History The History Of Los Angeles

Wow, did this trigger a flashback. I hadn't thought about this TV series in years.

 

Ride The Last Of The Red Cars-Los Angeles April 1961

 

Wow! Talk about memories, I remember dedicating "Maybe Baby" on Art's show one day after school at Scrivner's. That's the same drive-in where I tooled in with my newly chromed engine without a hood on my '50 Olds. It really looked pretty. Then the thing died and the battery was dead. Had to get some guys to push me out of the drive in. Oh, the humiliation!

 

The Scrivners where I had my episode was on Imperial, but there was also one on Crenshaw not too far from all the aircraft factories in Inglewood.

 

At the Auto Show in L.A. in 1929 which was held inside a huge tent, a fire started taking the whole show with it. Eventually cars were removed to a body shop for salvaging.

 

This show happened at the peak year of a 9 year rise in the stock market (where it had increased 10x in valuation!)
That fire was March 5, 1929 & millions were lost in an hour.

The show's blanket insurance policy alone paid out over 1.2 million: a fraction of the true loss. This was only one in a series of bad events; & three weeks later (right before all the 30-day insurance checks would have been issued) the market started to slip.

That was March 25, 1929. The market hickupped & slid farther right thru September. On October 19 it dropped like a stone & didn't recover for 10 years.

 

For those of you that like visors on you car, not my cup of tea, but prices reasonable. Made here in L.A..

 

PumaGirl..... welcome to the HAMB, but your first post is supposed to be in the Intro thread, per the rules. Not my rules, but the HAMB rules. Of course, you are not the first to ignore the rules. Having said that .... if the pic you are referring to has mislabeled Westlake as Bonnie Brae, just know that the photo captions you are referring to are from the USC Library Digital Archives. It is certainly possible that they mis-ID'd the street, or it is a typo. Since this seems to be your stomping grounds, I would bet you are correct. Thanks for chiming in. Cheers!

 

Remember the Pike, Long Beach, CA?

 

Hey, they growed RAT Rods in L.A. Lookie !!!

 

I have a horse that come from the Pike's carousel.

 

I wish it was still there instead of that mini mall that's there now.

 

My aunt's house, 6616 2nd Ave back in the 40's. My little brother and I would ride the Santa Fe passenger train from Barstow, she would meet us at Union Station and, since she didn't drive, we would trek out here on the red cars and city busses. We used to skate the sidewalks around the block with no thought of danger - now, this area is just a few blocks from Watts, and a pretty scarey place from what I hear.

 

Looks like it's still there​

 

Cypress Park neighborhood


Hill Street & Sunset (LA County Library)


Main Street, mid-1950s...it was pretty seedy then, places to not go included the New Follies Theater, live burlesque, I never went, of course...



Pep Boys in Van Nuys....none of us would admit going there, but most of us did.


Sunset & Vine - early '50s (remember when we could tell the year and make of the cars...who cares today?



Valley Blvd, El Sereno


Looking East from Fort Moore Hill, I remember well the gas tanks, one of the first things you saw when you arrived in Los Angeles from Pasadena.
Photos from the LA County Library collection

 

Born in Inglewood,Ca. 1932, These pix bring back many memories!!

 

This video post in a new thread (below) by chevyhound is right up the Boss' original thread motive. Think you can enjoy the people-watching and vehicle-watching better if you leave off the audio track of the corny officer training crap. Fantastic downtown LA time capsule from '40s.

 

1954. Culver City Speedway. 12 jalopies Turn-1.

 

^^^ And if you didn't know... this is where all the old Fords went... the oval trackers wrecked them by the thousands because they were so cheap in the 1950's - after gas rationing had stopped and new cars started coming out after WWII / Korean War. Gary

 

....And if the oval trackers had never wrecked all the old Fords by the thousands, and all the old Fords were still in existence today by the thousands, they would all have the value and relevance of a 1970 Ford Pinto......

 

3457 Fletcher Dr., this is a current photo of an old shop I worked in back in 1957, during summer vacation, and it's amazing how little it has changed since then. If you take away the iron fencing, and the block walls, it would look just as it did nearly 60 years ago. It was Bob Johnson's Automatic Transmissions back then - he hired me as a green kid and taught me how to remove and install the transmissions. All the repair work was done in-house. He had a Japanese guy that came in on Saturdays and did all the "difficult ones" (the Jetaway was his specialty). Very fun job.

 

View attachment 3114260

 

Oops, Los Angeles, around '48


Lynwood, around '50. That picture of Lynwood is looking north on Long Beach Blvd. at Fernwood. The train depot building on the left still exist , they moved it from that corner to a park across from city hall on Bullis Ave. (thanks to flyboy89 for the information)



Caption: Getting ready for the Mexican Road Race...no other information (thanks to 50fraud: The car is a Siata 208 S coupe, with a body by Balbo. They ran a Fiat 8V engine, which was a 2 liter 70° V8 made in very limited numbers -- around 200 total.


They used to make cars in Los Angeles, 1950





There were several auto factories in Los Angeles, I remember a Studebaker plant..,.all gone now


Highland Park, a Los Angeles suburb


Lankersheim Blvd, '40s..........(all these photos are from the Los Angeles County Public Library collection)

 

^^^ That picture of Lynwood is looking north on Long Beach Blvd. at Fernwood. The train depot building on the left still exist , they moved it from that corner to a park across from city hall on Bullis Ave.

 

View attachment 3114306
They used to make cars in Los Angeles, 1950

My 51 AD was built in Los Angeles. I remember the Ford plant in Pico Rivera (the area was first called Rivera until the city merge with the town of Pico, I believe in 1958).

 

And my 51 Studebaker was also built in LA. Never knew they had a plant there until I bought mine and researched the VIN.

I worked in the parts department at the Ford dealership in Redondo Beach when I graduated from H.S in 1957. I made many trips to the Ford parts depot on Bandini Blvd just off the LB Freeway. That may have been in City of Industry. Maywood-Bell Ford was also a place I had to pick up parts from on a regular basis.

 

My P15 was also made in LA.

 

Bandini Blvd off the 710 sounds like the City of Commerce. The City of Industry is next to La Puente, off the 60 and Azusa .