Yesterday’s photo of a Helms delivery truck evoked so many memories among people that I googled for other pics of Helms trucks. I didn’t find many, but I did find this photo taken while the Helms Bakery building at 8800 Venice Blvd in Culver City was still under construction. According to everything I could find, it opened for business on March 2, 1931 with 32 employees and 11 delivery trucks. But the date at the bottom of this photo reads December 20, 1933, so I don’t know what to make of that. Regardless of the actual date, this image is a glorious snapshot of a business that touched millions of LA lives in the nearly 40 years Helms was in business.
Helms Bakery is no longer in business, but the building is still around. This image is from December 2022.
After Helms Bakery opened their facility at 8800 Venice Blvd in Culver City (“Home of Helms Olympic Bread”) in 1931 and until 1969, these cute little yellow trucks delivered fresh-baked goods to hungry and grateful Angelenos all over the southland. As far as I can determine, this shot was taken around 1955, which seems about right. It has a very height of the 50s/Leave It to Beaver/Father Knows Best feel to it, if you ask me. Does anybody seeing this photo remember the Helms delivery truck roaming their neighborhood?
There was a lot going on in this Victorian building on the southwest corner of 8th and Olive, downtown LA, with its five bay windows and its square turret with the fancy ironwork crowning the top. I assume the “YOU DRIVE” sign refers to a rent-a-car operation, although I’m not sure what “Lail’s Auto Livery” were selling. There’s also the London Luggage Shoppe, and the “D and S Buffet Eastside” which begs the question: Was there a westside one too? And off to the distant right, we can see the First Congregational Church at 841 S. Hope St.
About a week ago, I posted a photo of the 
These days, we know this movie studio as 20th Century-Fox, but back in 1928, when this aerial photo was taken, it was still called the Fox Hills studio, named by William Fox after he bought the 100-acre site on Pico Blvd in 1916. A dozen years later, it had an impressive and sprawling backlot—and the talkies had barely even begun. Within a few years, William Fox would be broke and merge with Darryl Zanuck’s 20th Century Pictures. Meanwhile, maybe some of those oil wells can bring in some extra cash.
Many of the biographies and memoirs I’ve read often mention how on Friday nights they would go to the Vine St Brown Derby for an early dinner. Not because they’d reached the end of a long and tiring week filming their latest movie, but because Friday nights were the big fight night at the Hollywood Legion Stadium a couple of blocks away at 1628 El Centro Ave. But until I came across this photo, I’d never seen what the place looked like. The fancy car parked out front is a circa 1931 Cadillac and was typical of the cars pulling up on Friday nights ready to drop off well-heeled people looking forward to an evening of watching two men pummel each other. I do, however, wonder what the guy on the roof is doing.
For people who regularly shopped in Hollywood, the two-story Pickwick Bookstore at 6743 Hollywood Blvd was a mainstay from when it opened in 1931 until it closed 64 years later in 1995. But take a look at its neighbors in this circa 1939 photo: a gift store, a travel agency, a sporting goods store, and a camera store. It gives a feeling of a community that not just Hollywood Blvd but most strip malls and mini malls seem lack these days. The internet has replaced most of these businesses and although it’s more efficient and convenient, this photo does make me want to get into my car and book a steamship ticket to Catalina.
I found this photo on the website of the 
I love this circa 1914 photo looking west along 7th St from Spring St in downtown Los Angeles because it shows four forms of transport happening on the same block: streetcar, horse-drawn carriage, automobile, and pedestrian. I doubt the horses would be seen on LA’s street much longer, so this image shows the city’s transition from an old form to a new one. Little did these Angelenos suspect how deep the roots of car culture would dig down in the City of Angels.
Here’s a piece of Hollywood history in the making: An aerial photo showing the Cinerama Dome under construction on Sunset Blvd in 1963. It marked the first new major motion picture theater in Hollywood in 33 years, and in record time. The groundbreaking ceremony took place in July 1963 and opened a mere four months later on schedule on November 7 with the world premiere of “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, World.” Apart from the Dome taking shape, this photo shows us how much land in Hollywood was given over to parking lots.