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Tech NewsTrove of Architectural Photos Shows When LA’s Skyline Became Modern
At the dawn of the 1960s, Los Angeles lacked a true city skyline. A longstanding 13-story height restriction, in force since 1904 and only recently repealed in 1956, had created a downtown whose only vertical accent was the 32-story City Hall. And then a flurry of new high-rise construction in the 1960s, ‘70s, and 80s … Continued
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Tech News
Before 1948, LA’s Power Grid Was Incompatible With the Rest of the US
Before 1948, there was something funny about the Southland’s electricity. Plug in a clock from New York and it would lose 10 minutes every hour. Spin a record on a turntable from San Francisco and it would sound deep and drowsy. Some gadgets wouldn’t work at all. The problem? Southern California’s power grid ran on … Continued
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Tech News
When Anaheim’s Flying-Saucer Arena Touched Down Near Disneyland
Had one of Tomorrowland’s flying saucers gone missing? When the Anaheim Convention Center’s arena opened in the summer of 1967, it looked as if a spacecraft from another world had touched down directly opposite Katella Avenue from Disneyland. Designed by Los Angeles-based architects Adrian Wilson and Associates, the Space Age, Googie-style arena cut a striking … Continued
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Tech News
In Cold War LA, Nuclear Missiles Starred in Veterans Day Parades
That’s some serious military hardware parading down city streets, but no, this isn’t Moscow’s Red Square—it’s Long Beach, California. Coming only a month after the Soviet Union’s successful Sputnik demonstration, Long Beach’s Nov. 11, 1957, Veterans Day parade touted U.S. missile technology. One truck showcased a Nike anti-aircraft missile. Another displayed a Regulus cruise missile … Continued
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Tech News
Trolley Tracks Once Ran Through the Beaches of Los Angeles
Trolleys once rivaled the crashing surf in the soundscape of Southland beaches. Along much of the Southern California coast from Santa Monica to Redondo and from Long Beach to Newport, a red dot—a distant Pacific Electric car—would appear down the shore. As it neared, the click-clack of the wheels moving over the wooden ties, the … Continued
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Tech News
In 1966, the Angels Landed in Anaheim’s Futuristic Baseball Stadium
How could the Angels call any place but Los Angeles their home? After all, the club’s name directly referred to the city, and there had been a team named the Los Angeles Angels since the first decade of the 20th Century, when the minor-league Los Angeles Looloos wisely opted for a more dignified nickname. So … Continued
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Tech News
This Giant Searchlight Once Scanned L.A. From the Mountains Above
As twilight faded over Pasadena on September 9, 1894, an artificial sun flickered to life for the first time. High above town in the San Gabriel Mountains stood a wonder of the new electric age: a 60-inch General Electric searchlight, by many accounts the largest in the world. This massive projector first dazzled audiences at … Continued
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Tech News
These Massive Hangars in Orange County Once Housed WWII Airships
Rising conspicuously above the red-tile roofs and big-box stores of suburban Tustin, California, these two massive hangars stand as monuments to a lost age of aviation, built when lighter-than-air dirigibles held promise as the future of air travel—and air warfare. They rank among the largest wooden structures in the world. Step inside one, and the … Continued
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Tech News
Photos of Orange County, Calif., When Oranges Actually Grew There
Orange County, California, hardly lives up to its name1 anymore. A few relict orchards may survive, but today the endless citrus groves that once clothed the county in green are only a memory. Before a postwar population boom triggered an almost wholesale conversation of farmland to suburbia, much of Orange County appeared decidedly rural. In … Continued
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Tech News
What if Your Dream Home Had a View of an Oil Derrick?
Its promoters billed it as an exceptional housing tract—buried utility lines, curving concrete roads, and a hilltop site whose ocean views gave the subdivision its name: Monte Mar Vista. With country clubs bordering it on three sides, residents of the so-called “central jewel in a Tiffany setting” could easily play nine holes before breakfast. There … Continued
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ScienceSpace
L.A. Glows Red in This Photo From the International Space Station
Viewed from this unfamiliar angle and in the infrared rather than visible spectrum, Los Angeles reveals itself in new ways. City lights and thermal radiation create an abstract, russet shape that’s barely recognizable as metropolitan Southern California. Black voids dominate the frame; many of these are hills and mountain ranges, but the emptiness at the … Continued
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Tech News
Photos of L.A.’s Most Famous Streets When They Were Dirt Roads
Like some of the very people who drive on them, a few Los Angeles streets have achieved the height of fame. Sunset Boulevard lent its evocative name to Billy Wilder’s classic film noir. Pasadena’s Colorado Boulevard appears on millions of television screens each New Year’s Day as the route of the Rose Parade. And to … Continued
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Tech News
Did Disneyland’s Main Street, USA, Inspire Better Urban Design?
Walt Disney didn’t set out to revolutionize urban design when he created Disneyland—that’s what his Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, or EPCOT, was for. But whereas EPCOT never became anything more than a sort of permanent world’s fair, it was Disneyland and especially its Main Street, USA, that ultimately changed the way we think about … Continued
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Tech News
This Remarkable Palm Tree Couldn’t Decide Which Way to Grow
Many of us can sympathize with this fan palm in Pasadena, which in its roller-coaster youth apparently struggled to find its way. Trees of this species (Washingtonia robusta) don’t often have trouble deciding which way is up; they usually grow into the vertically oriented “skyduster palms” that punctuate L.A.’s horizontal skyline. But something disrupted this … Continued
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Tech News
Before the Hollywood Sign Found Fame, Others Signs Dotted LA’s Hillsides
HOLLYWOODLAND’s voice was not alone. Other hillsides also spoke. Across Los Angeles in the 1920s, signs announced new real-estate subdivisions in big block letters perched high above the city. BEVERLY CREST. BRYN MAWR. TRYON RIDGE. Time has largely forgotten these other signs. One still rusts away in the chaparral day, toppled and discarded long ago. … Continued
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Tech NewsAnimated Map Shows How Paved Roads Spread Across L.A. County
Is the L.A. of 2014 driving around on a road network built for the L.A. of the 1980s? That’s one conclusion two researchers at Arizona State University draw from their above data visualization, which uses building records from the Los Angeles County Assessor’s Office to infer the age of the metropolis’ roads. Green represents the … Continued
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Tech News
L.A.’s 1930s Extension of Wilshire Blvd. Left Urban Scars
The message was clear: Los Angeles was not afraid to reshape its urban form to accommodate the automobile. Over the course of a few months in 1931, workers cleared a wide swath through three dense downtown blocks, demolishing buildings, tearing up foundations, and filling in basements—all to extend an automobile thoroughfare, Wilshire Boulevard, from Figueroa … Continued
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Tech News
Arriving Soon in Southern California: A New Golden Age of Train Travel
If we really are witnessing the dawn of a “new golden age of train travel,” there are few better places to see it take physical form than the Southland. In Orange County, the arches of the Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center, or ARTIC (above), have been rising across the freeway from Angel Stadium. It’s scheduled … Continued
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Tech News
The Hollywood Sign Originally Read “HOLLYWOODLAND”
Looking at photos of the Hollywood Sign in its early years is a little like seeing the Statue of Liberty with a third arm, or the Golden Gate Bridge with a second deck. The sign has become such an effective icon of Los Angeles that we assume its present configuration must conform to its Platonic … Continued
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Tech News
This USGS Map Treats Disneyland’s Matterhorn as a Real Mountain
Can you blame the U.S. Geological Survey for having a bit of fun when when it mapped Disneyland? This 1965 topo map from the United States’ official mapping agency seems to treat the theme park’s Matterhorn—a 1/100 scale model of the Alpine peak—as a real mountain. The map labels the summit and gives its “elevation” … Continued
Nathan Masters
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