The Great Depression was in full swing and Los Angeles was a place where people also struggled to make a living, even though photographs show new buildings, apartments, public works, farms and industries. It seems everyone was working and the city was thriving despite hard times.
One thing that stands out is the spectacularly tidy streets with swept sidewalks, clean curbs, and not one sign of shopping carts filled with garbage or mountains of trash.
Mouth of Santa Monica Canyon, looking northeast, early 1930s.
Looking north from Palmer Drive
E 11th and Crocker
This was during the most severe economic downturn in American history, yet Los Angeles functioned as a functioning city, where the presentation of tidiness, order, and cleanliness was foremost.
There were many poor, destitute people in the 1930s. But Los Angeles did not create a dystopian city where people shit in the streets, or lived along the road, or slept on bus benches, or roamed mentally ill in parking lots, or set up tents on residential streets for outdoor trash camping.
Cheap structures on Eagle Rock Boulevard, looking east from north of York Boulevard
There was a crisis and it was called the Great Depression, but government and people, here in this city, were not seized in panic and unable to respond or knocked over by circumstances.
They ran the city well, with pride, and these photographs of ordinary life in the City of Angels, 85 years ago, should fill our modern, jaded hearts with shame for what we have allowed Los Angeles to become under Mayor Garbageciti.
Wilshire Bl.
Drive-in market, northeast corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Hamilton Drive
“Sheila James Kuehl (born February 9, 1941) is an Americanpolitician and former child actor, currently the member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors for the 3rd District. In 1994, she became the first openly gay California legislator and in 1997, she was the first woman to be named Speaker pro Tempore in California.[2] Kuehl most recently served as a Democratic member of the CaliforniaState Senate, representing the 23rd district in Los Angeles County and parts of southern Ventura County. A former member of the California State Assembly, she was elected to the Senate in 2000 and served until December 2008. She was elected to her supervisorial post in 2014. In her capacity as Supervisor, she also sits on the Metro Board, First 5 LA, and is the County appointee to the South Coast Air Quality Management District.” – Wikipedia
Thursday, October 26, 2017
Metro Los Angeles Board
Re. Metro “Option A” Plan for Light Rail Yard in Van Nuys
Dear Board Members:
As you are aware, Metro Los Angeles is planning to erect a light rail service yard in Van Nuys. “Option A” is one of four sites proposed by the agency.
“Option A” would seize land NE of Kester and Oxnard, along four blocks, covering 33 acres, and demolish 186 buildings straddling the Orange Line Busway. For the purpose of this letter the area will be called “Kesterville.”
We are vehemently opposed to this plan. Here is why:
186 small, family run businesses, employing an estimated 1,500 workers, occupying affordable, mostly rented space would be destroyed.
It would leave a gaping hole of emptiness blocks from downtown Van Nuys, obliterating plans for a denser, walkable area.
Option A will take out yet another engine of well-paying, highly skilled jobs and products, made in America, employing many immigrants and local residents.
It needlessly destroys a successful, close-knit pocket of creativity and commerce, manufacturing, and makers of unique goods and services found nowhere else in Los Angeles.
It will reduce fair priced, rentable industrial space in a city starved for it, in an area that is already served by public transport and contains more affordable housing.
Option A will subtract from the city what it is seeking to promote region wide: affordability, mobility, economic innovation, small business, local industry, ethnic diversity, and community cohesiveness.
The Van Nuys Neighborhood Council opposes Option A.
Within this dense, vital district are found a historic music recording studio, a maker of top quality metal hardware utilizing 3-D printers and advanced machinery, several fine custom cabinet builders and their craftsmen, an expert stained glass artisan whose work embellishes homes, churches and historic buildings, a restorer of Vespa motorbikes whose facility is the only one of its kind east of Pennsylvania, and a 20,000 SF shop where vintage Mustangs are serviced and restored. There are painters, carpenters, builders, and experts repairing racing boats, and several professional recording studios for musicians.
MacLeod Ale, a craft brewer of UK style ales, opened in 2014 and has become a highly successful and respected beer maker. They are located on Calvert St. adjacent to the Option A area.
Kesterville is a place of creativity, productivity, sustainability and viability. Organically, without government coercion or corporate ownership, it is an incubator of ideas and products. It has been alive for decades, growing more prosperous and doing well in the heart of the oldest part of the San Fernando Valley.
If Kesterville is destroyed, it will recall the most heartless obliterations in Los Angeles history: the razing of Chavez Ravine for Dodger Stadium, the flattening of historic Bunker Hill for corporate behemoths, and the bulldozing of West Adams for the Santa Monica Freeway.
Dodger Stadium, 1961. On land formerly housing poor Mexican families at Chavez Ravine.
1959:Evictions from Chavez Ravine.
1959: Families are Forcibly Evicted from Chavez Ravine to Make Way for Dodger Stadium.
1935: Boys in Chavez Ravine
Van Nuys has already suffered social, economic and environmental neglect. Why compound the injury by robbing it of yet another burgeoning and blossoming area that could become a new district of small businesses, restaurants, cafes, and even urban, in-fill small housing?
We urge you to respond to this civic emergency by opposing “Option A” and the demolition and eviction of sound businesses that support many thousands of families struggling to survive in a brutal time of economic insecurity.
We are in favor of light rail, and public transportation in general, but ask that it be constructed with greater sensitivity to the community so that it is compatible within the urban landscape and causes the least amount of damage to communities within our city.
With $1,013,430,131 LA building permit valuations recorded for the first nine months of this year, all indications point to 1955 topping any previous year in the history of Los Angeles County construction, according to Ouentin W. Best, chairman of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce Construction Industries Committee.
The January through September figure marks only the fourth time that construction activity in the county has gone over the billion dollar figure in any one year. The Chamber report pointed out that since three months still remain giving the 12-month total for 1955. There can be little doubt that the year will record an all-time high, Houses Gain 14%! Unprecedented construction during the same nine months of last year. A total of 51,067 residential permits have been issued to date in 1955, compared to 47,699 at the three- quarter mark in 1954, A total of 15,522 building permits were issued during the month of Septemberwith a valuation of $885,428.934.
[Permits were issued for the construction of 32,008 units in 2016, down 6 percent from 34,034 the year prior] (Source: KPCC)
Population of Los Angeles County in 1955: 5.1 million
Population of Los Angeles County in 2017: 10.2 million (State of CA)
And in Van Nuys, CA, at the corner of Oxnard and Sepulveda, Builders Emporium, established 1948, was doing a booming business.
Not only did it sell building supplies, tools, and machinery; it also seems to have had quite a golf and fishing, sporting goods department.
What follows are mid 1950s publicity photos connected to the store. They were published in the Valley Times Newspaper (LAPL). Their original, great captions cannot be improved upon by satire.
Here they are:
Photograph caption dated April 29, 1955 reads “Motion picture and TV Eyeful Norma Brooks gets close supervision on proper stance to be used when teeing off from attentive golf pro Jim Curtis, preparatory to free four-day clinic of Builders Emporium.” The store is located at 5960 Sepulveda Boulevard in Van Nuys.
Builders Emporium, 5960 Sepulveda, Van Nuys, is launching a new sports department and this outdoor group is helping to announce the fact to the public. Left to right, back row, are Sherry Hall, Rea Regal (sic) (Miss Van Nuys) and Kathy Sellers. Merchandising Manager Pete Campbell is on the left while Doye O’Dell, popular TV cowboy star, is examining the rifle on the right.
Circa 1957.
October 13, 1955 : “First slice of spectacular 40-foot birthday cake is being served by Victor M. Carter, store president, at ninth anniversary celebration of Builders Emporium, Sepulveda Boulevard and Oxnard street, Van Nuys. Cake was served with ice cream to thousands of visitors who joined in festivities.”
May 29, 1956: “Pete Campbell escorts Ree Regul, Miss Van Nuys, on tour of enlarged fishing section of sports goods department of Builders Emporium, Van Nuys. Recently expanded fishing section will carry complete line of equipment to satisfy needs of all fishing enthusiasts, according to Campbell.”
April 9, 1955: “‘This bunny is a honey’ say the ‘small-fry’ making their pre-holiday visit with the Builders Emporium Easter Bunny at Sepulveda and Oxnard in Van Nuys. The ‘B. E. Bunny’ passed out thousands of free chocolate rabbits to the youngsters at the giant hardware store.”
August 30, 1955 reads “Claire Weeks, Miss Van Nuys of 1955, learns workings of $239 De Walt Power Shop, which will be awarded Sept. 22 as grand prize in Builders Emporium toy building contest. One hundred additional prizes will be awarded. All toys will be donated to Childrens (sic) Hospital, City of Hope and St. John’s Children’s Hospital. Polk Riley, power tool department manager, demonstrates outfit. Entry blanks are available at Builders Emporium.”
I’m not the first person to happen upon these colorized photographs of old black and white images. But I’ll write about it anyway.
“Imbued With Hues” is Patty Allison’s project to bring to life vintage photos and somehow breathe new life into dead people and lost places. 25,000 follow her on Facebook.
She is in her mid 50s, and lived in Portland, ME where she worked as a dog groomer, but now resides in Long Beach, CA. She has been doing her special hobby for four years and she has a special affinity for old cars. This information I learned from a 2013 article about her.
A lot of her color choices are guesses, especially when it comes to clothing.
But the results are glorious.
Below are some selections, heavily weighted towards Southern California.
1937 Cord 810 Phaeton – Marsha Hunt with director producer Cecil B. Demille
1932 Packard Twin Six 905 Coupe Roadster with Clark Gable
1929 Cadillac V8 2-Door Convertible Coupe with Body by Fisher, Style #8680 at Bullock’s Wilshire, Los Angeles, photo taken in 1938.
1932 Packard Sport Phaeton and owner actress Jean Harlow
Parade of Progress. February 1956 – E Street, San Bernardino, California, Old Route 66.
1937 – Riette Kahn at the wheel of an ambulance donated by the American film industry to the Spanish government. Grauman’s Chinese Theater in the background.
1929 – Cord front wheel drive in front of National Auto School, Southern California.
1927-28 Model L Lincoln Limousine
Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, CA, early 1950s.
In the 1920s, fanciful, imaginative, inventive gas stations were built all over the Southland.
They mined every era in history, borrowing minarets from the Middle East, Chinese pagodas and southwestern adobe ranch houses.
But the most memorable and dazzling ones looked forward to the future, sweeping in with illuminated glass signage, polished steel pumps and graphically inventive designs.
Attendants wore clean uniforms, and proudly serviced cars, luring drivers in with not only prices, but entertainment.
One station offered an all female staff, the other clothed their workers in jodphurs.
Comic book characters like Tarzan, dinosaurs from the pre-historic age, and Pegasus from Greek mythology, all gathered to sell gasoline.
One hundred years later we see that the people on the front lines in clean uniforms were the public face of a dirty business, one that has led the planet Earth into endless wars of terrorism, despotism, the melting of the icebergs and the degradation of our oceans, rivers and air. We are still fighting over oil, even as it swallows us up from the pipeline plains of Alberta to the violent sands of Arabia, even as its toxic vapors diminish human, animal and plant life in every corner of the globe. Fracking into rock for oil makes earthquakes in Oklahoma. But its addiction is unending. Everyone wants oil, from the warriors of ISIS to the kid in his 1988 Honda on his way to Valley College.
Our price for a cheap ride to the nail salon ends in the extinction of nature.
But for thirty cents a gallon, a family in Los Angeles once had a joy ride on the smooth road, going from shopping center to beach with the top down. And those days are gone forever.
Here in Van Nuys 
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