Lost New England Goes West Archives

Lost New England Goes West: Santa Monica, California (2)

June 11, 2016 by Derek Strahan

Another view looking north from the pier in Santa Monica, around 1910-1930. Image courtesy of the University of Southern California Libraries and the California Historical Society.

The view in 2015:

Like the view in the previous post, these two photos show some of the changes that have happened along the beach in Santa Monica over the years. The most prominent building in the first photo here is the Windermere Hotel, visible in the upper center of the photo. It was built in 1909 and was demolished in 1962 to build Pacific Plaza, the tall apartment building that stands on the site today. Just to the left of it in the 2015 view is the Georgian Hotel, which was built in 1933 by the owners of the Windermere, probably only a few years after the first photo was taken.

This post is the last in a series of photos that I took in California this past winter. Click here to see the other posts in the “Lost New England Goes West” series.

Lost New England Goes West: Santa Monica, California (1)

June 11, 2016 by Derek Strahan

Looking north from the Santa Monica Pier in Santa Monica, California, around 1905. Image courtesy of the University of Southern California Libraries and the California Historical Society.

The view in 2015:

These views shows Santa Monica looking north from the pier along the Palisades, the steep cliffs separating the city from the beach below. When the first photo was taken over a century ago, Santa Monica had already become a popular beach resort.. At the time, the area above the Palisades was still sparsely developed, but there were number of amenities along the beach, including a bath house that offered visitors the option of swimming in a heated indoor pool rather than the relatively cool ocean. The beach was crowded on this particular day in 1905, with the attire of the visitors reflecting the styles of the time, including men in dark suits and straw hats, women in long white dresses, and swimmers dressed in nearly full-body bathing suits.

Today, not much is left from the original photo except for the Palisades. Even the beach itself has been extensively altered and widened, and a large parking lot now sits on this spot. In the distance, hidden from view, the Pacific Coast Highway now runs along the bottom of the Palisades, beneath the modern hotels and condominium buildings that now line Ocean Avenue on the top of the cliffs.

This post is part of a series of photos that I took in California this past winter. Click here to see the other posts in the “Lost New England Goes West” series.

Lost New England Goes West: Venice, California

June 11, 2016 by Derek Strahan

Looking east on Windward Avenue in Venice, around 1912. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

The scene in 2015:

Venice was founded in 1905 as a beach resort town just west of Los Angeles. Its developer, tobacco company owner Abbott Kinney, envisioned it as the “Venice of America,” complete with canals, gondolas, and Venetian-style architecture. Among the architectural features in the first photo are the arcades, or arches, along all of the buildings here on Windward Avenue. The building on the left at the corner is the Hotel St. Mark, which was built in 1905, and beyond it are a number of other matching buildings. On the right side, many of the buildings are not yet completed, with a row of columns marking where arches would eventually be built.

When the first photo was taken, Venice had already become a popular tourist destination. The white sign in front of the hotel advertises some of the city’s attractions, including the aquarium on the pier (admission 10 cents), the scenic railway, gondolas and boats on the canals, and the Venice Plunge, which was a heated indoor salt-water pool on one of the piers.

The city was successful in attracting tourists, but politically it was unable to support itself, so in 1926 the residents voted to be annexed by Los Angeles. This brought some major changes, which included filling in most of the canals and building roads on top of them. Venice’s decline continued during and after the Great Depression, and by the 1950s it was in serious decay. The piers were demolished by the 1960s, as were many of the historic buildings here along Windward Avenue and elsewhere in Venice.

Today, Venice is known for its unique countercultural aspects, including artists, street performers, and an inordinate number of medicinal marijuana dispensaries. A number of small shops now occupy the space where the Hotel St. Mark once stood, but a few of the buildings from the first photo still remain, including the one in the center of the photo and another further down Windward Avenue. Over the years, Venice has been used as a filming location for many movies and television shows, several of which feature this particular view here. The opening scene of Orson Welles’s 1958 film Touch of Evil shows the St. Mark a few years before its demolition, and a 2003 episode of Gilmore Girls includes several scenes from this section of Windward Avenue.

This post is part of a series of photos that I took in California this past winter. Click here to see the other posts in the “Lost New England Goes West” series.

Lost New England Goes West: Farmers Market, Los Angeles

June 9, 2016 by Derek Strahan

The Farmers Market at the corner of 3rd Street and Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles, around 1953. Image courtesy of the University of Southern California Libraries and the California Historical Society.

The view in 2015:

The Farmers Market in Los Angeles opened in 1934, and since then it has become a major landmark in the city. Originally, it consisted of a few farmers who parked their trucks here on the property and sold produce, but over the years it grew into a permanent facility as seen in these two photos. The property was owned by Earl Gilmore, the son of Los Angeles oil magnate Arthur F. Gilmore, who also built the nearby Gilmore Stadium and Gilmore Field in the 1930s. The light towers of Gilmore Field can be seen in the distance on the left side of the first photo; it was home to the Hollywood Stars minor league baseball team from 1939 until 1957, and was demolished in 1958 after the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles and brought Major League Baseball to the West Coast.

Because of its proximity to Hollywood, the Farmers Market has attracted its share of celebrities. Around the time that the first photo was taken, stars such as Marilyn Monroe and Ava Gardner as well as Dwight D. Eisenhower all made appearances here, and this trend has continued over the years. Today, the market’s exterior appearance has not changed significantly since the first photo. With a variety of restaurants and other vendors, it is a popular tourist destination, and is in many ways comparable to the much older Quincy Market in Boston.

This post is part of a series of photos that I took in California this past winter. Click here to see the other posts in the “Lost New England Goes West” series.

Lost New England Goes West: Pismo Beach, California

June 9, 2016June 8, 2016 by Derek Strahan

The view looking north along the shore at Pismo Beach, California, around 1906. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Panoramic Photographs Collection.

Pismo Beach in 2015:

I couldn’t perfectly recreate the first photo, since it was taken a thousand feet or so in the air, but the second photo shows roughly the same view from the ground. The 1906 photo was taken by George R. Lawrence, an early pioneer of aerial photography. He developed what he called a “captive airship,” which was a kite-supported camera that could take pictures up to 2,000 feet in the air, all while being controlled remotely from the ground. In many ways, Lawrence’s invention was an early version of a drone, and like modern-day drones, it was seen as a potential surveillance tool for the military. However, it was also commercially valuable, as demonstrated by Lawrence’s most famous photo, which was taken in the aftermath of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. He sold prints of this image for $125 each (over $3,000 today), earning around $15,000 from it, or close to $400,000 in 2016.

While he was in California, though, San Francisco wasn’t his only job. Hoping to promote tourism to their new resort, the El Pizmo Beach Company hired Lawrence to photograph Pismo Beach, especially their El Pizmo Inn in the lower right of the photo. The inn included the “Tent City,” which consisted of several block of tents that measured 14 feet by 18 feet and could be rented for $6 per week. Entertainment at the resort included the dance pavilion, which is the building in the lower center of the photo with the cylindrical-shaped roof.

In the 109 years between the two photographs, not much is left from the original image. The hills in the distance have not changed much,but Pismo Beach itself has become the resort city that the 1906 owners of the El Pismo Beach Company probably hoped it would be. In the years after the aerial photo was taken, the tent city continued to grow, attracting many visitors from San Francisco who sought warmer temperatures in the southern part of the state. By the early 1930s, most of the tents were replaced with more permanent cottages, and the dance pavilion burned down in 1945. There are few landmarks left to identify the original image, although, as a point of reference, the pier in the distance on the left side of the 2015 photo is at about the same spot where the dance pavilion once stood.

This post is part of a series of photos that I took in California this past winter. Click here to see the other posts in the “Lost New England Goes West” series.

Lost New England Goes West: Main Cell Block, Alcatraz, San Francisco

June 9, 2016June 6, 2016 by Derek Strahan

Alcatraz guard Carl T. Perrin, on duty on March 21, 1963, the last day of the prison’s operation. Photo taken by Keith Dennison, courtesy of the National Park Service.

The scene in 2015:

The corridors between the cell blocks at Alcatraz were named after major streets; this particular one was known as Broadway, and it was the central corridor in the facility, separating blocks B and C. The block had three levels of cells, and most of the inmates were kept in either B or C blocks, with the more isolated D block being used for isolation and punishment, like solitary confinement.

Because Alcatraz was intended for the nation’s most problematic federal prisoners, the prison enforced many strict regulations. Each cell housed only one person, and conversations between inmates were strictly limited to discourage them from coordinating escapes. “Lights out” was at 9:30 P.M., and, unless they worked a prison job, the inmates spent nearly 23 hours a day in their cells, passing the time by reading, smoking, and occasionally playing musical instruments or making artwork. Images of the interior of the cells can be seen in this earlier post and this one.

This post is part of a series of photos that I took in California this past winter. Click here to see the other posts in the “Lost New England Goes West” series.