I could find surprisingly little information about this photo other than it appears to be the opening day of the Mulholland Highway in December 27, 1924. I’m not entirely sure, but I think this photo was taken in the Cahuenga Pass in Hollywood with the drivers anxious to be the first ones facing westward. The banner reads “Welcome. Mulholland Highway. 55 Miles of Scenic Splendor” which puts the end of the freeway at around Ventura. Look at how similar those automobiles are. You’d have a tough time recognizing which one was yours in a large parking lot—or a small one.
Casey W. says: “I think the picture was taken near Calabasas/Woodland Hills where Valley Circle meets Ventura Blvd. The opening ceremony reportedly took place there in Calabasas.”
I do enjoy coming across genuine color shots of yesteryear Los Angeles. Even though I’m not much of a car guy, but I do appreciate design, especially when they’re lined up like in this shot at the original Farmers Market at Fairfax Ave and Third St. That glorious pink Thunderbird is a 1958 model, so this photo is circa late 1950s.
On a particularly clear evening during what I take to be the 1960s – ** UPDATE ** – IT APPEARS TO HAVE BEEN THE 1980s – someone went up in an aircraft and took this shot of Hollywood. The white circular building near the bottom of the photo is the Cinerama Dome, which opened in 1963. The street a block to the right of the dome is Vine. Around the center of the photo we can see round Capitol Records building. Way up the top, we can see the Hollywood sign atop Mount Lee. And we can even see the mountains in the San Fernando Valley. It must have been a very clear day indeed!
Here we have a little bit of nostalgia: this was the last house left standing on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills before the street completely gave over to commercial interests. (It didn’t become a luxury strip until the arrival of Gucci in 1969.) But back when this photo was taken in 1954, Rodeo Dr. was still a mixture of local stores and houses like this modest place at 371 N. Rodeo on the southwest corner of Brighton Way. I don’t know exactly when this house came down, but when it did, it heralded the end of an era.
After opening in 1901, the Angels Flight funicular was constant in the downtown Los Angeles cityscape until its original location at Third St connecting Hill and Olive closed in 1969. In this rather remarkable photo, we see it chugging up the incline like The Little Engine That Could as the surrounding buildings are being torn down in preparation of the redevelopment of Bunker Hill. (The relocated Angels Flight commenced operations in 1996, between 3rd and 4th Streets, connecting Hill and California Plaza.)
The freeways of LA seem so deeply embedded in the fabric of Los Angeles, that it can sometimes feel like they’ve been there forever. This aerial shot from 1964 is of La Cienega Blvd at Venice Blvd during the construction of the Santa Monica Freeway. It shows was a massive project it was to building these things, and also what a pain it must have been for the locals to get around their neighborhood.
These days, Westwood Village is a little hemmed in by large buildings, but when this photo was taken, it was all open spaces, wide boulevards, and plenty of places to park. This view has us looking north up Westwood Blvd from Wilshire back in 1932, just three years after UCLA had relocated from Vermont Ave to a large plot of land to the right of this view. But even back then, Westwood had a number of striking towers. I count four in this shot alone. Or five if you include the white Janss Dome in the center. It was Westwood’s first building, which went up in 1929.
This blurry but remarkable image is one of the earliest I’ve ever come across. It’s a shot of the parade that Los Angeles threw to celebrate the centennial of American independence. It was taken on July 4, 1876, when the United States of America was only 100 year old, and we’re looking up Spring St. It hadn’t been paved yet, so it’s a good thing that Independence Day takes place during the summer otherwise the parade might have been a soggy, muddy affair.
One of Hollywood’s most enduring landmarks is the Hollywood First National Bank building at the northeast corner of Hollywood Blvd and Highland Ave. It’s pictured here in 1929, a year after it opened during the summer of 1928. Designed by Mayer and Holler, who also built the Egyptian and Chinese theaters for Sid Grauman, it made a nice contrast to the Hollywood Hotel, whose greenery we can see on the northwest corner.
This image is a still from a 1926 silent movie called “The Roaring Road.” It’s about a 100-mile automobile race, and I guess they end up (or start out?) on Hollywood Blvd. In this still, we’re looking east toward Hollywood and Vine. The tall building in the background is the Taft, which had opened in 1923. It’s interesting to see how busy Hollywood Blvd was. So busy, in fact, that the bank was offering free parking. Even back then, merchants knew it was a way to attract customers.