Bumped. Happy President's Day everyone. ICYMI - wanted to make sure everyone had seen this amazing post. GO BRUINS. - BN Eds.
Not sure how I stumbled upon these...I think it was from a picture in wikipedia. Regardless, these are from an amazing photo archive at the LA Public Library. Its main search page is here:
Royce Hall on the first day (week?) of classes. The building was ready. The grounds? Not so much.
I ended up searching for pictures of campus and Westwood from prior to 1940. Here are some of my favorites. Frustratingly, I opened a new window to write this so I could easily bounce back and forth from this to the window where I had 20+ tabs open of pictures and descriptions...and their system kicked me out of most of the windows back to the main search screen, so I can't copy their descriptions as I had planned. Anyway, here's at least some of the good stuff I found.
Looking north from the Ralphs Grocery Building, 1929 or so.
Amazing aerial view of campus, 1929. The original four buildings are (mostly) done, as is the bridge, but Janss Steps aren't yet, nor is there much of anything surrounding campus.
Slightly later aerial view, showing Moore Hall under construction, and Janss Steps perhaps in progress, perhaps complete.
The bridge now between Schoenberg and Perloff. I'd known it was there since freshman orientation (I somehow knew this part was real, unlike Bunche...), but I had no idea it was this substantial.
Royce Hall on the first day (week?) of classes. The building is ready. The grounds? Not so much.
Aerial view of Westwood Village September 14, 1929.
Aerial view of Westwood Village taken from the Goodyear Blimp, in I believe the mid- to late-1930s. Buildings have filled in some of the spaces, and there's a grove of trees north of Le Conte.
Looking north on Westwood from Wilshire, this shot shows a gas station and, in the background, a Sears somewhere. This one also looks north on Westwood, but I think it's from slightly south of Wilshire and probably a few years later than the first link.
Did you know there was an outdoor ice skating rink in Westwood? Here are some pictures of the Tropical Ice Gardens being built in 1938, from 1939, and in 1949. According to this site, it was located at the SW corner of Weyburn and Gayley, though with the info in the quote below, it looks like it was not on Gayley but on the UCLA property behind Helen's, Oakley's, The Coffee Bean, and (as some of us remember there once had been) Breadstiks. The LAPL page with the 1949 pic has these details:
Historical Notes The Tropical Ice Gardens in Westwood Village opened in November 1938. It had a seating capacity for 10,000 spectators and could accommodate 2,000 ice skaters on its year-round outdoor rink. There were conflicting reports that Norwegian ice champion Sonja Henie had acquired the arena sometime in the 1940s and renamed it Sonja Henie's Ice Palace, but her actual affiliation with the establishment remains uncertain. The building sustained considerable damage due to a fire in May 1939, but re-opened shortly after. It was torn down in 1949 to accommodate expansion of UCLA.
Summary Things Are 'Hot' Over This Ice Rink In Westwood Village - Ten Thousand Men, Women and Children in Area Are Battling Over Whether It Should Be Demolished; Medical Center Is Planned Two Years From Now.