Most aerial photos of Los Angeles I find look out across LA or Hollywood or sometimes the San Fernando Valley. So it’s nice to find one that looks directly down. This is from 1938, and those three main north-south streets are Cahuenga Blvd, Vine St, and Gower St. The east-west street at the top of the photo is Santa Monica Blvd, which means that park at the far right is the Hollywood Forever Cemetery (known back then as Hollywood Memorial Park.) And directly to the south of that, we can see the soundstages of Paramount Studios. And on the left are a few open fields. There aren’t many of them left in Hollywood anymore.
This satellite image from 2022 covers much the same area.
In this quietly genteel photo from 1926, we’re looking west along W. Adams Blvd toward St. Vincent de Paul’s Roman Catholic Church. It must have been a pleasure to drive around Los Angeles back then. All those spacious boulevards with so much room you didn’t even need lanes. Getting around looks like it was easy, parking looks like it was easy, hardly anybody was in a rush—unless you were the Keystone Kops. If you had a reliable car (a big “if” back then), it must have been fun to run around town looking for the latest speakeasy and quaff bathtub gin made god-only-knew where by god-only-knew who.
This photo of an early model automobile (can anyone ID the make?) was taken outside the Automobile Club of Southern California Club headquarters at Eighth and Olive Streets in downtown Los Angeles. The year was 1912, so I can’t imagine the club had too many members. For all I know, maybe we’re seeing the entire club membership in this photo!
The new Los Angeles City Hall opened on April 26, 1928, and so from the last of the scaffolding we can see here, I’m guess this shot was taken in early 1928. The photographer was standing on Weller Court in what is now 
In this circa 1937 photo, we’re looking west across Vine St from what looks to be the roof of a gas station on the corner of Selma Ave. We’re looking at the CBS Radio Playhouse. (KNX was the flagship radio station for the CBS network at the time.) This theater was home to the very popular Lux Radio Theater show which started in 1934 but moved from New York to Hollywood in 1936 until 1955. We can also see the banner for another popular radio show; “Hollywood Hotel” featuring Louella Parsons. Sponsored by Campbell’s soup, it ran from 1934 or 1938. The theater is still there and is currently known as the Ricardo Montalban Theatre.
On May 18, 2022, I posted a night photo of 
These days I think of Eagle Rock as a landmark to look for while driving east on the Ventura Freeway which alerts me to the fact that I’m heading into Pasadena. It’s surrounded by freeways and bridges and overpasses so it can be easy to miss. That wasn’t the case when these two Thoroughly Modern Millies stopped at the intersection of Colorado Blvd and Annandale Rd to take in the view in the 1920s, when Eagle Rock really stood out.
There were a lot of insults you could hurl at William Randolph Hearst, but you can’t fault his love of architecture. We’re looking north up Broadway from 12th St in downtown Los Angeles, and building on the left was the headquarters of his Los Angeles Examiner newspaper. It was designed by Julia Morgan who built Hearst Castle in San Simeon for him. According to a source cited on Wikipedia, the 7,800-square-foot building was the largest structure in the US devoted solely to the publication of a newspaper. It was also where Louella Parsons had an office. This photo was taken in 1938, which is the year that the L.A. Times gave Hedda Hopper her own gossip column in the hopes of checking Louella’s power, but ended up unleashing a second monster on Hollywood. Talk about unintended consequences.
And from the “They Sure Don’t Make ‘Em Like That Anymore” file comes the Green Spray Market which used to stand on the northeast corner of Fairfax Ave and San Vicente Blvd. I’m not even sure what to call that structure on the roof. A pagoda? I assume it’s ornamental and designed to catch the eye of the passing carriage trade. This photo is from 1932, when apparently the Fairfax Ave and San Vicente Blvd intersection was easy as pie to navigate.
I know that the people in this 1880 photo were Victorians with a very strong and rigid sense of propriety, but still, just the idea of spending the day sitting on Santa Monica Beach and strolling along the pier while fully clothed makes me sweat. I can’t imagine how uncomfortable those Angelenos in this photo must have been by the end of a summer day.