Vintage Views: Coney Island, 1940

Vintage Views: Havana in the 1930s

From Hollywood, California, in the 1920s, we now move southeast into the Caribbean Sea and make landfall at Havana, Cuba--“the Paris of the Caribbean”--a decade later.

By this point, Cuba had recovered from the Spanish-American War and its subsequent occupation by U.S. troops, which ended in 1902 (although the United States maintained the right to intervene militarily in the future). It had been declared an independent nation in 1902, and for the next couple of decades enjoyed relative peace. But in the early ’30s, revolution broke out in Cuba to topple industrialist-turned-president Gerardo Machado, who critics said had become despotic in his governance, and who--in the wake of terrorist attacks reportedly committed by Communists--had declared martial law in hopes of restoring peace. With the intervention of Sumner Welles, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s assistant secretary of state for Latin American Affairs (and later under secretary of state), Machado was deposed in 1933.

Havana’s construction industry boomed in the ’30s as the country’s middle class burgeoned in size and new apartment buildings had to be raised all over the city. Tourism was also on the rise during that decade, with hotels, casinos, and nightclubs opening to welcome visitors from the States and elsewhere. It was in the ’30s too, though, that gangsters from the States began infiltrating this “largest island of the West Indies.”

Someday, after U.S. lawmakers finally concede that the Cuban embargo--in place now for the last 51 years, and still vigorously supported by American right-wingers--is doing neither country a lick of good, perhaps I can visit Havana. The many photographs I’ve seen of it make the city look both fascinating for its history and intriguing for its street scene. In the meantime, though, I shall have to be happy with those photos and with old films like this one.

Next time, we’ll go sightseeing in Depression-era Chicago.

Vintage Views: Hollywood in the 1920s

The peaceful reaches of Barcelona, Spain, our previous stop on Limbo’s video excursion through history, seem a world away--instead of merely half a world away--from bustling, bumptious Prohibition-era Hollywood, this week’s focus.

Over blues singer Victoria Spivey’s rendition of “Hollywood Stomp,” a popular tune of the early 20th century, we’re offered a mix of black-and-white newsreel footage introducing some of the largest studios and most sumptuous movie theaters, as well as other popular sites around Los Angeles, including the Hollywood Bowl, the Brown Derby restaurant on Wilshire Boulevard, and hectic Sunset Boulevard. Although the first motion picture made in the L.A. area was not actually shot in the formerly tranquil agricultural suburb of Hollywood, it certainly didn’t take long for that now-renowned neighborhood northwest of downtown to corner the film-production market. By the 1920s, it was awash in swank cars, spotlight-enhanced movie premieres, and celebrities made to believe that they could outshine the stars in the night sky.

I am a bit surprised not to see in these clips the Hollywood Sign (which at the time read “Hollywoodland”). But maybe in those days, not long after the sign had been erected as a real-estate promotion in 1923, it wasn’t considered the landmark that it is today.

From here, we head next to the ambitious and fast-expanding Cuban capital, Havana, in the 1930s.

Vintage Views: Barcelona, 1908

Leaving behind the frenzied New York City thoroughfares of 1928, we leap back two decades and across the Atlantic Ocean to land in Barcelona. Now the largest and most beautiful city in eastern Spain, in 1908 Barcelona was enjoying a period of quiet between its 1888 world’s fair and the bloody political clashes of 1909, during which the Spanish army faced off against anticolonial and antimiltarist forces all over the Catalonia region.

I’ve visited Barcelona only once, back in 2006. But I quickly fell in love with its extensive and entertaining downtown pedestrian mall, the La Rambla; its many innovative works by architect Antonio Gaudí; and the kinetic energy and stylish inhabitants that together make this more than 2,000-year-old city feel so very modern. The video embedded above shows a place that is at once nothing like the commercially active metropolis I enjoyed, and yet every inch the same sort of grand, proud, and richly textured town.

Next time we’ll strike out west to see Prohibition-era Los Angeles.

Vintage Views: New York City, 1928

From London in 1903 and then San Francisco in 1905, we leap ahead two decades to America’s largest metropolis in the year before the Great Depression clobbered the world.

It’s interesting to see that getting around the city was no more sane or simple back then than it is today. And no, you aren’t imagining things: This clip not only features silent-film actor Harold Lloyd as the less-than-gifted, bespectacled cab driver, but also the then 33-year-old “Sultan of Swat,” George Herman “Babe” Ruth, as his second “unfortunate customer.”

Join me for our next historical adventure, when we’ll sail across the Atlantic Ocean to visit enchanting and considerably less hectic Barcelona, Spain, early in the 20th century.

Vintage Views: London, 1903

Last time, we took a streetcar ride down San Francisco’s Market Street in the year before that beautiful California city was shaken by its worst-ever earthquake. This week, let’s travel halfway around the world, and two years back in time, to see what London, England, was like in the second year of King Edward VII’s reign.

Every time I visit modern London, it seems more bustling than the time before. But clearly--judging by the video embedded at the top of this post--that is not a new phenomenon. A description of this silent film, available on YouTube, explains:

Made over 100 years ago, this footage shows a number of scenes shot around central London, taking in locations such as Hyde Park Corner, Parliament Square and Charing Cross Station. We see crowds of people disembarking from a pleasure steamer at Victoria Embankment, pedestrians dodging horse-drawn carriages in Pall Mall and heavy traffic trotting down the Strand.

There are plenty of famous landmarks to spot here, including Big Ben, the National Gallery and the Bank of England, and it is fascinating to see the similarities between the customs of then and now--the dense traffic (mainly horse-drawn, with the occasional motor car) is highly reminiscent of today's London rush hour, while advertising on public transport is clearly no new phenomenon--in one scene, an advert for Nestlé’s Milk seems to be plastered on every other vehicle.

When we next visit the past, the destination will be New York City.

Vintage Views: San Francisco, 1905

I’m inaugurating a new series here at Limbo, focusing on rare and fascinating old film footage I have come across while surfing the Web. Today’s first “Vintage Views” video was apparently shot from the front end of a streetcar heading east along San Francisco’s spacious Market Street in 1905, a year before the earthquake and fire of 1906 devastated most of downtown.

The clip isn’t perfect; it was filmed more than a century ago after all. But it’s somewhat mesmerizing to watch the people and assorted vehicles navigate the old Victorian city’s principal east-west arterial, to see automobiles and bicycles dash across the streetcar’s path, and pedestrians stroll over its tracks, confident that they have plenty of time to avoid disaster. Before long, one starts to imagine himself a passenger on that trolley, approaching the clock-towered Ferry Building on the Embarcadero.

At about the 1:25 mark, the streetcar reaches what used to be known as “Cape Horn,” at the windy intersection of Market, Geary, and Kearny streets. That’s where you may spot Lotta’s Fountain and the San Francisco Chronicle headquarters off to the left, with the white San Francisco Examiner headquarters on the right. Slightly further on, also on the right, you’ll sight the original, seven-story Palace Hotel, with its redundant banks of bay windows.

With few exceptions, most notably the Ferry Building, what you see over the course of this eight-minute clip either tumbled to the 7.8 magnitude temblor, or was consumed by the hungry flames that followed that 1906 shaking.