These are the Baldwin Village Shops, as photographed by Julius Shulman in 1952. It's his
"Job 1281: Robert Evans Alexander, Baldwin Village Shops (Los Angeles, Calif.),1952". The first shot shows the back of the shops from the parking lot. The nearest one seems to be a fine foods store called The Penguin.
An open-ended courtyard between the stores.
The parking lot with the Baldwin Hills behind.
The second half of the photoset shows the stores at night.
The Liquor and Spice House was at the front.
Next door was a laundry/cleaners and a Thriftimart.
The reason for this detail shot will become clear below.
All from
Getty Research Institute
A post on groceteria.com gave me an address of "3621 S La Brea at Rodeo" for the Thriftimart. The 1956 CD also lists a Van de Kamp's Holland Dutch Bakers at 3621 S La Brea. The laundry/cleaners is listed at 3625 S La Brea, and the Liquor & Spice House at 3629. The groceteria.com post has links to several pictures of the Thriftimart (including the last two images above) hosted by Flickr user srk1941. I'm assuming that's the same
srk1941 (aka Steven Keylon) who posts on these pages, so, Steven, any extra info you have would be appreciated.
The detail image above shows a Mobiloil station at the right. Next to it is a neon-lit pylon. Even zoomed-in I couldn't read the sign, but when I worked out the location, I realized we'd seen it before. From my earlier
post #25841, here's a daytime shot of Hody's.
eBay
To help visualize where all these stores and restaurants were, here's a 1952 aerial view. Thriftimart is just below the center, with the other Baldwin Village Shops below that. Hody's is the triangular building just north of Rodeo Road.
Historic Aerials
If this block seems familiar, we visited it recently for
Julius Shulman's 1963 photoset of Gibraltar Savings.