Charles’ 
Slide of the Week: February 24th, 2005
Los Angeles City Hall Sidewalk, 1959
Blue jean clad second and third grade Glassell Park Elementary School students board a big yellow school bus in front of City Hall. They’re on a Field Trip. How fun! In the background on the left is the Los Angeles Times building. It still stands. The Sunkist Building is on the right. It was bulldozed about 1969. Chances are the school bus is still in service
Did it ever occur to you that school buses and Kraft Macaroni and Cheese are the same color? Did it ever occur to you that downtown Los Angeles is just like Disneyland? The Freeway is Autopia; the Gold Line between Union Station and Chinatown is like riding the Monorail to Adventureland. Olvera Street is a Main Street USA-Adventurland-Frontierland combo; Clifton’s Cafeteria, the most atmospheric eatery in town is Frontierland with a little Bear Country mixed in; The Bob Baker Marionettes, downtown since 1961, is more than Fantasyland; The Music Center is Tomorrowland and the Walt Disney Concert Hall is the Castle, the Castle of the future.
That is just the tip of the iceberg of the places that make the heart and soul of Los Angeles just like a theme park. Come along and join the tour and you too will never see the city the same way again! It’s the other “Happiest Place on Earth.
Here’s to you and to Downtown Los Angele
Charles Phoenix
Los Angeles
February 2005
Sets this Slide belongs to:
Los Angeles
One Comment on “Los Angeles City Hall Sidewalk, 1959”
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February 25th, 2007 at 5:23 pm
Waaaaay off in the background, that is probably a PCC streetcar on the most popular line of what used to be the Los Angeles Railway/Los Angeles Transit Lines: the “P” line, that traversed East L.A. to Mid-City, mainly on First Street and Pico Blvd., ending its trip at the streetcar loop at Pico/Rimpau (that’s why there’s a bus transfer station there to this day, known disapprovingly to some as the “Crackton Turnaround.”)
In spite of its assumption by the first Los Angeles MTA in 1958, the streetcar still sports its LATL “fruit salad” paint scheme of pastel green, yellow and white. It probably will be repainted in the MTA paint scheme of dark green, mint green and white sometime soon, but, shamefully, it will run in service for only 4 more years after that, when streetcar service ends in 1963.