Imagining living in Los Angeles when it was smaller


Even though it's been many decades since I lived in Los Angeles, I remember thinking that it was outrageously huge. Not just in population, which of course it is, but in complexity, the freeways, the roads, the buildings. And even back then all of the communities had melted into each other, creating a Greater Los Angeles area that for many people goes all of the way from Ventura to Disneyland.

My first apartment in Los Angeles was in a suburb called Hollywood. To me, it seemed just about downtown, but really it wasn't. I had been built a loooong way from downtown, when Los Angeles was smaller. There would have been a fair amount of empty space between downtown Los Angeles and Hollywood, and then from Hollywood to the ocean. Communities were there, but they hadn't all grown together, like I saw.

My apartment, by the way, was in the Hollywood foothills, north of Franklin. And when you see photos of the construction of the new houses in those hills in the 1920s, you get a real feel for how crowded, and expensive, land was getting to be in more desirable areas, that is, areas that didn't require you to have to climb up the side of a mountain, and get into a lot squeezed into a tiny area hanging on the edge of a cliff. Nowadays it's hard to imagine, but before Hollywoodland was built, most people wanted easy access to the trolleys, to be able to walk to their favorite restaurants, stuff like that. Up in the hills wasn't seen as luxurious, it was seen as a way to get more house for your money. It took some convincing, but people bought into it.

In my imagination I wonder what it must have looked like to the people who lived there, and watched just about every square inch of land get covered up with houses, buildings, and paved roads. There was a time when there were wide-open spaces, places to hike, to walk, to breathe. It all went away, and it went away so long ago that nowadays you have to stretch your imagination to even picture it.

Image at the top of this post: the original Hollywood sign in the 1920s, which advertised a housing subdivision. The "land" was later removed, and the sign remains to this day, and it's difficult to imagine people wondering "who would want to live up there?"
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Comments

  1. wyattphxDecember 11, 2019 at 6:00 PM

    My grandmother's family moved to LA from Phx in 1922 when it was just starting to boom. Aside from a brief post-high school summer my grandmother always lived in Arizona, but my mom spent many summers vacationing in the LA area and they all knew their way around pretty well. I cringe when ever I have to drive anywhere in southern California lol

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