Photo Find: Dissuading “Suicide Bridge” Jumpers, 1937
Colorado Street Bridge barricade. Herald Examiner, LAPL Digital Archives Finally frustrated by the shocking number of jumpers drawn to Pasadena’s Colorado Street Bridge, officials took the drastic...
View ArticleWilliam Mulholland: LA’s Gravity-Defying Water Super Genius
William Mulholland; Wikimedia Commons You have to hand it to William Mulholland. While he may forever be reviled as the man who sucked the Owens Valley dry, he did so through miraculous fetes of...
View ArticlePhoto Find: A River (Once) Ran Through It
Paving the Los Angeles River, 1938; Herald Examiner, LAPL Digital Archives A construction crew works to pave the Los Angeles Riverbed in this old Herald Examiner newspaper photo, circa 1938. Given how...
View ArticleWeekend Matinee: How People of the 1920s Saw the Future
From convertible automobiles, to automated doors. From animatronics to animated high fashion. It’s amazing how much 1920s futurists got right — except perhaps the peace and prosperity part.
View ArticleOctober 1, 1910: The Morning They Bombed the Los Angeles Times
Bombed-out Los Angeles Times Building, 1910; LAPL Digital Archives This photo shows the smoldering aftermath of the tragic bombing of the old Los Angeles Times headquarters at 1st and Broadway 103...
View ArticlePhoto 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...
View ArticleBlightseeing: MacArthur Park, Then and Now
Boating in MacArthur Park; Herald Examiner, 1949 Then: A family of three motors around LA’s MacArthur Park Lake (once known as Westlake, at Alvarado and Wilshire) aboard a boat christened “Tarzan” in...
View ArticlePhoto Find: Sister Aimee Semple McPherson Goes to Rest
Sister Aimee Semple McPherson at rest; LAPL Digital Archives In life they say “Sister” Aimee Semple McPherson was the most photographed woman of her time. In death they say she went to her grave with...
View ArticleEverything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Los Angeles Beer Industry
Eastside Brewery gets ready for Prohibition repeal; LAPL Digital Archives Except for a brief hiatus during Prohibition, beer production in the Los Angeles area actually dates to the 1850s. For those...
View ArticlePhoto Op: Westlake Theater, Then and Now
Westlake Theater, 1937; Herald Examiner Collection, LAPL Above: A view of Los Angeles’ Spanish Baroque-style West Coast Westlake Theatre, located along Alvarado Street across from MacArthur Park, as...
View ArticleVideo: The Biltmore as Hollywood’s Go-To Hotel
Filled with marble and wood carvings, murals, frescoes, tapestries and other irreproducible art and architecture, the downtown Biltmore stands mythic and in a class all its own among Angeleno Hotels....
View ArticleThe Hollywood Reporter Names LA’s “Most Haunted” Locations
Ship of ghosts, courtesy the Queen Mary Hotel website The word is out… The best place to rest with the angels is the City of Angels. That’s apparently because, for the dead as well as the living,...
View ArticleSlideshow: Tripping Out to Angelus Rosedale Cemetery
Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR. Now this is what a real graveyard should look like: Mausoleums, tombs, monuments and headstones pushing up like daisies from the grounds — not boring flat markers...
View ArticlePhoto Op: The Brunswig Building
The old Brunswig Drug Co. building, left; Michael Imlay Located along Main Street across from the old town Plaza in Los Angeles, the Brunswig Building is among the city’s first five-story edifaces. It...
View ArticlePhoto Find: Fido’s Lost Resting Place
LA Pet Cemetery Sign, circa 1937; LAPL Digital Archives A 1930s sign welcoming visitors to the now-defunct LA Pet Cemetery at 2500 N. Highland Ave. The animal boneyard was eventually razed to make way...
View ArticleVideo: Parks and Recreation, 1950s Edition
Ahhhh… Boating on any of LA’s placid park lakes. Picturesque Pershing Square with its lush gardens and open-air political debates. Children’s pageants and picnics at Griffith Park. A genteel day...
View ArticlePhoto Find: Scary Society Ladies Prepare for Halloween, October 1949
Herald Examiner Collection, LAPL Digital Archives Originally run October 27, 1949, this Herald Examiner photo’s caption read: “Getting in the mood for their annual Jack o’ Lantern Ball are Mrs. John...
View ArticleLos Angeles’ Shameful Chinese Massacre
Bodies of Chinese Massacre victims in the jail yard; LAPL Digital Archives Contemporary Southlanders are sadly all too familiar with the 1965 Watts and 1992 Rodney King riots, but it was 142 years ago...
View ArticleSlideshow: Old Chinatown Gets Erased
As a follow-up to yesterday’s post on the infamous 1871 Chinese Massacre, here’s a brief slideshow of LA’s first Chinatown, which sprang up in the late 1800s along the Old Plaza’s eastern fringe. As...
View ArticleThe Avila Adobe: LA’s Oldest Haunted House?
Olvera Street's Avila Adobe; Michael Imlay Built in 1818 by wealthy rancher and former mayor Francisco Avila near the center of Olvera Street, the Avila Adobe is considered Los Angeles’ oldest...
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