One of Warner Bros.’ flagship theaters was the one that stood at 9404 Wilshire Blvd at Canon Dr. in Beverly Hills. This photo is looking east along Wilshire sometime around the mid 1930s when a parade was in progress. Or maybe it was a bunch of guys on horseback caught in stop-and-go traffic. I don’t know what was playing at the theater that day, but their parking lot looks rather jammed.
This was the August 2022 view looking east along Wilshire Blvd from where the Warners Theater once stood. That site is now a parking lot.
Between the Hollywood Freeway and Cahuenga Blvd, these days LA motorists have more than a dozen lanes to drive in when coming and going through the Cahuenga Pass in Hollywood. This photo shows, however, that in 1920, Angelenos had two streetcars and lanes—and those lanes weren’t even painted. In fact, I don’t think they were even paved. Of course, back then, you were driving out into the countryside into the San Fernando Valley, which was practically all fields and orchards.
It wasn’t just the main LA thoroughfares like Hollywood Blvd and Santa Monica Blvd that had streetcars, it was regular local streets, too, like this one. This was the Los Angeles Railway’s N streetcar on 9th Street, just west of downtown LA. Like the Red Cars, these yellow-and-green ones were easy to spot. This photo is circa late 1940s, just prior to the abandonment of the line in 1950. In the background we can see the Hotel Proctor with its “bachelor apartments”, which I assume were probably just a room with maybe a basin like we’ve seen in many a seedy film noir picture.
A couple of weeks ago I posted a 
The smog in this photo is so thick and so gritty that I can almost taste it, 68 years later. This photo was taken circa November 1954 on a day that was particularly heavy that pretty much the only building we can see clearly is the Los Angeles City Hall, and even then, only because it’s closest to the camera and is white. Thankfully the city took measures to clear the air otherwise everybody would have left.
This genteel photo gives is a glimpse into what Abbot Kinney’s original vision was for what he called “Venice of America,” but which we now refer to as Venice. In the foreground, we can see the lagoon, on which Angelenos could take gondola rides. That wide pedestrian walkway lead down to the Venice amusement pier, which had all sorts of rides, games, and diversions. But what stumps me is that circular thing in the foreground that looks like a volcano. What do you think it was?
The California Incline, a steeply angled road connecting Ocean Avenue to the Pacific Coast Highway, was first built in 1905. In the mid-1930s, construction on PCH meant that the Incline got an upgrade by widening the road and adding a concrete balustrade. This 1934 shows it getting its makeover. The 1930s was the time of big, fancy beach clubs and we can see two of them in this photo. The one with the turret is 
Here’s a view of something we rarely see anymore: a row of very individual mom-and-pop stores: a shoe store, a pants (and shirts) store, a barber, and a radio repair store. And on the far right, that “Co.” belonged to an Owl Drug Co drugstore (which you can see 
I think of these sorts of photos as slice-of-life shots. Nothing much is happening in this 1947 color photo looking north up Whitley Ave from Padre Terrace in Hollywood, but it does give us a glimpse into what the post-war Hollywood neighborhood looked like with lots of palm trees, green lawns, and well-maintained apartment buildings. On my time travel trip, I’d happily spend an hour or two wandering around this area (and then go to C.C. Brown’s for one of their hot fudge sundaes because apparently they were super-delicious!)
The Mulholland Dam (named after Water Superintendent William Mulholland, who is also the namesake of Mulholland Drive) sits in Weid Canyon north of Whitley Heights and northeast of the Hollywood Bowl. Construction began on April 1, 1923. This photo was taken ten months later on February 2, 1924 when the curve of the dam had taken shape. It was such a massive project that it wouldn’t be completed until April 14, 1925.