The Alexandria Hotel at 501 South Spring Street became Los Angeles’s first five-star luxury when it opened on February 12, 1906. It also served as the city’s main social center from 1906 to the end of 1920. The hotel appears in Haunted by History Vol. 1. I’ve included a few photos of the hotel through the years. Check back often because this […]
Above photo: Colorado Street in Pasadena, c. 1880. Colorado Street leading into Pasadena in 1884. The opening day of the small, but important, Los Angeles & San Gabriel Valley Railroad, which provided train service from from downtown Los Angeles to Pasadena. Two years later, it became the California Central Railway, before becoming […]
As we all know, Hollywood is not a city. It is a neighborhood, perhaps the most famous one in the world. Here is a short history told through photos. Come back often because there is a lot to add. The Six Mile House, named for its distance to Los Angeles, was a liquor/wine bar […]
Pictures of Santa Catalina Island thru the years. Above photo: 1953. “Camp Clemente,” a temporary campground somewhere on Catalina Island in the late 1800s. A monster-size black sea bass weighing 384-pounds was caught with a rod and reel off Catalina Island by Franklin Schenck of Brooklyn, NY. Photo dated August 17, 1900. It […]
The Los Angeles Athletic Club, designed by architects John Parkinson and Edwin Bergstrom, was nicknamed “the Club” shortly after it opened in 1912. Its address is 431 West Seventh Street. According to Photoplay Magazine, the Los Angeles Athletic Club quickly became the “capital of the screen rialto – the Lambs, Players and Friars rolled into one.” […]
In May 1914, Universal Studio officials broke ground for a brand new motion picture plant in the San Fernando Valley. Construction commenced on June 28th and Universal City, off of Lankershim Blvd., officially opened on March 15, 1915. Its inauguration featured bands, speeches, cowboys on horseback, celebrity sightings, food, beverages, and fireworks. The new municipality covered […]
This turn of the 20th Century postcard is confusing because it claims that Long Beach, California, had the longest beach on the Pacific Coast. However, Long Beach Peninsula in Washington State is considered the longest beach in the United States (some say the world, though this claim is disputed). If that isn’t confusing enough, several […]
The den of the Hollyhock House located at 4808 Hollywood Boulevard (near Sunset and Vermont), circa 1939. Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright for oil heiress Aline Barnsdall, it was built between the years 1917 and 1920. In 1927, Barnsdall donated the house and surrounding property to the City of Los Angeles in order for it […]
Norma Shearer and Louis B. Mayer attending Jean Harlow‘s funeral at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale on June 9, 1937. (LAPL 00115420) Five Sing Babies sculpture from Glendale’s Forest Lawn Memorial Park back in the 1940s, maybe earlier. I’m not sure if it is still there today. In 1963, approximately 1.5 million people visited the Forest Lawn […]
A canal in 1905. The photo was taken the same year the Venice Canals project was completed. (LAPL) A mother and child enjoying a gondola ride through a Venice Canal in 1907. The canals were barely two years old at the time this photo was taken. (LAPL 00005810) Circa 1910. A gondola ride, […]