If there’s one thing I like better than digital photography, it’s vintage photos. I have a huge collection of them, mostly inherited from deceased relatives, but my collection pales in comparison next to this. (note: self-indulgent walk down memory lane follows)
From the UCLA Digital Collection: Changing Times: Los Angeles in Photographs, 1920-1990. You can search over 5,000 images of the LA area from the archives of the LA Times and Daily News. Even better — they’ve licensed them under a Creative Commons license (stand up and cheer!)
Grading work is underway on the Glendale Freeway – 11/1/1974
That dead-end stretch of freeway in the center of the photo was there for many years before they started work on finishing the interchange. Many of my friends were ousted from their homes under the eminent domain laws so they could build the freeway at all. My house is almost visible in this photo — it’s to the left of the dead-end and back toward the left.
Freedom Train, Glendale, CA 12-23-1975
I’m in this photo in the crowd — the choir sang for the bicentennial celebration that the Freedom Train commemorated.
PERFECTLY CLEAR–Couple enjoy unusual view of Burbank and Glendale from atop Griffith park. Santa Ana winds swept sky clean I grew up in a house in the upper right part of the photo.
A SOMBER THANKSGIVING –Robert Bray sits amid the charred rubble of his home of 18 years on Rimhill Road in Glendale fire area. 11/28/75 This was a devastating fire — one of many.
Glendale High School in 1956, before it burned down in 1964*
This archive is priceless, especially to anyone with roots in the Los Angeles area. It makes me want to finally get off my butt and scan all of my grandmother’s photos taken when she arrived in LA in 1917.
*What it looks like today:
GHS original
