Originally Posted by sopas ej (Post 4559501)

BTW, I love the 1908 map of Los Angeles, ethereal. I like looking at the now vanished street grid, before the freeways and before the destruction of Bunker Hill. It's also cool to see 10th Street denoted as such before it was renamed Olympic Blvd.

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality (Post 4556985)

Here's a photograph of the ill-fated Los Angeles High School on Olympic.
This was the third L.A. High School.

http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/4...sangeleshi.jpg
usc digital archive

Originally Posted by mayxbo5 (Post 4560647)

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f2...abrea/1921.jpg
^Aerial view of Rancho La Brea, 1921. The street cutting diagonally through the middle of the photo is Wilshire.

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f2...abrea/1931.jpg
^Same angle, different elevation 10 years later in 1931. You can see the La Brea Tar Pits more clearly in this picture just south of the oil derricks.

Originally Posted by JDRCRASH (Post 4560691)

That growth is just amazing.

Originally Posted by Beaudry (Post 4556375)

Am I going to complain about needing to go to bed, or am I going to talk about oil wells? Well, duh.

Yep, those are derricks, a lot of people assume that LA oil production is Wilmington/Long Beach/Signal Hill, and those are important to be sure, but later in the grand scheme of things...

There was nothing but a little seepy brea until Doheny's first shaft, fall of '92, which was near where Beverly crosses Glendale; by '95 derricks lined First Street. By '97 the area bounded by Figueroa, First, Union and Temple held over 500 producing wells--one could climb between derricks without touching the ground. Three out of every five barrels produced in California came from that field, and California produced a quarter of the country's oil. The big strikes in Signal Hill, Huntington Beach et al were still twenty years away.
Check out this map, 1906:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2490/...fe593f85_o.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2459/...ef087f6a_o.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2648/...308dd10f_o.jpg
...and this isn't even all of them (you'll notice there are none around the aforementioned Fig/Temple area, this is just a map of a certain sand, that is, a particular stratigraphic substructure).

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality (Post 4561330)

Great photographs mayxbo5.....welcome to the thread.


Below: You might find this photo interesting.
It's looking east on Wilshire from Fairfax in 1929.



http://img263.imageshack.us/img263/3...eastonwils.jpg
usc digital archive

Originally Posted by Chicago3rd (Post 4560546)

The Room 222 High School, Walt Whitman. It looked so beautiful...when I was a kid I wanted to go to High School there....well not the real one....Walt Whitman....had a crush on Pete.

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality (Post 4561508)

Here's another impressive view of the high school on Olympic,
this time with a streetcar in front.


http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/526...3rdhigh192.jpg
usc digital archive

Originally Posted by GaylordWilshire (Post 4561494)

It's interesting to see the site of the future May Co/LACMA, and that Fairfax was the western end of the famous Wilshire streetlamps (and the new "Miracle Mile')-- I saw Chris Burden's Urban Lights a year or so ago, but don't remember if the tall Wilshire lantern is among them. Anyway, that installation is great--best seen at night, of course--like being in a cathedral, as I once heard it put. Btw, What is that odd walled building with towered entrance on the site of the future Mays/LACMA?

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality (Post 4562071)

Below: Here's an interesting photo looking NE from Santa Monica Blvd.
and Highland Ave. in 1926.


http://img412.imageshack.us/img412/6...nefromsant.jpg
usc digital archive


I can't remember what's on this corner now.

Originally Posted by sopas ej (Post 4562114)

ethereal that pic you posted of Santa Monica Blvd. looking west from Western is very interesting to me; that bank building on the northwest corner still exists, as does the Sears building, which is the building in the background that you see with the tower. The tower still exists, though the building itself has been massively remodeled beyond recognition and looks horrible; looks like a 1970s remodeling, and even the Sears logo that's on the building now is from the 1970s, with that all-cap, red lettering.