There’s something so striking about those old Kodachrome photos. The colors burst from the image so vividly that you almost feel as though you could jump right in. We’re looking west along Wilshire Blvd from around Cloverdale Ave, circa 1950s. That white building on the left is the Dominguez-Wilshire Building at 5410 Wilshire, which opened in 1930 and whose major tenant was Myer Siegel, a well-known women’s clothing store. According to one report I read, the building was named after its developers, the Dominguez family, the heirs to the first land grant given in California by King Carlos III of Spain. And in California, that’s about far back as it gets!
** UPDATE ** – We can also see a sign for Vic Tanny. John J. says it was: “A chain of luxurious health clubs founded in 1947 for men and women. Offering strength training and other health programs. Also in these clubs were swimming pools, skating rinks, movie screening rooms, bowling alleys, and ballet classes. They were aimed at middle class Americans.”
This is roughly how that view looked in November 2021.
I’m no sports fan, but even I know that the LA Dodgers won the first game of the 2024 World Series at Dodger Stadium on Friday. Here we have an aerial photo of that stadium under construction. The project broke ground on September 17, 1959, and opened on April 10, 1962, so I’d say this photo was taken some time in 1960s. They sure knew what they were doing making space for all those parking lots.
These days, the Angels Flight funicular railway shuttles riders between Olive St at the top and the station at the bottom situated between 3rd and 4th St in downtown LA. But when this photo was taken, Angels Flight was in its original location at 3rd Street. It’s still quite a steep ride, but these days, it doesn’t run right next to a bunch of apartment buildings so close that passengers could look into strangers’ living rooms. This photo was taken some time in the 1960s, when it was on its last legs (or wheels, as the case may be.) It closed in 1969 ahead of the redevelopment of Bunker Hill and didn’t reopen in its new (and current) site until 1996.
It looks like United Artists pulled out all the stops when it held the world premiere of “Trapeze” at the Fox Wilshire Theatre at 8440 Wilshire Blvd in Beverly Hills on May 29, 1956. Behind that huge spotlight shooting into the air there’s what looks like ten rows of bleachers which, given the circus setting of the movie, might have been set up like seats under a big top. All this effort was worth it: “Trapeze” was one of the biggest movies of 1956 (although, of course, nothing came close to “The Ten Commandments.”)
Here we have an early example of the sort of double-decker motor coaches that were put into service to transport people between Los Angeles and Venice. Back in 1914, when this photo was taken, there was a lot of open, empty land between the two. What worries me is that the top deck of this bus appears to be very full. The whole thing looks dangerously top-heavy, if you ask me. Even more so if that road they’re driving along isn’t sealed, which back then it probably wasn’t. Even Sunset Blvd wasn’t fully paved until the early 1930s.
The Rose Bowl is probably best known for its New Year’s Day parade, called the Tournament of Roses, but it’s a football stadium located in Pasadena, California, with capacity for nearly 90,000 screaming sports fans. It was also the track cycling venue for the 1932 Summer Olympics held in LA and is the site of a very popular that takes place the second Sunday of every month. This photo was taken in 1954 when everyone back then was driving classic cars!
And from the “I Wish It Was Still Like This” file comes this 1963 aerial photograph of Disneyland and its parking lot. My first visit was in 1975, and I’m pretty sure it was like this. You drove up to Disneyland, you found a space to park your car, and you walked inside. No parking structure, no waiting for the tram, no tram ride, no security search. And it looks like this was a good day to go to Disneyland — I can see three fully empty rows. But now I’m wondering what time you had to get to the lot in order to nab that prized slot right in front of Main Gate.
I’ve read in a number of places that the intersection of Broadway and 7th Street in downtown Los Angeles was the city’s busiest intersection. I have not, however, been able to understand why that was. But when you see photos like this, you can see it must have been true. Here we can see a Los Angeles Railway “M” streetcar sometime in the 1920s. It’s rattling along Broadway en route to Inglewood while it looks like half of LA is crowding the sidewalk! The other side of the street (outside Boos Bros. Cafeteria) doesn’t seem nearly so packed. It makes me wonder why some of those people didn’t cross the street!
I doubt that I shall ever tire of looking at vintage photos of the Bullocks Wilshire department store. It stood at 3050 Wilshire Blvd between Westmoreland Ave and Wilshire Place. The store opened on September 26, 1929 and at the time it was is considered a risky venture because it was outside of downtown LA, where all the important stores were located. And then a month later, the stock market crashed—not exactly a primo time to open a very upscale, very large store. But Bullocks Wilshire survived, and by the time this photo was taken in the late 1930s, it was thriving as one of THE stores that people with lots o’ dough went to spend it.
As an Angeleno who often finds himself stuck in traffic, I take a measure of satisfaction knowing that my fellow Angelenos from yesteryear had to deal with much the same thing. These poor drivers were stuck in a traffic jam in around 1946 as they were on Wilshire Blvd (note the Wilshire Special streetlights.) The white building on the right is the Rex Arms apartments, which I suspect means we’re looking west down Wilshire from around Figueroa St and the cars were heading into downtown LA. It looks like those drivers turning onto a side street had had enough!