Old Los Angeles

That picture of snow in downtown LA is fabulous!

With climate change, that will probably never happen again.

Capitol Records building under construction in 1955.

Wow.

Traffic sucked in LA, even as way back as 1958.

This here is an amazing photo.

A real life "Grease."

HOLLYWOODLAND.

1967 street trade hooker.

Marilyn Monroe.

Was Los Angeles ever NOT crowded?

Circa 1937.

Amazing. Thanks!

Downtown LA at Broadway & 7th, 1943.

The Miracle Mile, Wilshire Blvd, 1941

R6 Yeah, I don't think "street trade" ever wore dress shoes, dress pants like that. In Hollywood in the 50s, 60s and 70s, street trade on Selma, on Santa Monica and Hollywood Blvd ... Pershing Square... would more likely be in jeans and "tennis shoes"....

Venice Beach, 1925

R13 Are you sure that's Venice? I don't recognize those buildings, and I don't think multi-story buildings were on the sand in the 20s. Looks more like East Coast.

Venice Beach ,1930s

These are brilliant! Keep 'em coming. I love: BOAC!

R14, the Water & Power Associates site says this: "The view is looking north towards Ocean Park where some buildings and part of Lick Pier are visible."

I love the Gaylord, r11. The other day I finally got around to checking out where the Brown Derby used to be. It was next to the Gaylord.

R17 Ok. I lived in Venice/Ocean Park for a couple decades, and a long stretch of the buildings on the beach there was likely "torn down" during development in the 50s when Lick Pier was converted to Pacific Ocean Park.

These are wonderful! Any other Angelenos watch reruns of “Things That Aren't Here Anymore” with Ralph Story and the old Huell Howser shows like “California’s Gold” and get super depressed for what was?

It's on Youtube...

Highland and Hollywood, looking north, 1952

R22 Hollywood Methodist Church (before "United Methodist" was a thing). I am probably one of the older Angelenos on DL.... I can remember taking the red cars downtown. Then they tore up the tracks so they could sell tires to cars. Then schools were shut down with "smog days" because of all the air pollution from cars.

The myth of Progress.

It may not be Bullocks Wilshire anymore, but at least the beautiful building still stands.

Huell...

I remember there was a tea room in Bullock's Wilshire... my mom and aunt used to (or at least once?) had tea there when shopping. Weird custom.

Your finer department stores had tea rooms back in the day, r26.

Birdseye view of Wilshire Blvd. looking west, 1928. (The Brown Derby is on the right.)

The snow was on January 10, 1949. Most of southern California received an inch of snow. It has not happened since, to my knowledge.

The Mexican-Americans getting their daily arrest for being brown.

More brown arrests during lunch hour.

The oldest known photo of Los Angeles, from the 1860s

1940's Papi Chulo showing some cleavage.

LOVE these! My father’s family has lived in Los Angeles since the 1890s. Love seeing old photos.

Also on that Instagram page - I was born in Long Beach and had no idea that they had a roller coaster at one time My mom was like - yeah, you didn’t know?

[quote] Downtown LA at Broadway & 7th, 1943.

That area still looks the same, IMO.

Filipino teens at an LA dance hall, sometime in the 1950s.

I'd bet that there was more than one tearoom at Bullock's Wilshire.

All about June in the Orpheum circuit.

Gimme a chance and I know I can work it.

Grauman's Rialto

Lankershim Blvd at Weddington, North Hollywood, 1926

Greetings from...

OMG look how undeveloped the hills are

I wish I lived in Los Angeles back then, r42.

It must have been absolutely lovely.

Awesome thread. Love these historic photos.

I actually believe the smog was bad even then.

R45, wasn't peak LA smog during the sixties?

Pico & Sepulveda

1930s Los Angeles, great decade to be Mexican-American

I've always been curious what this building started out as. It's on 6th St near downtown.

Looks like car dealership

Where is Lana Del Ray?

Next to Playa Del Ray?

The marvelous 1927 Sears store on Olympic Blvd closed a few weeks ago.

Judy and the May Company

Van Nuys drive-in theater

the Mocambo

R56 The Mocambo is nice but, damn it, Perino's is MY place

R45 R46 I was born in LA in 1950. Smog was absolutely the worst in the late 50s and early 60s. In elementary school they had "smog days", where we could go outside at recess or lunch. That horrid shibboleth of the Right, "regulation" cleaned up the air. Smog in LA now is nothing, compared to the 50s.

But what a world it was... a great, great big city to grow up in. I grew up 5 miles from downtown and also ran out my door into the hills... oaks, sycamores, mustard plant, trails...

I preferred the Cocoanut Grove

R56 I had my high school prom at the Coconut Grove, Ambassador Hotel.

Norma's derricks.

[quote]I had my high school prom at the Coconut Grove, Ambassador Hotel.

Well, you must fart cobwebs and dust.

the Crescendo...

R62 Ha. No, it was 1968. A few weeks later Robert Kennedy would be killed at that hotel.

Frances Faye at the Crescendo...

Sigourney!

Musso and Frank's Grill

Has been exactly the same since the 30s.

The Pan Pacific Auditorium

[quote]No, it was 1968

Making you 71. Cobwebs and dust.

[quote]Has been exactly the same since the 30s.

Try 1919.

R30 R31 R48 No one gives a shit.

R69 70. But yeah, Gold Dust. Pure Gold Dust.

Pan Pacific. BIG warehouse type building with TINY decorative Entrance.

[quote]Pure Gold Dust.

More like Gold Bond.

R70 Well, they did a big remodel in 1929, as I remember.

R24 My mom used to take me to Bullocks for afternoon tea. It was lovely.

R74 Well, the thread is OLD Los Angeles.

Nurse, can you bring me the crack pipe??

[quote] Pan Pacific. BIG warehouse type building with TINY decorative Entrance.

I never knew that. I'd only seen photos of the entrance and thought it was about the size of the Pantages. Thanks for posting that photo, R73

Here's the Pantages in 1959

I found a Perino's ashtray at a thrift store for a quarter and resold it on eBay, r57. I realized I lived within relative walking distance of it. So I went out to search for Perino's. Here's what I found. I thought it was nice that they managed to keep the sign. They used a duck press borrowed from Mr. and Mrs. Steele.

Scandia

The original "mid-century" elegance.

The Apple Pan

Quality forever.

Ponyland and Beverly Park where Beverly Center is. I wasn't born yet, but my parents talk about it.

R81 - I love The Apple Pan. The Peach Pit from 90210 was based on it.

the Wiltern

R66 in keeping with the them, “Alien” at the Egyptian

77 Sunset Strip

Hedda's town...

Thanks for this thread. As a fourth generation Californian and third Angelino, I just love these old pics.

Van Nuys Blvd and Delano Strert

*Street

El Portal Theater on Lankershim Blvd, North Hollywood

The Huntington Hartford...

Wilshire...1935

I had no idea they filmed this at the LA Arboretum

Totally unrealistic, r94.

R7 That's a beautiful photo of Marilyn. It's new to me. I'm enjoying this thread.

Hollywood 1931

Then Jonathan Club when it was restricted.

The El Portal Theater and the brick building to the north of it (in R91 photo) are both still there! 👍

The Carthay Circle, in the Wilshire district, not Hollywood, was the grandest theater - at least to my memory as a child. More than the Grauman's/Mann's/Grauman's theater. I saw El Cid there (with my Dad, who has a professor of Spanish literature and history) the week it opened. It was so grand.

That was awesome, R97. My grandfather was born in Hollywood in 1931! Crazy to think about that.

R100 That’s amazing! Love the photo. My best friend lives in Carthay Circle - one of those old complexes - and loves it. She’ll never move. Always so cool to hear about the city’s rich history. Thank you for sharing.

Miracle Mile, Wilshire Boulevard, 1950s.

Westwood Village before it became overrun by the homeless

Another building I'm curious as to what it was. It's Just off W. 3rd St. on Berendo.

It was an automobile garage! (and I believe it is currently occupied by a body shop) According to AN ARCH GUIDEBOOK TO LOS ANGELES:

"Automotive Garage, circa 1926, 248 S. Berendo Street. A single-story Spanish Revival automobile garage, luxurious enough in its ornate cast-concrete facade to accommodate Franklins, Packards, and Pierce Arrows."

Thank you, r106! I thought it was something like that because of the wide doors. But it's so ornate....well, so were the cars.

I came across this, r50. Apparently from the early '70s on, it was a series of grocery stores before it became a Goodwill.

Just-flattened Bunker Hill

R109 And the before shot....

Wow.

R109 That is so sad that it is all gone.

Wow this is what it looked like where the Library Tower sits today

Even lower middle brow department stores like May Company had tearooms (the restaurant kind---they probably had the other kind, too)

R113, I revisited THE GREATEST AMERICAN HERO, a couple years ago. One of my favorite things about the pilot was the opening title sequence....flying through 1980 DTLA. And how relatively undeveloped it was!

You can see 444 South Hope St. -- the "L.A. Law building" -- under construction. Starting at 3:00.

R114 Not sure what "lower middle brow" is, as a ranking of class. I think May Co was pretty much right in the middle. (And I remember going downtown for Christmas shopping when I was a kid - taking the red car downtown! - and the "Tea Room" on the mezzanine on the May Co. on Hill St.).

"Class" was indeed represented by department stores in my childhood in LA. I'd put them in this order.

Sears

"The" Broadway

May Co.

Robinson's

Bullocks

I. Magnin

Great photos in this website - Van de Kamp windmill on the Von's market invokes an earlier age.

A Googie masterpiece!

May ran "promotional" department stores and that was their niche, nationwide---known for sales and basement stores. Everyone went there but they were not aspirational stores like Robinson's and other chains owned by Associated Dry Goods.

Went for a walk today and took this pic for comparison...

I found this 1940's video of Burbank streets to be enjoyable so I thought I'd share.

Ape’s restoration of the Tower Theater in the Historic Core is glorious

The Pantages...downtown

I love old Bunker Hill!

Fairfax and Santa Monica

R124 With the old red car. Those tracks and cars went all over the LA basin, from the mountains to the sea. Then they were removed.

Looks pretty much the same except for the cars.

Bunker Hill Financial District when it was just a bunch of modernist boxes.

Cool video

The Cock 'n Bull on Sunset was a wonderful place to dine and drink.

A Day in 1920s Hollywood

I was raised in Chicago, but once took a trip to LA when my father, who worked for our families ventilation company, installed a giant exhaust fan on the roof of the Tick Tock Tea Room on Cahuenga Blvd. Building is still there, fan's gone. Elegant LA is gone.

Canter's Deli

R132 Back in the day (70s?) the ceiling at Cantor's used to fun when you were high.

Bring on the chili!!!

Old LA rises again!

Before...

Bunker Hill’s forgotten second funicular

Were there ever funicular accidents?

When did the first skyscrapers in downtown LA start going up?

The Continental was the first tall building....1903.

r71 The racist Trump ass-licker crawls out of his hole.

Good read, cool photos.

When I was a kid in the '70s, we would drive down to LA from Santa Barbara and, shortly after entering the city, would go off to the right from the highway and my parents would go to some office. But there was a huge building taking up an entire block, with onion domes on the upper corners, painted all sorts of fantastic colors. I always thought it was something out of The Thief of Baghdad. My parents don't know what I'm talking about and neither do some relatives who grew up in LA. Don't know if I'll ever figure out what that was.

[quote] Were there ever funicular accidents?

Angels Flight has taken out a couple of people in its hundred years or so.

Have these already been posted?

R143 Perhaps the Shrine Auditorium?

This amazing Victorian gothic building would probably still be around if it hadn’t been devastated in the 1930 Long Beach earthquake

R146 - no, that's not it, but good guess - thanks!

The LA River as a filthy stream!

America was really nice, and the boomers completely wrecked it.

r150...specious as ever.

Church of the Holy Transfiguration (Russian Orthodox) on Fountain (?) Ave, maybe.

The last of Bunker Hill

Not bad for a graduate of the Copacabana School of Dramatic Art, r7.

Some rapid fan of Belinda Carlisle & The Go-Go's had a blog that detailed the punk scene & the band's rise to fame & fortune.

It had dozens of late 70s & early 80s photos of LA & the surrounding areas. A treasure trove of greatness.

The Go-Go's were hardly punk.

That is Lana deal Ray at the airport in her latest video at OP.

R156 They started out that way genius.

I'll grudgingly give you punk-lite, r158....grudgingly. The Bangs were punkier.

Wilshire & Western

1978 Go-Go's

1922 Aerial view of what would become West Hollywood. On the bottom left is a building where the Pacific Design Center now stands.

Pacific Design Center...

Amazing photos show how fast LA grew from 1922 to 1930

Elysian Park palms then

And now

View of the San Fernando Valley (date unknown)

Didn't we all just *adore* the alligator rides?

New homes go up in Topanga Canyon, 1957.

Farmers getting ready to plow and seed on Lankershim Ranch.

Highland and Franklin in 1903.

View of Highland Ave, north of Hollywood, 1906.

Further goes to show America’s best days are behind it and it’s never coming back. 21st Century was a turning point in more ways than one.

Wilshire Blvd in color, 1942

80s smog

R175 I believe that is on Wilshire between Western and Vermont. The palm trees on the left side might be the Ambassador Hotel (RIP).

I don't know, r176. r160 is looking east from Western and r119 is looking west from Vermont. This is the church you can see in r119 on the left side of the street.

R175: That isn't smog, it's fog . Or if you prefer, the "Marine Layer". (a.k.a. "May Gray" & "June Gloom"). See the shades of darker gray in the sky? I'd bet $100 this photo was taken in May-June.

Bunker Hill in color!

Well, r179, that's certainly grandiose.

Been ordering from Greenblatt's throughout the pandemic. This bites!

Greenblatt's sandwiches were good. West Hollywood was fun.

I took my mother to downtown LA back in 2006 to buy some jewelry and naively (stupidly) thought we'd enjoy seeing the old building architecture. OMG , WHAT A HELL HOLE! I was kicking myself for putting my mom in possible harms way. We had to get out of there by sundown, if you know what mean?

God, it was awful. There was uncivilized crap going down everywhere we went that day. Fight or flight mode. Istead of jewelry we should have bought tasers and police style batons. Real life American horror.story.

But where are the old photos of hot men? Is this DL or not?

Muscle Beach

WeHo boys

The dudes in R184 are much more attractive than the big tiddie WeHo boys.

R182: You seem to have delicate sensibilities. Have even stayed in DTLA and never had a problem. You probably should have taken one of the LA Conservancy tours.

r187 I did one of their virtual tours during the lockdown. It was quite interesting, but I'm sure it would have been better if we had been able to see the locations in person.

Greenblatt's bites the dust, that's sad. Almost as if Musso and Frank's or the Pantry were to close. LA institutions melting away. I used to live a couple blocks from Greenblatt's and got "dinner" to bring home there a lot.

Hot ticket!

Driving thru the historic core in the sixties! One Eyed Jacks is playing at the theater!

I love the color palette of the late 60s/early 70s.

Some info on the theater

R191 Great clip capturing the atmosphere well. I think it ends at Pershing Square, right? Sees Candy store. Florsheim Store. Cars with fins. The Inn Clinton made me first think it was the old Clifton Cafeteria downtown, where they had an organ up on a ledge in the "jungle"....

Yes going up Hill past Pershing Square.

This video: LOS ANGELES: OLDEST KNOWN PHOTOGRAPHS, A true Old World compilation, Antiquitech, Aqueduct, Tunnels

is pretty unbelievable. It is actually just old photographs of incredible buildings in Los Angeles that mostly no longer exist. I lived in LA in the 70s and most of them were not there any longer by then. The narrator has a rather annoying monotone but he does give some very interesting information if you can overlook his speaking voice and terminology. One of the more shocking things is that the author/narrator does not live in Los Angeles and has never been there, yet he managed to dig up some of the most interesting photos of Los Angeles that I have ever seen. You might want to just fast forward through it without the sound on, but that way you will miss some interesting facts. It is 40 or so minutes long, but worth every minute.

Many estates made it to today.

My friend and I just got back from seeing NT's FOLLIES at the Fine Arts in Beverly Hills.

Downtown from a jet, 1972

Recently leveled Bunker Hill is visible north of the two black skyscrapers

These are terrific. Too bad L.A. didn't stay like that.

Evolution of DTLA skyline

Capitol Records

This is pretty cool

R203 That was great. Graphically it shows how crazy that sequence was where a comprehensive rail system covering the whole county was pulled up to begin building freeways.

Frederick's...

Absolutely r150. They selfishly destroyed everything that was good about this country.

R206 I remember the Helm's trucks coming around the neighborhood... the little "beep beep" was very distinctive. Then milk delivered early in the morning to the front door from Rock View Dairies (my memory was that they were in Altadena, though a web search says Downey).

This if the Carnegie library in Highland Park where I went every week as a child. High coffered ceilings, dark wooden shelving, white marble floors... a temple to books, ideas, and other worlds. This library was torn down, replaced with an ugly structure with parking on the roof, that was torn down and another library built. You know you're old when you remember THREE versions of a public library.

The Arroyo Seco was a great place to grow up in the 50s...

The Red Car system was designed to bring prospective buyers to far flung properties away from the city center and was not really built efficiently.

LA is really a strange place. Is there any other waterside city with a downtown in such an odd place?

I really think they should have moved downtown to where the 110 and 105 freeways juncture, roughly in the center of the LA Basin.

R210 Very hard to understand what you are saying. In what way was the Red Car system "not built efficiently"... it matched the rail lines built in the last couple decades to replace them.

Downtown lies on what was El Camino Real connecting all the missions - between San Gabriel and San Fernando missions. It was one of several developed "pueblos" is Spanish Colonial California, El Pueblo de La Reina de Los Angeles. Situated on the largest river in the regio, on a transportation route.. pretty far from the coast. "they should have moved it to a freeway junction..." is not reall how history works.

R201, thanks for that video -- it was interesting.

The video at R201 would be more effective it went in chronological order rather than jumping around—it's somewhat confusing going from 1990 to 2010 back to the 80s, then the 2010s, then 1928, etc.

[quote] "they should have moved it to a freeway junction..." is not reall how history works.

High density business districts located away from the old city center are created all the time. Midtown Manhattan. La Défènse. Canary Wharf.

Instead of flattening Bunker Hill, they could have just built a new business district where the freeways intersect.

R214 Well, these "decisions to move a whole city" were made or not made before most of the freeways were built. And the current downtown is exactly where major arteries conjoin... Harbor Fwy, Hollyywood Fwy, Santa Monica Fwy, Santa Ana Fwy, Golden State Fwy (to use the geographical names, before numbers wiped out geography). And LA was one of the prime examples of distributed urban centers... Pasadena, the waterfront of Long Beach... Century City... nodes just like the ones you reference.

R209, wow had no idea about the library. Going to do some googling. Where did you go for junior high /middle school? I was a prisoner of nightingale or as we called it, nightinjail.

R216 Luther Burbank Junior High School - the old buildings were vaguely Assyrian/Mayan colonial architecture. A cousin to the old tire factory in Anaheim.

Later I lived up in the hills behind Nightingale... likely before your were born.

r217 The tire factory was in Commerce, not Anaheim. It's now an outlet mall.

R218 Only in LA - a temple to tires.

At least they didn't tear it completely down.

Beverly Drive when the palm trees were only three stories tall

Today

As many may know, the blinking light on top of the Capitol Records building spells out "Hollywood" in Morse code. Special messages have been put out a couple times to acknowledge Capitol's 50th & 75th anniversaries....and also, this: (which I cannot stop laughing about)

[quote]Prior to a Katy Perry album release, it was changed to “Katy Perry. Prism. October 22, 2013,” a message left for anyone to read, but no one noticed.

Why do the strip malls/plazas in LA look so ugly and dated? They should tear them all down put up something more pleasing to the eye.

Would you prefer pavilions, r224?

I love that they've kept the pink and aqua color scheme.

R226 Much of LA, then and now, is magnificently ugly.

Hooray

Vintage dingbat

R227 That is probably the biggest difference between LA and San Francisco. Nearly every building in SF is wonderful. LA has some REALLY wonderful buildings, but you can't say nearly every building in LA is wonderful. Especially the crap that was built in 60s and 70s and 80s and 90s. All those horrible apartment buildings that look like motels are hideous.

RE LA’s uglinesses, on my first trip to LA what struck me the most is that if you took away the palm trees, it could be indistinguishable from New Jersey.

Ralphs

Westwood Village before the homeless moved in

Knock yourselves out with this spectacular collection of old LA photography.

Thanks for posting that, R234. I have spent MANY hours on there crying while looking at what amazing buildings used to exist in Los Angeles.

Oh...on Dick Cavett right now...and after it:

Bea Arthur is interviewed in 1989.

*

Dixie Carter discusses getting the role in Designing Women; why she doesn't have an agent, and the dissolution of the family unit.

Warner Bros surrounded by fields

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

Went to the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures today...

Judy owned a flower shop just a few blocks East of May Co.

Approaching the Barbra Streisand Bridge, I felt a sense of foreboding...

For the winter of '74-summer of '75, I lived with my mom at my uncle's house in Hombly Hills (he was a low-level producer and lived next to Vincent Price). I remember the smell of mornings going to school of a flower that we didn't have in Chicago (where we were from). Was is orange blossoms? I also begged my mom to take me to Ponyland, where I saw Tina Louise and was privately fan-girling, although she was that anorexic thin version of herself.

I live in WeHo now, and if you had told me that I would live a mile away from where Ponyland used to be (now the Beverly Center) as an adult, I would have never believed you. I will say that developers here don't have any respect for older architecture and are quick to snatch up property, raze it, and building giant modern soulless boxes. I guess there is a demand for it, but it's taking all the charm out of so many neighborhoods, including mine, which used to have so many Craftsmen and Spanish style houses.

Here is the interior of the CalEdison building, very nicely preserved:

[quote]Was it orange blossoms?

R242, likely a shrub called "mock orange", which was ubiquitous in SoCal landscaping in the past.

Thank you, r243. The smell was delicious. Much like the 2 weeks of Night Blooming Jasmine we get here in Feb/March.

I was thinking perhaps it was Jasmine or honeysuckle. Orange blossoms usually bloom in February/March.

This is the mock orange shrub, not orange trees. It blooms in June and July.

June, July in my youth in LA - Jacaranda purple blossoms everywhere, and the scent of mock orange.