LA in the 1940's

[BinkieBaumont]

I have just watched the 1940's movie "possessed" it shows an LA street scape with trams/trolley cars, and lovely old Deco buildings, is it still there?

 

[Mr. 'H']

This is a subject in which I have a huge personal interest. Did you ever hear mention of the conspiracy by GM and the rubber companies to get rid of the streetcars? An awful shame.

BTW - you're referring to the '47 picture with Joan Crawford I take it?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFhsrbtQObI

 

[flipper]

Of course the trolly system is long gone but you can still find some of the old deco buildings, City Hall probably being the most noteable and recognizable. The theatre district is also pretty well preserved with all the old movie houses etc. And then there's Hollywood....My dad told the story of his first impressions of LA back around 1940. He was about 21 at the time, had hopped a freight train in Erie, Pa and headed west where he had an aunt and uncle living in LA. He fell in love with So California (the weather) and never left. In a lot of ways it's sad to see how it's changed so. Cheers, Flip

 

[flipper]

Mr H

The Red Car system was long gone by sometime in the 1950's I believe. It is true that GM (and Standard Oil) played a large part in doing away with the rail line. It was well traveled and served from Long Beach to as far east as "The Inland Empire", Riverside and San Bernardino. The idea was to bring in the new GM buses (which of course burned Standard Oil fuels) and the birth of the new "Rapid Transit District" followed. Flip

 

[Mr. 'H']

Thanks for the info Flip. It would have been an amazing place to experience living in the late 40s.

 

[flipper]

After re-reading your post Mr H, I had forgotten about the rubber co, it seems like it was Firestone? but I can't quit recall. They were all mixed up in it together I guess, GM, Standard Oil and Firestone..and then came the smog that I remember so well growing up in Riverside back in the 60's
Flip

 

[JennyLou]

I love LA, there is so much history. I always wished I could have been here in the 1940s. My granmother always tells me stories of how it was back then. What a difference it is today.

 

[lagunie]

Binkie - one of the biggest changes in the last fifty years has been the loss of space. Up until the 60s - Wilshire Blvd still had many empty lots. And little traffic. A drive from Hollywood to the beach along Santa Monica Blvd. took about 30+ minutes and you could find parking once you got there. Just before I left LA almost five years ago it took me almost twenty minutes to go just a few blocks from Fairfax to La Cienega along Beverly Blvd. during lunch hour traffic. The loss of space, the great increase of people and development make movies from the 40s and 50s seem quaint. Hollywood has been developed with a 'theme park' atmosphere for the day tourists and (again when I left, may be different now) at night a red zone for prostitution and drug addicts. I can remember how shocked I was when I first realized Sunset Blvd. (in the area where the old Schwabs drugstore used to be) was becoming a zone for streetwalkers. Lana come back!! Remember taking the red cars to school when I was a kid. Only problem was you had to step off the sidewalk to get onto the trolly and watch out for cars not paying attention.

 

[TM]

While there may have been some conspiracy to demolish the Red Line system, there was also another reason for its demise - the rise of the automobile.

There were thousands of miles of train tracks that shared and crossed over streets. As the use of automobiles grew, the amount of accidents between cars and trains grew. Eventually a choice had to be made - who gets the right of way? Cars or trains. Cars won.

We see a glimpse of this today with the light rail system that was expanded some years ago. Accidents between cars and trains are frequently reported. Usually the car tries to run the signal and get past the train. But today we only have a some percentage of surface rail that crosses roads. The problem was very real then.

Tony

 

[J.J. Gittes]

I live on the West Side and there are still signs of the Old Red Line. A few minutes away is a 1/4 mile of trolley track in a long empty space between two housing tracts. I like to bike around there and hang around. It's sad to stop and think that the system was shut down, It would really be nice to have compared to the buses. I'll get a picture next time I go there.
To the main topic, lots of Old L.A. is gone or hidden. Hollywood Blvd is just a bunch of smoke shops with streetwalkers and other characters. No Glamour to be found. There still are some old buildings and theaters on HW-BLVD, but that's about it.

 

[Mike in Seattle]

The Red Car still had some lines in operations in the early to mid 1960s.

 

[JimInSoCalif]

Around 1960 there was still a freight train, altho a very short one, that came down Santa Monica Blvd. occasional to Sepulveda Blvd. I am sure why because the only manufacturer of any size in the area that I can think of was Everest and Jennings who manufactured wheel chair. After the trains no longer ran, the tracks were still there for a rather long time.

I love Art Deco, but there is another older building that you might enjoy seeing in downtown L.A. That is the Bradbury Building with all of its lovely iron filigree. It has been used in a few movies, but I don't recall which ones. There may now be an admission charge.

Most nice old things don't seem to last in this city - instead we call Cleveland Wrecking and build something new, usually without much, if any, charm. I guess that is progress as we practice it.

 

[AmateisGal]

I just found a great photo stream on Flickr of LA in the 1940s.

Ansel Adams' Lost Los Angeles Found

http://www.flickr.com/photos/1000photosofnewyorkcity/sets/72057594083888984/

 

[John in Covina]

There are a number of areas spread through out LA where train tracks are still embeaded in the streets. Near to Union Station is the werehouse district and you find sections all over the place. Another thing is if you take Huntington Drive and go east from LA I was told the center island is there because it was a trolley right of way maybe the Redcar.

 

[Fletch]

I love LA, there is so much history. I always wished I could have been here in the 1940s. My granmother always tells me stories of how it was back then. What a difference it is today.

Today it is a vast urban sprawl. The Anti-New York, but just as citified, with many of the same preoccupations, urges and concerns (as well as many different ones).

Back then, I gather, there wasn't such a feeling of megalopolis, or the rule of the motor vehicle or The Industry. Those were just ingredients in the mix that would become a unified, asphalted, smog-colored SoCal.

Camino Real (Highway 1) at Pacific Avenue, Redondo Beach, circa 1949. '47-'49 Studebaker in foreground.

 

[John in Covina]

Things That Aren't Here Anymore - Los Angeles

The local LA PBS TV station KCET (28) has two programs that you can get on DVD that are about some of the really cool things that have been built over here in LA and the surrounding area. The legendary announcer Ralph Story has the intro and narration duties and they are old programs now but still valuable as to some of the fun, jumping and historic places around LA.

Things That Aren't Here Anymore
More Things That Aren't Here Anymore

I think if you go to their web site (KCET) you can order them.

They are 2 of my favorites that make me don't mind pledge week along with "A Hot Dog Program!" all great viewing.

 

[dhermann1]

The same thing happened in New York. Fiorello LaGuardia had an obsesion about getting rid of the trolleys. He, and so many others, thought they personified "old fashionedness", and wanted to completely replace them with buses.
In Brooklyn they just finished repaving Smith Street, part of which involved yanking up trolley tracks that had been paved over for at least 60 years. Sad.
Having read a few Raymond Chandler books, I've always wanted to see how much of his LA was still to be found. Not much, I guess, and a lot of the areas he describes (like Central Ave) are now severely gang infested. Not a good place to go sight seeing.

 

[Story]

If you like that time and place, check out James Ellroy's grim & gritty noire quartet :The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential & White Jazz

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Novels_by_James_Ellroy

 

[Fletch]

The same thing happened in New York. Fiorello LaGuardia had an obsesion about getting rid of the trolleys. He, and so many others, thought they personified "old fashionedness", and wanted to completely replace them with buses.

It was only natural, in a way. There were countless independent streetcar companies, some still running quaint 1890s wooden rolling stock. Cars stuck to the tracks couldn't maneuver around rising automobile traffic, and were limited in speed even on a clear route. And then there were the power lines, which reminded older folks of the snarl of overhead wires of the 90s. Diesel fumes and higher carbon monoxide levels must have seemed a small price to pay to that generation.

Indeed, busification probably worked pretty well until traffic volumes went up even further, and buses began causing the same old bottlenecks the streetcars once had.

A transitional technology (they're always interesting) was the trolleybus, a wheeled coach powered by overhead lines. These were used mostly in medium-sized cities like Des Moines, where they served from 1938-64, replacing streetcars AND even some pre-war gasoline buses.

General Electric sales material, 1950. Click to enlarge.

 

[Doctor Strange]

And don't forget Robert Moses - whose reign was vastly longer than LaGuardia's - who didn't add ANY track to ANY rail system in all his decades as NY's master builder, but built many hundreds of miles of roads, highways, expressways, and bridges... all for automobiles.