Tripping Out to SoCal’s Oldest Family Graveyard
Workman-Temple Mausoleum Are you ready for another brief tour of L.A.’s haunting past? Off the beaten track, in the City of Industry, you’ll find a small but significant cemetery, known simply as El...
View ArticleDetail Shot: Million Dollar Bison
Photo: Michael Imlay A close-up of the many bison and gargoyle reliefs adorning the old Metropolitan Water District (MWD) headquarters at 307 S. Broadway, Los Angeles. Designed by architect Albert C....
View ArticleL.A.’s Ouija-Inspired Bradbury Building
L.A.'s Famous Bradbury Building. Photo: Michael Imlay “Take Bradbury Building. It will make you famous…” That was the message George Wyman supposedly received from his dead brother, courtesy a Ouija...
View ArticleDetail Shot: San Pedro’s Friendship Bell Pagoda
Friendship Pagoda. (M. Imlay) This week my camera and I had the chance to get up close and personal with the Korean Bell of Friendship, located in San Pedro’s Angels Gate Park. This shot captures some...
View ArticleTime Warp: The St. Francis Bungalow Court
St. Francis bungalows today. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, nothing says Southern California Living like a bungalow court — and with good reason. They originated here, specifically in the City of Pasadena. In...
View ArticleClose-Up: Monrovia’s Scary Aztec Hotel
Monrovia's haunting Aztec Hotel. Built in 1925 in the Mayan Revival style, Monrovia’s sadly dilapidated Aztec Hotel is a notable example of the once-proudly offbeat motoring attractions that...
View ArticleDetail Shot: Finnish Lines in Pasadena
The Tupa's porch. Porch scene at the Finnish Folk Art Museum on the Pasadena Museum of History grounds. Once a Swiss-chalet style garage, the building was originally designed in 1910 as part of the...
View ArticlePhoto Find: Really Old, Old Town Pasadena
Old Pasadena, late 1800s; LAPL Digital Archives Straight from the Security Pacific Collection of the Los Angeles Public Library (LAPL) Digital Archives, here’s a shot of Pasadena’s Colorado Blvd. near...
View ArticleWill South Pasadena’s “Haunted” Rialto Theater Ever See a Revival?
Rialto Theater, Mike Imlay. Every respectable theater has its ghost stories, but a ghost cat? Yet that’s just one of several creepy tales circulating about South Pasadena’s crumbling Rialto Theater....
View ArticleMONA: Preserving Our Neon History
Stock xchang image Sometimes a community’s history is written in neon. This electrified gas-tube type of lighting was first introduced in Paris in 1910. Since then, it has been more than a form of...
View ArticlePhoto Find: Former LA City Hall, 1889
Old LA City Hall; LAPL Digital Archives Situated on Broadway between 2nd and 3rd Streets, this Romanesque Revival building served as LA’s City Hall from 1888 until it was demolished and replaced by...
View ArticleShould LA “Re-Envision” Pershing Square? Or “Restore” It?
Postcard of Pershing Square in the 1920s. One of LA’s oldest parks, Pershing Square originally opened in 1866 as a lush, tree-filled public space. Then it met the 1980s and was turned into a concrete...
View ArticleCrystal Cathedral Goes High Church
Christ Cathedral; Wikimedia Commons What does it take to convert a Protestant worship space to Catholic? A lot more than you’d think, especially when the space in question is Orange County’s famous...
View ArticleVideo: Los Angeles Then and Now
This brief video goes back to the early to mid-1900s. In some cases, it’s amazing how much has changed. In others, how little.
View ArticlePhoto Find: Dissuading “Suicide Bridge” Jumpers, 1937
Colorado Street Bridge barricade. Herald Examiner, LAPL Digital Archives Finally frustrated by the shocking number of jumpers drawn to Pasadena’s Colorado Street Bridge, officials took the drastic...
View ArticleWilliam Mulholland: LA’s Gravity-Defying Water Super Genius
William Mulholland; Wikimedia Commons You have to hand it to William Mulholland. While he may forever be reviled as the man who sucked the Owens Valley dry, he did so through miraculous fetes of...
View ArticlePhoto Op: Westlake Theater, Then and Now
Westlake Theater, 1937; Herald Examiner Collection, LAPL Above: A view of Los Angeles’ Spanish Baroque-style West Coast Westlake Theatre, located along Alvarado Street across from MacArthur Park, as...
View ArticlePhoto Op: The Brunswig Building
The old Brunswig Drug Co. building, left; Michael Imlay Located along Main Street across from the old town Plaza in Los Angeles, the Brunswig Building is among the city’s first five-story edifaces. It...
View ArticleSlideshow: Old Chinatown Gets Erased
As a follow-up to yesterday’s post on the infamous 1871 Chinese Massacre, here’s a brief slideshow of LA’s first Chinatown, which sprang up in the late 1800s along the Old Plaza’s eastern fringe. As...
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