Daily Planet in the first season of the “Adventures of Superman” TV series. I guess that was before they switched to the more iconic LA City Hall.
Imagine driving home one night along Wilshire Blvd, you realize you need to fill the tank, and the next gas station in your headlights has red tiles in a striking geometric pattern and a dome that looks like it had come from a Maria Montez movie set in a Persian desert. This Texaco gas station was at 3237 Wilshire Blvd between New Hampshire and Vermont Avenues. In the 1920s it was under the Calpet brand. I don’t know when it switched to Texaco, but I’m guessing circa early 1930s. I tip my hat to Texaco for not tearing it down. That, of course, would come later.
The Beverly Hills Speedway opened on February 28, 1920 on a lot bounded by Wilshire Blvd, South Beverly Dr, Olympic Blvd, S. Lasky Dr. It was a wood-boarded, oval-shaped race track with seating for an impressive 70,000 race fans. It was only around for 4 years – the final race was held February 24, 1924. It was very popular in its day, but good luck finding your car afterward. You’d be okay if the roof of yours was white, otherwise you’d be smart to allow a couple of extra hours at the end of the day.
One name for this 1896 photo could be “Out with the Old, In with the New.” A new electric streetcar is passing an old cable streetcar at the corner of Spring and 1st Streets in downtown LA, looking south. And on the other side we can see horse-drawn carriages, which were the main form of transport before cable cars. The clock on the right shows the time to have been 8:17, so what we’re seeing here is peak-hour traffic, 1890s style. With so much hustle and bustle, it’s not hard to imagine the noise that must have been filling the air at that moment.
In 1939, Rita Hayworth was still an up-and-coming starlet (she had a minor role in “Only Angels Have Wings” starring Cary Grand and Jean Arthur) when she posed for this photo stepping off the northeast corner of Wilshire Blvd and N. Beverly Dr. in Beverly Hills. Behind her is a tri-light traffic signal. In 1931, those lights began to replace the semaphore signal, and Wilshire was the first street in LA to get them. I can’t imagine Rita’s controlling studio boss, Columbia’s Harry Cohn, would’ve been too happy to see a Warner Bros. theater in the background.
In this rather amazing aerial photograph, we looking east from Beverly Hills. That main street is Santa Monica Blvd and what used to be known locally as “Little Santa Monica Blvd” is where those train tracks are. (The small building right at the bottom in the center is the Beverly train station.) All that development in the distance is Hollywood. This photo is from around 1924, so Hollywood would have been fairly well established. But look at all that empty land between Beverly Hills and Hollywood. Empty, unused, and available to be picked up for a song!
Whenever I see a photo like this, I’m often amazed to see a locomotive pulling a line of passenger carriages along a track laid out along city streets. Maybe it was a common sight back then, but it still makes me wonder how many accidents this sort of thing caused. Or maybe pedestrians always saw that big shiny round headlight casing coming from a mile away. This locomotive was Southern Pacific GS-3 class, 14 of which were made in late 1937. This photo was taken at the intersection of Alameda and Aliso Streets in downtown Los Angeles. That tower in the background is part of Union Station, which had opened on May 3rd,1939, so I’m guessing the photo was taken later than year, when the station was still a brand-new addition to the LA skyline.