Found on EBay – Thomas Bros. Map

This 1940s vintage Thomas Bros. map of Los Angeles has been listed on EBay. These maps and street guides – which show the city before freeways – are entertaining and can be useful references for anyone researching the history of Los Angeles. I rely on them often at the Daily Mirror HQ in tracking down streets that have vanished over the years. Bidding on this map starts at $4.99.

School Board Sells Downtown Property

Clare Briggs on the day after Halloween.

Nov. 14, 1919: Here’s one of the problems of research – a story about the sale of Mercantile Place, which is so well known that the reporter doesn’t say where it is.  June 12, 1904: Aha! It was between Broadway and Spring Street, and 5th and 6th streets. Sept. 3, 1906: The Board of Education closes the Broadway and Spring Street entrances to Mercantile Place.   Feb. 15. 1924: The remodeled Mercantile Place opens as the Mercantile Arcade Building—an indoor shopping center. View Larger Map   Voila! The Broadway Arcade via Google maps’ street view.

Nude Man Prances on Bunker Hill

Nov. 14, 1909: The problem with identifying the man gamboling about the top of Angel Flight* without clothing is that none of the women who complain to police have taken a good look at him. And Eddie Foy offers advice to aspiring actors: “When you next visit a theater, note how few real actors there are in the company. With some, every word spoken is distinct, every action suits the word and the audience clearly understands, not only what the actor is doing and saying, but why he is doing and saying it. On the other hand, note the indistinctness and the mealy-mouthedness of the majority.” *At least that’s how it appears in this story.

Pro Hockey for L.A.

Nov. 11, 1959 Would L.A. warm up to ice hockey? Bob Hannam apparently thought so. Described in The Times as a Pasadena insurance man and president of a local amateur league, he was the front man for an International Hockey League team that would start playing in the Sports Arena in 1960. The plan, if approved by the Coliseum Commission, would be to expand the league into Los Angeles and San Francisco. If the Cow Palace (perhaps the weirdest name ever for a sports arena) didn't add an ice rink, the league would add a second L.A. team for one season to play under a Hollywood name. There's so much about this I find puzzling. Didn't L.A. have an eye on bigger fish than a minor league hockey team? Seems strange to me that given the Dodgers' incredible success, the city didn't work on getting better tenants for the new Sports Arena. Maybe the Lakers were already quietly talking to L.A. And the idea of putting two teams in L.A. and naming one Hollywood, that sounds strangely familiar. Anyone for the Los Angeles Kings of Hollywood? -- Keith Thursby

The Problem of Vice

Clare Briggs on golf.

Nov. 6, 1919: A judge blames gambling and other forms of vice at a Spring Street hotel on the lack of a segregated vice district. "It is one of the penalties we have to pay and that hotel managers have to run the risk of, because of the reform in this country and in most of the civilized world, which has resulted in wiping out those districts."

U.S. Approves Project to Clear Bunker Hill

Guess what happens after a plumber connects a butane line to Crestview, Fla.'s water supply Someone, we're not sure who, reminisces about Halloweens of the past. I figured out how to make the "ticktack" the woman describes, but the first problem is finding a wooden spool. War Admiral dies ... Racketeer Frankie Carbo admits having a role in boxing ...And Ernie Nevers plans pro football for Oakland.

Oct. 31, 1959: The federal government approves $58 million for urban renewal of Bunker Hill. The Times' Ray Hebert notes that the extensive project to clear "the substandard downtown area" won't cost local taxpayers a dime. By 1966, "the ultramodern commercial and industrial center envisioned on Burnker Hill will be a reality," Hebert says. In a phone conversation, former Daily Mirror mystery guest Pier Angeli tells ex-husband Vic Damone that she's slashed her wrists after he informs her that he plans to remarry. Police rush to her Bel-Air home to find her crying but uninjured.

Halloween Pranks

A cheese elephant from “The Terrors of the Tiny Tads” by Gustave Verbeck/Verbeek. A five-passenger Cadillac is stolen – police say it’s a prank.

Oct. 31, 1909: Three motorcyclists are charged with going almost 30 mph, in violation of the city ordinance … The proprietor of the Optic Theater is charged with letting people stand in the aisles … Four deputy district attorneys move out of crowded offices at the Central Police Station … And a husband is sentenced to 50 days’ for having “encouraged his wife to lead a dishonorable life for the pecuniary gains it would bring for him.”

Paul V. Coates – Confidential File, Oct. 28, 1959

Nippon Women Split on Retaining Geisha     LADIES DAY IN TOKYO:  The flowery era of Madame Butterfly is dying, but not quite dead in the postwar life of Japan.     Under the democracy dictated to them by Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Japanese women got the vote in 1946.     Since that time, 11 of them have become prominent members of parliament.  There is a very active, very huge, very persuasive League of Women Voters.  Women are beginning to outnumber men at political rallies.     And women are responsible for pushing through a law that banned prostitution for the first time in Japanese history.  It took them five tries in parliament to get the bill through, but they finally did it.     So, while a surprising number of them still wear the kimono and still make the pretense of gentle subservience to their men, it's the women who seem to be running things in today's Nippon.      Mrs. Satoko Togano, a socialist member of parliament, told me the other day: "We voted out prostitution on practical grounds.  We are women.  And since the war, there are many more of us than there are men.  For a girl to find a husband is difficult enough.  Prostitution only made it more difficult.     "And," she added, "as socialists, we voted it out on ethical grounds.  Prostitution has no place in modern Japan.  It's feudalistic."     But, oddly enough, these same socialists didn't consider the system of geisha, where girls from poor families were traditionally sold into training by their parents, to be equally feudalistic.     "Geisha," Mrs. Togano said, "is part of this country.  It sis cultural.  Not economic.  It doesn't violate our principles of socialist reform.  And the Japanese people - men and women -- would never accept it being banned."     However, according to her opposite number in the Japanese Diet, Mrs. Masa Nakayama of the conservative Liberal Democrat Party, geisha is merely a more delicate word for prostitute.  And, in practice, it IS an economic menace to the security of the Japanese home. His Family Still Intact     "The man who visits a prostitute," she told me, "goes there for an hour or so.  Even though it's morally wrong, it doesn't have to destroy his family life.     "But the man who takes a geisha may decide to keep her as a mistress.  He must pay her a monthly sum.  If she has children by him he must support them.  And his wife and family, because of that, must suffer.     "They will tell you," Mrs. Nakayama said, "that the Japanese wife doesn't mind the geisha, because geisha when she meets the wife of a patron always stalks to her politely, in the language of a servant.     "But that is nonsense," the Japanese lady politician told me.  "No woman wants to share her husband with another.     "And," she added, "there will be no real progress for women in Japan until we outlaw the geisha girl."

Women in Little Tokyo Charged as B-Girls

And all this time, I thought people were joking about winning the Irish Sweepstakes.  The prolonged steel strike puts 6,100 local General Motors employees out of work. The affected factories are GM's Chevrolet, Fisher Body and truck plants in the San Fernando Valley and the Buick-Pontiac-Oldsmobile plant in South Gate. Note: GM called it the Van Nuys plant, but the factory was actually in Panorama City.

Oct. 28, 1959: Women working in a Little Tokyo restaurant are charged with violating the law against B-girls. San Francisco’s ballpark is nearly ready, with an enormous parking area and seating for 44,000, the Mirror says … and Mickey Mantle says he wouldn't be surprised if the Yankees traded him.

Grauman to Remodel Rialto Theater

Oct. 27, 1919: Sid Grauman has big plans for the Rialto theater on Broadway near 8th Street. Grauman will install a Wurlitzer organ and cover the theater’s seats in white satin. The first three films booked after the theater reopens are “Male and Female,” “Scarlet Days” and “Everywoman.”