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In this rather breathtaking aerial photograph, we’re treated to a view of Los Angeles City Hall. It opened on April 26, 1928 and this photo was taken (probably late) 1927, so City Hall wasn’t quite finished yet. But we can see why and how it stood out: It’s bigger, taller, and blindingly bright! (It’s clad with light grey California granite.) We can also see the old Los Angeles Times building (the one with the tower close to the bottom of the photo) and the old Hall of Records, which is the building close to City Hall built at a weird angle.
EJ says: “The Hall of Records followed the old street grid. When City Hall was built, Spring Street was realigned.
This is a satellite image of that same area in December 2023.
I spent ten minutes looking for information on a 1951 movie called “Hocus Pocus (all I could find was the Disney one starring Bette Midler) when it finally dawned on me that the Las Palmas Theater, pictured here at 1642 Las Palmas Ave, Hollywood on the night of June 7, 1951 presented live theater. With live actors! And a live audience! Starting out in 1936 as the Hollywood Little Theatre, it had seating for 388 people, which is a fairly decent sized house of the area. According to 
While Angels Flight is LA’s most famous funicular, it wasn’t its only one. Court Flight began operating on September 24, 1905 on a hillside between Broadway and Hill St, between Temple and First. It was even more needed than Angels Flight because the 180-foot hillside had a 42 percent grade, making it longer and steeper than Angels Flight. Back then, the area was home to the wealthy residents of Bunker Hill who loved the view and cooling breezes that came from living so high, but understandably they hated the stairs they had to take. For the price of a nickel, they could ride Court Flight in ease and comfort. And even better, the ride down was free! The funicular ran until a fire on October 20, 1943 put it out of business.
Whenever we hear the name “Schwab’s” we immediately think of Schwab’s Pharmacy, which is understandable because it was the most famous drug store in Los Angeles. But this image reminds us that there was another Schwabs (no apostrophe) that opened in Hollywood six years before the pharmacy opened on Sunset. Schwabs was a men’s shop (i.e. menswear) at 6358 Hollywood Blvd which put it on the south side between Cahuenga and Ivar. To publicize their opening in 1926, they somehow managed to nab a “souvenir section” in the March 26 edition of the Hollywood Daily Citizen. (Note the newspaper’s motto: “Striving to be clean, seeking to be fair, hoping to be helpful.”) I’d love to window-shop in their plaza of glass cabinets and check out the prices. (In 1931 the Hollywood Daily Citizen would merge with Hollywood News to become the better-known Hollywood Citizen-News which would stay in circulation until 1970.)
The building on the southwest corner of Hollywood and Vine has been there so long (nearly 100 years: opened in 1928 as the Dyas department store before switching to the Broadway-Hollywood in 1931) that it can be easy to think it’s always been there. But fortunately we have photographers to show us otherwise. It’s a shame we had to lose such charming buildings. We can see a blade sign for Witzel, who was a photographer, who had studios at 6324 Hollywood Blvd (as well as two locations in downtown Los Angeles) so maybe he’s the one who took this photo sometime in the 1920s.
I strongly suspect I’m not the only one who wishes he lived in a world where his corner drug store looked like this. I know they cost more to build, and the ball on top of that tower reaching into the California sunshine was probably a lethal earthquake danger, but when the alternative is a cookie-cutter pharmacies, frankly, I’ll take my chances. This Rexall drug store stood at the northwest corner of N. Verdugo Rd & Honolulu Ave in Montrose, northeast of Burbank. The photo is dated 1942 – I don’t know how long it lasted, but I hope it added texture to the area for decades.
Yesterday’s photo of stores along Hollywood Blvd in the late-20s/early-30s made me think of this shot looking east along Hollywood Blvd from around Hudson Ave. On the north side of the boulevard, I can see seven different stores, each with their own sign, each selling something different, including one that sold theater tickets and on the corner of Wilcox Ave, the Innes Shoe Co. who had a hand in creating the ruby slippers for “The Wizard Of Oz.” Nelson Eddy in “Balalaika” (opened December 1939) was playing at the Iris Theater and Edward G. Robinson in “Dr. Ehrlich’s Magic Bullet” (opened February 1940) was playing at the Warner Bros. Hollywood Theater, so let’s call this circa 1940.
In this shot we have of a line of stores along Hollywood Blvd near Wilcox Ave: a cut-rate drug and sundries store, a men’s shop (clothing I assume), a billiards and snooker hall, a magic shop, and a circulating library (which was a cross between a bookstore and a library. People bought a subscription which allowed them to borrow books.) We rarely come across any of these sorts of businesses anymore, which is why I see this shot as a sort of microcosm of Hollywood in 1928, when the photo was taken.
In 1953, Frank Sennes, former manager of the Hollywood Gardens nightclub, took over the famed Earl Carroll’s at 6230 Sunset Blvd and relaunched it as the Moulin Rouge. In a smart move, he kept the iconic “Most Beautiful Girl in the World” neon sign of a woman’s face that Carroll had commissioned, but otherwise made the place his own. This photo was taken on November 11, 1954 and reminds us why night scenes in movies often wet the streets before they start shooting: it adds loads of atmosphere
In this image (probably a postcard) we’re looking at the Original Farmer’s Market facing east from the corner of Third St and Fairfax Ave. If you ignore the huge Grove outdoor shopping mall that now stands next door, you can wander around the market and get a feel for what it was like to go shopping there in the 1930s and ‘40s. The market opened in 1934 and from what I can see, hasn’t changed much. Perhaps the stores themselves have, but not the mid-century feel of the place. The yellow car parked bottom right is a circa 1953 Cadillac Coupe de Ville, and its blue neighbor is a 1953 Buick, so let’s call this one circa mid-1950s.