Wordless Vintage Snapshots: One Parking Lot In Los Angeles, Early 60s
– Posted on February 5, 2024
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The row with the covered Porsche 356 (I assume) seems to be all compacts (and TBirds). And quite some gems there in addition to the domestic compacts: a Fiat 1200, an Audax Hillman, Dauphine, what I think is an Opel, the Metropolitan and several Beetles. And the few late Forties and early 1950’s cars look so old. This is the California automotive landscape I remember from childhood.
A bit curious about them parking the imports and compacts all there.
If my bearings are correct the lot in the foreground is the current site of the Walt Disney concert hall
I think it may be one block to the west. I’m thinking that the lot in the foreground may be the current site of the Conrad Hotel / Grand LA buildings.
The reason I think that is because the lot in the distance has an odd grade-separation between the two halves of the lot. Improbably, there’s still a surface parking lot in that vicinity, and it has an identical grade separation. Sure looks like the same one. I’ve attached an aerial image below, with the site of where I think our vintage lots may have been outlined in red. If you StreetView the area, you can see that
Yeah I think you might be correct, I was trying to infer the spot from google earth 3D and that view is a little hard to get with said buildings. Looking at historicaerials it does appear the concert hall spot was indeed parking too.
That’s where I thought this is located .
I’m sad I didn’t arrive here until the Fall of 1970 permanently .
The junkyards used to be full of Jags stacked atop of Porsche’s and so on, it was heart breaking coming from rust town .
-Nate
Wow! A very pastel palette!
Some So Cal trends forming. So many white cars, well, roofs anyway.
An early adopter of the car cover in public lots.
And, nary a black car in sight. Black was very funereal when I was young. Today it is fashionable.
I see at least two black cars. Both Renault Dauphines, oddly, though I do associate black with some French cars, at least Citroen TA’s.
Yep. In Australia only elderly folk bought black, if it was available at all.
Black was also the colour of one taxi company in Melbourne (Black Cabs, naturally enough). Black is so impractical in a hot climate without air conditioning – which would have been a mighty expensive option in the early sixties, and not available on cars down here yet.
Any thoughts on what year the photo was taken? There’s a light blue ’62 Galaxie in the middle row (lower middle of the full-view photo)… but other than that I’m not seeing anything newer than 1961.
Also a ’62 Buick & “62 Cadillac a few rows over.
Given how few ’62 models are in the lot, my guess is this photo was taken in late ’61 not too long after the normal fall introduction of the ’62s.
Good eye. And yes, makes sense.
Lots of 61’s, but the only ’62 I think I see is a white Pontiac, 2dr hardtop.
(middle pic, middle row, left edge of the picture, to the left of the yellow & white Rambler wagon?)
Certainly near or at the Stanley Mosk Courthouse. Sadly, I’ve been there too many times now with a cranky ex-wife. lol
A lot has changes since then, but I’d bet many of those cars are parked for court stuff.
I’m surprised nobody else has mentioned this, but that parking pattern/layout is very confusing to me. Three deep parking stalls? Was this common on the West coast at that time? I don’t recall ever seeing this in the Northeast. I wasn’t around in ’62, but I was shortly thereafter.
Now that you mention it, how would the middle guy get out?
I was wondering the same!
I assume it’s valet parking. Why else would all the compacts and imports be in one section.
Some of these lots now have even deeper rows.
OK, that makes sense!
There is one 1949 Buick but I do not see any 40s cars….
That 56 Thunderbird is a rare one. Only around 10% came without the porthole and the color is one of the less seen ones.
Notice that “top down, Vdub”! The two “Corvairs” got my attention too. Love all the colors.
Being “Cali”; surprised not to see too many “early 50’s” rides..
When I was there in “1990”, was amazed at how many “70”s , cars were still rolling.
One factor might be that 1955 was a record year for car sales when many of those earlier models were traded in/used as second cars and not as visible in daily commutes. The economy was booming, and California was the center of it, becoming the most populous state in 1962, right around the time these photos were taken.
And this parking lot was probably used by primarily white collar workers. If you’d gone to an industrial site, there would likely be more older cars.
I was only 5 years old then but already pretty car aware. As I remember it, there were quite a few of the refreshed post wars cars around then. The “aero” GM cars, ‘49-51 Fords, etc. But anything older than that was rare. Even without rust, cars just didn’t last long and anything over 100k miles was either scrapped or passed down to young people and hot-rodded. A 25 year old 1940 Ford was more likely to be seen at a drag strip or hot rod show, maybe in the student parking at the high school. Not like a 20 year old Camry or Accord or F150 today. Even ten years after these photos, when I was in high school myself in San Francisco, the oldest student car was a ‘62 Dodge.
Didn’t see a single Pick-up in the lot. Times have changed.
Today the scene would be one SUV after another, in silver, gray, black, white. Miss the variety of body styles in happy pastels.
Past the office buildings, smog looks heavy. Photos make a great case for mass transit.
Parking lots must have been aimed exclusively for day use office workers. As the only lighting is on the street. Much of the lot(s), would be in near total darkness at night.
Ironically this was right around the point the last of the streetcar stragglers ceased operation.
This whole area was in process of being cleared as part of urban renewal and grade leveling during the 50s and 60s so that might answer for the lack of lighting effort, the parking lots were probably temporary until a developer would inevitably buy the empty plots. For perspective, this is how the area looked south of these parking lots(visible slightly right of center). This only 10 years earlier would have been filled with buildings
Just about 10 years earlier that area looked like this(view is from the city hall building, the long building north of the parking lot is visible)
Was that the Bunker Hill neighbourhood demolition? I’ve seen some articles / videos on that – a huge change to the city, and the loss of a lot of Victorian-era Los Angeles.
the two blocks shown here were both parking lots up until a few years ago, believe it or not – the lot across the street in first pic is at the northwest corner of Hill and 2nd streey directly across the Stanley Mosk Courthouse and today shares space with the Civic Center station for the subway.
The lot closest to the camera was redeveloped into a live/work type building over the last few years, but in the intervening time the single level lot had a very short, metal frame three level parking structure built on top to make use of the space. The block that the Walt Disney concert hall occupies would be just behind the photographer.
Should I be surprised to see only a half-dozen Beetles ? Maybe this lot is in use by a different demographic—as Paul suggested ?
I see four black cars, a ’57 Chevy at lower left, two VWs, and a possible Dauphine across the street. There are a couple others. But the prevailing color palette is notable—turquoise had been popular for only a few years at this point, I think.