Oviatt Library Digital Collections | Item Viewer

This photo, found online in the Oviatt Library at CSUN, shows the “California Bank” at the corner of Van Nuys Blvd. and Sylvan Street in 1949. What dignity this average scene possesses, so unlike the chaotic garbage pit of today! There is a classically inspired, two story solid brick bank, with eight vertical pillars. Admire the decorative lamppost; a traffic signal that delights in its moving arms of “STOP” and “GO”; the diagonally parked automobiles turned elegantly towards the sidewalk curb; and the lovely “California Bank”: a local, not international, financial institution.

What we DO NOT SEE are SUV’s with pounding ghetto rap music, graffiti marked walls, plastic signs, trash on the streets, slutty girls with tattoos, homeless persons, steel bars on the windows, reflective glass facades, McDonalds.

1949 may have been an imperfect time for Los Angeles and Van Nuys, but it was a demonstrably more livable and pleasant time. As the above image attests, this era had a certain grace and formality now absent.