Going to the La Salle Market in the 1940s, Washington and Normandie, Los Angeles, California


When I first stumbled across this wonderful image, on the Duke University website, I really had no idea where it was. I sent an email to my number one history adventuring friend (who prefers to remain anonymous) and just said that it had an "LA feel". He determined that it's looking east on Washington Boulevard and Normandie Avenue in Los Angeles.


I was still skeptical (because that's what I do) because I had thought that the LaSalle Market was part of a chain, but it wasn't - it was the only one in town. And any doubt that the location was exactly right faded away when I saw that it was right nearby the Rosedale Cemetery (look over at the trees on the left). I went to the Rosedale website, and this is what I found:

Angelus Rosedale Cemetery

It was founded as Rosedale Cemetery in 1884, when Los Angeles was a small city of around 28,285 people, on 65 acres of land running from Washington to Venice Boulevard (then 16th Street) between Normandie Avenue and Walton and Catalina Streets, and often used by California politicians, notably former Mayors of the City of Los Angeles. The interments include pioneers and members of leading families who had a conspicuous place in Los Angeles institutions and the state.

Rosedale was the first cemetery in Los Angeles open to all races and creeds, and was the first to adopt the concept of the new approach of design called lawn cemeteries, where the grounds are enhanced to surround the burial places of the dead with beautiful and decorative trees, shrubs, flowers, natural scenery and works of monumental art. Among the more traditional structures, headstones and mausoleums, the cemetery also has several pyramid crypts.


My interest in history started when I lived in LA in my twenties, which started with my fascination with Hollywoodland, and went on from there. There's some interesting history in LA! But let's take a closer look at the La Salle Market.


It was right across the street from, believe it or not, a drugstore called Husbands Pharmacy. I haven't done any research on it yet, but my best guess is that it was someone's name.

The billboard provides an excellent clue to the date of this photo. Take a look at the lower right and you'll see the words "Non-rationed". Rationing started in 1942 in the US and continued until the end of war, but apparently you could get "Plenty good eatin'" of Albers Corn Flakes, and get as much as you wanted. 

This photo, by the way, was taken because of the billboard. Advertisers wanted to know if the billboards that they were paying for were all up and visible, so photographers went out to collect visual proof. The backgrounds are what interest me, but they're just a bonus. The people walking by are just incidental, like the people you see nowadays on Google Street View.


I have to admit to being fascinated by how street markings change. It looks like there were "safety zones" where pedestrians could stop and wait for traffic, and apparently the little bumps were there to tell drivers to stay out. Since I've never seen anything like that in a long life I have a feeling that this practice was discontinued quite a while ago. I'm also wondering how far back the California law that you gotta stop for pedestrians, even if they're not in crosswalks, goes back? As someone who loved to walk, I really like that when I lived in California, although it took some getting used to not having that law when I moved to Arizona.

Thank you for visiting LA in the 1940s with me!


Image from the Duke University Library Digital Collections.
If you like pictures of old-time Phoenix, please become a member of History Adventuring on Patreon. I share a LOT of cool old photos there, copyright-free, with no advertising. Your support makes it happen! Thank you!

Click here to become a Patron!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is ...
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the...
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me...
Read more