Jimmy is a relatively new member that recently spent a ton of time scouring the photo archives of the Los Angeles Public Library. In doing so, he found hundreds of photos from the 193... <BR><BR>To read the rest of this blog entry from The Jalopy Journal, click here.
Even in El Lay we drive on the right side of the road... Was this photo taken BEFORE the onset of traffic jams as we know them today? Is that a body laying in the back of the stake body??? Where are the homies - I don't see no homies, bro! Can't be El-Ay...
Thanks to BrerHair for the photos. I have looked through L.A. Lib. photos many times and am always glad to see car photos. The Automobile Club Of So. Cal. donated a great many of their photos to be stored in this collection.
On the western edge of Los Angeles and Santa Monica city limits. This photo was taken by one of my photographer mentors, Tom Thompson. Can you imagine building a "shrine" like this today? It's just a gas station, but in Los Angeles anything to do with the automobile was honored, even the gas stations. and, this one was a mile or so to the east
The Merle Norman Cosmedics business in downtown Los Angeles. These photos were also taken by Tom Thompson and were given to the Nethercutt Museum for their archives last year. when we took the tour. The Merle Norman Co. is the sole financial support for the Nethercutt Museum. Free parking and free admission. Go, if you ever come to L.A. http://nethercuttcollection.org/Visitor.aspx
I would like to see a now and then shot of the parts stores and gas stations... anyone up for finding what they (or where they used to be) looks like today?
The board track was Beverly Hills Speedway and was near Wilshire and Santa Monica Blvds. Beverly Hills High and the Regent Beverly Hotel now stand on part of the property. Also, image no. 19 in the original post shows author/historian Griffith Borgeson with one of the two Miller 91 front drive Indy cars that he bought from the family of Ettore Bugatti in the '50s. Cheers, Kurt O.
While in Borders recently, I looked through a coffee table book devoted to the history of LA. You gotta see this book....must be about 15"X18", 10-15 pounds, 400-500 pages, for a hundred bucks...full of photos from all eras. It covered culture, architechture, politics, crime and a fair amount of hot rodding. Von Dutch, for instance, had a whole page.
I think the second gas station in post #15 was on Wilshire down near Lincoln maybe?? When I was a kid my Nana lived near there and I'm pretty sure that is the building we used to pass on the way to her appartment. My aunt lived in L.A. from the mid-30's till her death in the early 1990's, and she said that L.A. was paradise until the end of WWII. When the war ended the returning G.I.'s got off the boats in SoCal, they saw no point in going back to the farm or the snow back home so they just stayed in the warm breezes and orange groves. They, of course, were the hotrodders that we all love, but to her they killed what made southern California great: By the early 50's it was gettin awfully crowded...
Hope I don't fuck this up. My goal is to keep these uploaded to the same place so they'll remain viewable......But, I've fucked this up before.
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