Vintage Los Angeles Postcards, Part 3
Here it is... PART 3 in a series of posts featuring Steve DeGaetano's vintage Los Angeles postcards, purchased in the "One of a Kind Shop" in New Orleans Square. I'll bet Lillian Disney herself had put the cards in the shop! She was lurking in a corner to see if anybody would buy them. As before, the card captions are in orange, and Steve's additional comments are in blue. We've got five more scans today, so let's get to them:
LA-11: This card has no caption other than ”Spring Street, Los Angeles, California.”
Note the streetcar tracks in the middle of the street.
LA-12: This card has no caption other than “Plaza and Old Mission Church, Los Angeles, California.”
My comments: This card is postmarked December 1907. The writer says, “We are nicely settled for the winter. It is lonely here. 75 degrees in the shade.”
LA-14: “Typically Californian in its spacious and beautiful Spanish architecture, the new Los Angeles Union Station, built at a cost of $11,000,000 provides a setting which typifies to visitors the charm and hospitality of Los Angels and Southern California. The buildings and tracks cover 40 acres of ground; the station, which extends 850 feet along Alameda Street, is the gateway to Los Angeles’ Civic Center. Its lavish appointments and ultra-modern facilities make it the most attractive railroad station in America.” (See Union Station HERE).
LA-15: This card has no caption other than “Cahuenga Freeway, Gateway to Hollywood, California.”
“Cahuenga Freeway?” Most people today would know it as the Hollywood Freeway. It’s hard to see in this image, but in the median between the traffic lanes are tracks of the Pacific Electric “Red Cars.” The San Fernando Valley is just visible on the horizon. Universal Studios would be in the hills to the right.
THANK YOU, Steve DeGaetano! We'll have one more installment for you, coming up soon.
12 comments:
Major-
“Cahuenga Freeway, Gateway to Hollywood, California.”
I imagine that's the same as Fresno - Gateway to Yosemite.
(I wonder when it was changed simply to Cahuenga Pass).
Thanks to Steve and The Major.
I like the Spring Street card. Late 1920s/early 1930s? It almost looks like a 1950s photo, until you see the vintage cars. We can see Tinker Bell on her zip-line gliding across Spring Street.
Ooh, the 2nd image is even nicer than the first! I love that huge agave(?) plant in the (right) foreground.
L.A. City Hall hasn't changed much since the time of this postcard. I thought that black thing in the sky might be an airplane with an advertising banner. But I guess it's just some random dots from the printing process.
Well, we know precisely when this photo of Union Station was taken- 12:28 in the afternoon (as shown by the tower clock). Judging by the cars, this was taken sometime in the late 1930s? $11 million dollars was a huge sum back then!
The last card: Brush-covered hills and freeways- a perfect representation of the greater L.A. area.
Thanks, Steve. Nice images. Thanks, Major. Nice blog. :-)
We can see Tinker Bell on her zip-line gliding across Spring Street.
JB, that's Harry Houdini! ;-)
As for the last postcard, I've only ever known that area as the Cahuenga Pass part of the Hollywood Freeway. According to Wikipedia, this segment of the freeway through the Cahuenga Pass was only a mile and a half long, and was the first segment of the freeway to open (in 1940). It was not extended to Downtown L.A. until 1954.
Wikipedia also mentions that there were two different battles fought in the Cahuenga Pass, in the 1800s. And apparently, cannon balls are still found on occasion, during excavations. Who knew?
I have really enjoyed this series of vintage postcard posts! Thank you, Steve and Major!
I forgot to mention that segment of the freeway was indeed called the Cahuenga Pass Freeway when it first opened. I couldn't find an exact date for when the name was changed, but it seems like it might have been when the freeway was expanded beyond Hollywood, to Downtown L.A.
Thanks Major and everyone for the comments. Interestingly, embedded in the concrete overpasses in the Cahuenga Pass, you can still see metal attachment points for the overhead power lines of the Pacific Electric. Both City Hall and Union Station don't look much different today.
I don't call myself an expert re: the Caheunga Pass...for those not from LA: CAH-HUENG-GA....not "CAH-HUNG-GA"...but I certainly have driven on it perhaps thousands of times. For us "East Side" boys, this was our only route to the Valley...unless you wanted to go around through Glendale/Burbank....or over Coldwater/another canyon et al...the Canyons tend to be quicker when the Caheunga pass is a giant bottleneck, and if somethings going on at the Hollywood Bowl (like...every day during "the season") it's allll jacked up. That being said, this view is actually going TOWARDS Hollywood not away from it...the view in the distance is Hollywood, and you can see the giant cross over by the Ford theatre on the left. The lower street on the right takes you down to Highland, where you plonk right down in the Hollywood Bowls parking lot before getting into more extreme traffic. The road on the left now goes through down towards the more eastern streets in Hollywood: Vine, Gower, etc. As Bette Davis once said "Take Fountain"...(and that IS good advice), here, the Bu quote is "Take Caheunga to Barham"....which is going over that bridge to the left and head towards Universal...which gets you to Barham (going back over the freeway)...or Lankershim if you choose (more traffic) but takes you in a different direction: and Barham basically gets you to Burbank fairly quickly as it's going around the Universal Lot and into the Warners/NBC/Disney et al compounds. DON'T take the 101 to the Barham exit if going to Universal....take Caheunga "over the hill": you will thank me. If you are going to the West Valley: Sherman Oaks/Encino/et al....suffer through the 101: Major may have a more "secret" shortcut...every time I took Ventura it became an even worse nightmare. OK....that being said: that Cross on the hill has an interesting story, and it's actually owned by a church in Van Nuys....a philanthropist from PA was someone was involved in the infancy of the Hollywood Bowl...but she wanted more liturgical presentations...and the others wanted a broader spectrum of entertainment...so she bought and built the Ford Theatre on the other side of Cahuenga....it was called something else at that time....and that's why she put that cross up on the hill: which you can see sitting in the audience at the Bowl. For those of you who haven't seen a performance at the Hollywood Bowl...I highly recommend it as a lovely "picnic" night out...and even though there are tens of thousands of people it is a rather zen and quiet place. The last thing I saw there was the first "Sing a long Sound of Music"...which was (surprisingly to the promoters) a sell out....Charmian Carr (Liesel) did some MC work...and when the crowd was shrieking to have her sing "I am sixteen going on seventeen"...she DID: acapella...the crowd grew quiet, where we were all transported back in time...she sounded amazing...and when she stopped there was thunderous applause/screaming/and the crowd went WILD. It was like Sting or the Beatles had just performed. RIP Liesel. Julie was not there...however many celebs were...and Debbie Reynolds brought her grandkids and dressed them in the ACTUAL costumes from the draperies the kids in the movie wore....she was there like everyone else in the audience. What a fun night that was. Thanks Steve for taking me back to my "childhood" in Hollywood: three chapters after Disney. Thanks Major. Stay cool again today: another blistering heatwave!
Thanks for the very detailed and informative correction, Bu!
Thank you Major and Steve, and by extension, Mrs. Disney too.
These are all familiar views, made fresh in the flat coloring and laconic captions.
I can’t help hearing the these to Dragnet every time I see City Hall.
JG
*theme*
Re pronounciation, my LA native Dad always pronounced the middle syllable “Ca-Hu-en-ga. Also I noticed that there is a local pronunciation of “Los Angeles” where part of the middle is skipped and a hard “g” is kind of swallowed, “Los Ang-Les”. I had forgotten he said it this way until I rewatched Perry Mason and every character used it too. No idea if that is academically correct or not, but it was a real thing that I don’t hear any more.
JG
Nanook, hey, you have to admit that “Gateway to Yosemite” sounds pretty great!
JB, yeah I love old views of downtown like that Spring Street card shows. While I don’t go downtown as much as I used to, I will be there in about a month, it will feel like old times. I had to look to see what the “advertising banner” was - it’s just a blob! I wonder if that card was postally used? Sometimes the cancellation stamp bleeds through. You are right, $11 million was huge, and when you visit Union Station you can see why it cost so much. Beautiful tiles, custom bronze clocks, and all sorts of other wonderful details. While I tend to use the Sepulveda Pass more than the Cahuenga Pass (unfortunately), that last card is a familiar view driving into “the city”.
TokyoMagic!, Harry Houdini? I oughta punch that guy in the stomach! He thinks he’s so great. It’s crazy to think of days when LA freeways didn’t criss-cross the whole area, even the idea of a freeway was still pretty new. Some of the older freeways were clearly designed before they knew that cars would be speeding along at 65+ mph. I want to find a cannon ball!
TokyoMagic!, my earliest memories of being aware of the Cahuenga Pass are from when my dad would listen to “news radio” and the “eye in the sky” traffic guys always talked about the backed up traffic there. The Pass, not the sky.
Steve DeGaetano, interesting about being able to see the attachment points for the powerlines of the Pacific Electric; I’ll have to see if I can spot them the next time I am on that route (though my guess is that I won’t see them!).
Bu, it’s always entertaining to hear how Google Maps pronounces things like “Cahuenga”. “Hueneme” is another good one. Depending on the time of morning, there is NO good way to get from the Valley (or Burbank) into LA,, since everyone knows about the canyons now. They can be terribly congested. I used to take Barham from Burbank when I needed to get into Hollywood after work, and it really was the way to go. You are right about that card looking into Hollywood; the other direction would show the Santa Clarita mountains at the north end of the Valley for one thing. I’ve taken Fountain a few times and always think of that Bette Davis quote. I would imagine most locals have figured out their own “best routes”, though there is never any guarantee of course. I was once stuck in the worst traffic heading to an event, and was stressing out so much, only to arrive and find that the event had been cancelled. Arg. I’ve only been to the Ford Theatre once, to see Charles Phoenix of all things. It was fun. Except that my girlfriend got mad at me (she got mad at me a lot) so I wound up going by myself, which was less fun. I haven’t been to the Hollywood Bowl since Disneyland’s 50th, which I am shocked to realize was 20 years ago. There have been shows that I’ve wanted to see, but the Bowl is so expensive now. I’m sure the Sound of Music thing was fun for fans of that film (which I have still never seen). The Go-Gos played there a few summers ago, and a friend went, they said it was the most fun they’d had in years. We haven’t had a summer heat wave yet, in fact just a few nights ago it was 62ยบ on a late July evening. But the heat is coming soon enough, and I’m sure it will be brutal.
Steve DeGaetano, you can just print out Bu’s comment for the next time you come to LA for traffic tips!
JG, your mention of Dragnet reminded me of the Vintage LA Facebook group, I love it when people take screen grabs from old TV shows like “The Rockford Files” to see what LA looked like 50+ years ago.
JG, my grandpa was an LA native too, he pronounced Cahuenga the way I hear most people say it, but LA is so big that I am not surprised that there could be regional differences. I always laugh when I listen to old radio broadcasts and some announcer will say “Los An-G-ugh-lees”!
Remember LA City Hall was legally required to be the tallest building in town, from its opening in 1928, until 1957, and not actually surpassed until 1966.
Another fun fact about that Cahuenga overpass, it’s that we’re also looking at Mulholland Dr. weaving upwards, which for all its fame is actually very challenging to find…this is its eastern terminus.
MS
The LA Stock Exchange building still exists, though the exchange does not. It merger with the SF Stock Exchange in the 1960s into the Pacific Stock Exchange, which then went fully electronic and closed the floors around the turn of the century. It merged into ArcaEx which was then bought by the NYSE a few years later.
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