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Shared Nostalgia: Rachisio Oliva’s Downtown Store, 1948
The above photo was sent by reader Patrick Oliva. Depicting a downtown market run by his father, circa 1948, the image was part of a recent El Pueblo exhibit celebrating L.A.’s Italian community....
View ArticleWeekend Matinee: Remember Marineland?
The aquatic park entertained millions of visitors to the Palos Verdes Peninsula from 1954 to 1987. Opening a year prior to Disneyland, it was then the world’s largest oceanarium and arguably...
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Old News: L.A.’s Dangerous Streets Revisited
2nd Street cable car, circa 1889. (LAPL Digital Archives, Permitted Use) A week ago this blog brought you the news that L.A.’s streets have been ranked the nation’s third most deadly to pedestrians....
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L.A. in Quotes: An Ironic Reflection on the River
Broadway Viaduct, L.A. River. Photo: M.Imlay. “The Los Angeles River was a beautiful, limpid little stream with willows on its banks….it was so attractive to me that it at once became something about...
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Then and Now: Temple City’s Lost Theater
Source: LAPL Digital Archives Opened circa 1940 and named for land developer and Temple City founder Walter P. Temple, this proud single-screen theater once stood on the corner of Rosemead and Las...
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Friday Forum: Name Your Lost Landmark
Photo: StockXchng From the Temple Theater, to the Brown Derby, to the Garden of Allah, Southern California seems to boast more bulldozed landmarks than living historical structures. (Joni Mitchell’s...
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Hollywood’s Legendary Bronson Caves Are Just a Stone’s Throw Away
Bronson Cave in Griffith Park. Photo: M. Imlay. Recognize this gaping oriface in the Hollywood Hills? If you don’t, you obviously weren’t a fan of the 1960s Batman television series or numerous other...
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Time Warp: Hollywoodland’s Immortal Gates
Hollywoodland gates, 1923. Source: LAPL Digital Archives Brand spanking new 87 years ago, the Hollywoodland real estate development welcomes a handful of vintage automobiles through its Beachwood...
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Time Warp: William Desmond Taylor’s Sensational Death Scene
The murder site today. Photo: M. Imlay. Today it’s a Ross parking lot, but on the evening of Feb. 1, 1922, the tract at 404. S. Alvarado was a Mediterranean bungalow court — and the setting for...
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The Rise and Decline of Historic Route 99
Photo: M. Imlay We’ve all heard you can “get your kicks on Route 66,” but would you feel just as fine on Route 99? While less iconic than its cross-country cousin, Route 99 also has a storied past. It...
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An Out-of-This-World Moonsuit
NASA-JPL image. The year was 1960 when NASA development engineer Allyn B. “Hap” Hazard donned his stellar design creation to take a runway strut around Pasadena’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)....
View ArticleMemory Lane: 1950s Los Angeles
Automobiles with fins cruising broad boulevards and open freeways; street cars and paper boys; well-dressed people lining up to dine at the Pantry; industry and commerce — these are just a few of the...
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Pussycat, Pussycat, Where Have You Been?
Whittier's abandoned Pussycat. (LAPL Digital Archives) Historical preservationists have some very strange bedfellows… Don’t ask me how I stumbled across it, but this offbeat San Diego Reader piece by...
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Weekend Matinee: An Incredible Collection of 300 Hot Rods
Founded by the late Robert Petersen in 1948, Hot Rod Magazine is known throughout the automotive world as a car-culture icon. To celebrate its 65th anniversary, the publication did the seemingly...
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Photo Find: What a Real SoCal Smog Attack Used to Look Like
Smoggy LA, 1968; Herald Examiner Collection, LAPL Those who lived in the Los Angeles basin from the 1940s through the 1980s remember how bad it once was. So bad your eyes watered. So bad your lungs...
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Photo Find: The Long-Gone Childs Grand Opera House, Circa 1929
Childs Grand Opera House; LAPL Digital Archives Yet another landmark long gone, paved over and forgotten… Here in all its Victorian garishness is downtown Los Angeles’ Childs Grand Opera House, once...
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Happy Halloween!
Herald Examiner, LAPL Digital Archives The caption for this 1949 Herald Examiner photo reads: “Having a drippingly good time over a barrel of apples is pretty Diane Smith, practicing on October 29,...
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