A couple of days ago, I posted a circa 1906 photo looking north up a bustling Broadway. This one is much the same view, but from Third St and taken from what looks like the rooftop of one of the buildings on Broadway. It was taken earlier though, circa 1895. We can see the pyramidal-topped tower of the City Hall more clearly. But I want to draw your attention to the sidewalks. Is it just me, or do they look super-wide?
Andrew S. says: “This image is easily identified before 1905 due to the lack of streetlights, a good date marker to date images. In May 1905 Broadway was lined with 135 decorative iron Liewellyn lamp poles, with 7 electrolier light fixtures on top. A year later Main and Hill streets had them installed too.
There’s nothing like a vintage color photo of a parking lot filled with vintage cars to make you nostalgic—even if you were never there back then. This is LA’s original Farmers Market at 6333 W. 3rd St on the northeast corner of Fairfax Ave. It opened in 1934; this was taken in 1950, when its parking lot was filled with gleaming 1940s cars. I especially like that bronze one in the lower right corner. And by the way, there’s a word that means “nostalgia for a time you’ve never known” – it’s “anemoia.”
In yesterday’s photo of a 
I couldn’t find a lot about this Life magazine photo dated May 4, 1944, but from what I’ve been able to piece together Los Angeles Railway repainted one of their streetcars as a “Flying Tiger” for the war effort. They were encouraging citizens who were ineligible to go into the military to become “a home front ace” which I take to mean become a streetcar driver. I’d love to have seen a color version because I’d imagine it made quite a striking sight rolling around LA. That building in the background is the Post Office Annex building at 900 N. Alameda St next to Union Station.
Some vintage photos are teeming with so much activity that you can just about hear the commotion. We’re looking north up a bustling Broadway from around Fifth Street in downtown LA. One of the banners stretched across the street reads: “Opening, Grand Midwinter Carnival and Oriental Exposition, Venice, Jan 14, 1906” so we can date this photo to around then. This is a Los Angeles largely reliant on horse-drawn transportation, a burgeoning streetcar network, and pedestrians’ legs, and I love how many multi-globe streetlights there are. The building on the right with the pyramidal roof was the LA City Hall, but my favorite feature is the big boot sign on the left. I assume Cummings was a bootmaker and cobbler—though I doubt how many people could see that sign eight or so floors from the sidewalk.
The irony about this color photo of the Warner Bros. Hollywood Theatre at 6433 Hollywood Blvd is that neither of the movies playing at the time were Warner Bros. releases. “Bend of the River” was from Universal, and “As You Were” which was from a company I’ve never heard of (R&L Productions) which makes it a classic B-movie double-bill filler. “Bend of the River” came out in February 1952, so I’m pegging this photo at circa mid-1952. But at least we get treated to a color photo of Warner’s main Hollywood theater around a year before it was converted to the latest trend in movie-going: the curved-screen Cinerama experience.
Last month, I posted a 
Car salesman, Walter Wellman, billed himself as The Smiling Irishman on his car lot at the northeast corner of W. Pico Blvd & Vermont Ave, Los Angeles. I don’t know if his gimmick drew in the customers, but it made him stand out from his fellow car salesmen. Interestingly, though, his logo is a three-leafed clover – did he not know about the whole lucky four-leafed clover thing? Also, we can see a semaphore traffic signal. This photo is from 1952 and the last one in LA was taken out in 1956, so this particular one wasn’t long for this world.
The photographer who took this photo was facing east on the southeast corner of Sunset Blvd and Crescent Heights Blvd in 1954, looking at two places that took on legendary status in Los Angeles. At the rear is Schwab’s Pharmacy at 8024 Sunset, which had opened in 1932 and quickly became the place where Hollywood wannabes and madeits (I made that word up) gathered to see, be seen, swap gossip and information, grab coffee, read “The Hollywood Reporter,” and fill a prescription. Then, in 1949, Googie’s Coffee Shop opened next door at 8100 Sunset with such a weirdly angled style that it gave rise to a whole new trend in architecture to which it lent its name. When someone finally invites me to ride their time travel machine, I’m heading straight here.
