Offering in NEAR MINT CONDITION...
a matted and framed 1932 SEPIA PHOTOGRAPH of DOWNTOWN WESTWOOD CALIFORNIA.
I purchased this stunning photo at a Westwood art gallery almost thirty years ago. In the lower center is the intersection of Wilshire Boulevard and Westwood Boulevard in 1932. What's so amazing about this photograph is that the six bare corners in the foreground now have six 30+story skyscrapers on each of them. In the background from the left are the hills above Brentwood and where the new Getty Museum is now located, then where the San Diego Freeway is now located, then where the Veteran's Cemetary is now... the hills of Bel Air to the right of that, then there's UCLA campus, Beverly Glen Canyon and Beverly Hills on the right. And in the upper right you can make out the hill that is at the corner of Mulholland Drive and Beverly Glen Boulevard at the top of Beverly Glen Canyon, where the boundaries of Bel Air, Beverly Hills and Sherman Oaks all meet. Another interesting object is the stoplights at the bottom which have stop and go signs as opposed to lights. Also visible is the "Welcome to Westwood Village" sign. And on the left you can see the Redmond Moving and Storage sign, which in the late 1970s was the rompin' four story discotheque called Dillon's.
Westwood's heyday was in the seventies and eighties. And it was a bumper to bumper party every weekend back then. But with the construction in the nineties of Santa Monica Place on the old Santa Monica Third Street Promenade, the trendies moved west, never to return... UCLA campus is still a block away and they still hold red carpet star-studded movie premieres here, but the days when O. J. Simpson used to circle endlessly in his red Ferrari, or hangouts like Postermat or Tower Records, or restaurants like Stratton's, Hamburger Hamlet, Old World and The Rathskellar... and Stan's Donuts, when you could literally bump into dozens of big Hollywood stars and rockstars in the same two block stretch on a typical Saturday night are long over. Boy, this photograph is packed with memories! Would be a perfect gift for some UCLA alumni or someone (like myself) who used to work on Weyburn Avenue back in the day.
Photograph is near perfect. Outer dimensions: 42" x 14 1/2". The frame has some extremely minor edgewear but still looks great. Very nice expensive curved grained molding. READY TO HANG.
Buyer pays $30.00 for secure INSURED shipping via FEDERAL EXPRESS GROUND (within the continental USA). Shipping elsewhere will be higher.
Bid with confidence. I have over 1200 glowing positive feedbacks and over 150 delighted repeat customers over the past eleven years.
