It’s not often that we are treated to a genuine color photo from the 1940s, so I’m grateful for every one that I come across. This one is of the Santa Fe train pulling into their South Pasadena station, which stood near the intersection of Meridian Ave and El Centro St. I love its bright red roof, but I’m a bit concerned that there doesn’t appear to be much in the way of safety guards. Just what I take to be that flashing light in the pole on the right.
Here are a couple more photos I’ve been sent:
I’m not entirely sure where the Santa Fe depot was, but I think it was here, where the Gold Metro line now passes through South Pasadena. (Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.)
It took me a while of living in Los Angeles to figure out that most of the wider streets around town were the ones that used to have streetcar lines running down them. In this photo we’re looking south down Main St in downtown L.A. It had two lanes for parking, two lanes for driving, and two lanes for streetcars – that’s a lot of coming and going. The cross street is Seventh St, which had a Liggett’s Drug Store on the northwest corner and an Owl Drug Store on the southwest corner. I expect they would’ve competed heavily for business. My guess is that the Owl’s huge four-leaf clover neon sign helped attract customers. I wonder if it was bright green. (Overell’s on the left was a furniture store.)
I’m not sure what was happening on Pasadena’s Colorado Blvd (then called Colorado St) when this circa 1890 photo was taken, but from all those flags hung from the horse-drawn carriages, it looks like a parade. July 4th, maybe? And that small house in the mid-background, I’m guessing that’s some sort of float? The road isn’t even paved so all I can think is what a slog it would be if it rained the night before.
It’s stunning aerial photos like this one taken in 1949 that show why Los Angeles chose this site on Mt Hollywood to build the Griffith Observatory. It was constructed between 1933 and 1935 from money stipulated in Griffith J. Griffith’s 1919 will (I’m not sure why it took so long.) Ever since its dedication on May 14, 1935, it has been one of L.A.’s memorable sights that can be seen from miles around
This sparse photo gives us an idea of the size of the Mulholland Dam that keeps Lake Hollywood in place up in the Hollywood Hills. Without that guy sitting there, they could look like regular steps. We can no longer see them because they’re now covered with tons of earth, which were added to reinforce the dam after the catastrophic failure of the St. Francis Dam farther north in Santa Clarita in 1928.
This color photo was taken across the street from the Warner Bros. Theatre at 6433 Hollywood Blvd during the run of “This is Cinerama.” The game-changing widescreen format made its New York debut on September 30, 1952 with the movie “This is Cinerama.” The movie opened at this cinema on April 29, 1953. The marquee behind the people in the foreground says it was playing it’s “2nd record breaking year” so I’m putting this photo at 1953. But oh, look at the buffet of 1950s cars on Hollywood Blvd!
In this photo, we’re looking southwest toward Hollywood along the Hollywood Freeway as it stakes through the Cahuenga Pass. This photo was dated at 1940, and as this stretch of the Hollywood Freeway (aka “the 101”) opened to the public on June 15, 1940, I’m guessing that the photo was taken not long after the freeway opened. This would explain why there are so few cars. The 101 is the main freeway into downtown Los Angeles, so these days it’s nearly always packed. As a frequent user of this freeway, it’s actually quite shocking to see it this empty. Those tracks running down the center were for the streetcars and that bridge is the Mulholland Drive overpass.
Los Angeles’s post-WWII decentralization gave Angelenos countless areas to shop without having to traipse into downtown L.A. where all the big (and tons of smaller) stores were. But during before then, downtown was lively bustling place, as this photo shows. It was taken in December 1937, so the people crowding the sidewalks of Broadway were doing their Christmas shopping. I bet the streetcars were uncomfortably crowded with packages that day.
Wilshire Blvd has long been an important east-west cross-town thoroughfare for Los Angeles, and in places quite scenic, like this stretch, for instance. In this photo, we’re looking west along Wilshire from Alvarado St just outside of downtown. All those trees in the distance are clustered around MacArthur Park. This photo was taken in 1940 and wouldn’t be renamed MacArthur Park (after General Douglas MacArthur) until 1942, when the US was embroiled in WWII and MacArthur was leading the battle against the Japanese in the Philippines. On the right we can see a sign for a Sontag drug store, which we don’t see any more but back then was a common sight around L.A.
It looks like that in the early days after UCLA moved from Vermont Ave to Westwood, the parking situation was “You can park in that field, or in that dirt lot behind it, or pretty much anywhere you like, really.” UCLA moved in 1929 and this photo was taken 1932, so I think of this era as its Wild West period: there is some civilization with those gorgeous buildings completed, a few streetlamps, and a bit of fencing, but apart from that, you’re free to do whatever you like.