The filmmakers at the Goldwyn Studios (fomrerly the United Artists studios) at Santa Monica Blvd and Formosa Ave in Hollywood had an extra headache when using the backlot. It was the enormous Hollywood gasometer, which was a holding tank for natural gas. I would imagine they came up with all sorts of clever ways to mask it—or maybe they had a standard matte painting they would superimpose over every shot the gasometer loomed over—which was probably every shot. I’m guessing this photo was taken in the 1930s.
Robert E. says: “Gas from the LA Oil fields, just south of there, initially powered the studios (they had generators that ran on cheap field gas) which is why studios were/are located in Hollywood.”
Andie P says: “During the fifties, it had some huge panels of what looked like fabric hung on one side of it for a year or so.”
Steven L says: “When I was young there was a whole farm of these in downtown Los Angeles where the Staples Center is now.”
Here is a photo taken from the blimp at around the same time (I’m guessing.) It shows how the gasometer really towered over everything. It didn’t come down until the mid-1970s.
This is how that area looks now. The old Goldwyn studios is now simply known as The Lot. This image is from May 2022.
This is photo of the business card for Hotel Hollywood on the corner of Hollywood Blvd and Highland Ave. The fact is says “NOW OPEN” suggests that this comes from circa 1903, which is when the hotel opened. Its telephone was “Hollywood Main 111” – does that mean it got the first telephone in Hollywood? And $2 per day for an American Plan (breakfast, lunch, and dinner included) sounds like a good deal to me. Interestingly it doesn’t list an address – if it did, it would have said Prospect Ave instead of Hollywood Blvd – but I do love how it bills itself as the “Chief Hostelry of the Favorite Foothill Resort of Los Angeles.”
I always enjoy coming across photos like this one where nothing in particular is happening. Just another day looking south down Broadway from 4th St in downtown Los Angeles in 1931. Photos like this remind us how lively downtown LA used to be—look at that packed sidewalk. I don’t think I’ve seen those triangular banners strung across Broadway before, but there are a lot of them. Does anybody recognize them or know what they represented?
When I first saw this photo, my “Oh, what a lovely dawn!” reaction turned to a horrified “Oh my God!” when I read the description. The glow behind downtown Los Angeles is from an atom bomb test conducted on June 4th, 1953 in Yucca Flat, Nevada, which is 300 miles away. If it was this bright in LA, I hope the townsfolk of Las Vegas (80 miles southeast) were wearing two pairs of sunglasses that night. The tower with the light that we can see at the center of the photo is the 
Abbot Kinney, the man who conceived the huge “Venice of America” project on what we now know as simply “Venice Beach,” also built a vast amusement pier, which he opened in 1905. It featured an auditorium, dance pavilion, fun house, roller coaster, tea garden, aquarium, roller rink and a bowling alley (among other attractions.) Unfortunately, it all came to an end just before Christmas of 1920 when a fire broke out and consumed the whole thing. But before that, someone went up in an airplane and took this marvelous shot of the pier. Equally interesting is seeing how beyond the canals development, the land was pretty much empty. That’s certainly not the case anymore!
This color photo gives us an idea of what LA’s most famous intersection looked like in around 1941. The photographer would have been standing on the second or third floor of the Taft building on the southeast corner of Hollywood and Vine. He pointed his camera past the ornate streetlight and the semaphore traffic signal to the northwest corner occupied by the Melody Lane diner. It would have still be rather new as it occupied the site from 1940 until 1955, when Hody’s took over. There seem to be a number of patriotic banners flapping in the breeze, so maybe it was the July 4th long weekend.
I’ve been researching the restaurants of Los Angeles for quite some time now, and am always delighted to find a new one. Especially when it’s a chicken dinner restaurant because I always find myself thinking of Mildred Pierce. I’m sure Mildred’s chicken was very good, but could it hold a match to the Ferncroft Inn who made the bold claim that it’s the place “where chicken melts in your mouth”? At 670 S. San Vicente Blvd it probably benefited from being close to the popular Carthay Circle Theatre.
I don’t know if Charlie Chaplin could actually play a keyboard, but here he is at the organ of the 
These days, the road through Elysian Park is known as Stadium Way (because it runs past Dodger Stadium) but back the 1920s, when this photo was taken, it was called Avenue of the Palms for fairly obvious reasons. It’s kind of funny to see palm trees without trunks, but the city knew that in time they’d grow to make a picturesque frame for drivers.
In this circa 1930s photo, we’re looking north across homes nestled into the Hollywood Hills toward the Mulholland Dam that holds back Hollywood Reservoir, aka Lake Hollywood. On March 12, 1928, the similarly built St. Francis Dam 30 miles northwest of LA collapsed causing the grave concerns that a similar fate might befall the Mulholland Dam. Consequently, tons of dirt was packed against the dam’s wall to make it more secure—and I suspect to help the people living in these houses forget that they lived in the path of a possible deluge.