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On February 22, 1929, hundreds of Angelenos crowded on the corner of 10th and Hope streets in downtown Los Angeles. They had come to celebrate the opening of a fantastical, four-story structure designed by esteemed architect
Bernard R. Maybeck. Broadcast over radio station KFI, the event was hosted by L.A. Mayor George Cryer and movie star Dolores del Rio. An orchestra played standards and Paul Taylor s Metropolitan Chorus sang popular tunes of the day.
May 21, 1928: A customer get service at a Muller Bros. Service Station in Southern California.
(Security Pacific National Bank Collection
As the bleak winter of 1862 dragged on into 1863, the isolated, ramshackle town of Los Angeles was visited by a terrifying scourge smallpox.
With its telltale fever and disfiguring skin rash, the highly infectious disease jumped from adobe to adobe, killing more than 100 people and sickening hundreds of others. If those numbers don t sound like much, remember L.A. had only 4,000 or so souls at the time and the outbreak wiped out half of its indigenous residents. The city s smallpox wagon, dubbed the black Maria, was a frequent and disheartening sight as it rolled through the streets carrying victims to the city hospital, or pesthouse, writes John W. Robinson in
President Trump after last week’s ransacking of the U.S. Capitol, unless Vice President
Mike Pence and the Cabinet agree to remove him under the 25th Amendment.
Pelosi’s plan, disclosed in a letter to colleagues, came as a second Republican senator Sen.
Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania joined Sen.
Lisa Murkowski of Alaska in calling on Trump to resign over his incitement of the mob that attacked the seat of Congress on Wednesday. It’s part of an intensifying push by lawmakers to force Trump from power before his term ends at noon on Jan. 20.
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Must-read stories from the L.A. Times
In the 1940s, Nick Gabaldón, an athletic, handsome student at Santa Monica High School, would often escape class to Bay Street Beach, a half-mile stretch of shoreline roughly between Pico and Bicknell Streets, by the Casa Del Mar hotel. Derisively called the Inkwell by some white Angelenos, Bay Street Beach was a haven for people of color.
Here, Gabaldón would bodysurf for hours, impressing two white lifeguards who loaned him a rescue board. With this heavy, 13-foot board, Gabaldón taught himself to surf, becoming the first documented Black surfer in America. He eventually took to riding the waves in Malibu, paddling six miles north and another six miles back, because he knew he would not be welcome walking on most of Santa Monica s beaches.