Today is National Bike to Work Day. Here, Los Angeles Police Department officers ride their bicycles down Broadway in May 1904.

Part of the Title Insurance and Trust, and C.C. Pierce Photography Collection in the USC Digital Library.

Northeast corner of Fifth and Spring streets in downtown Los Angeles, ca. 1905. 

Part of the Title Insurance and Trust, and C.C. Pierce Photography Collection in the USC Digital Library.

Where did all of L.A.’s wildflowers go? The Altadena poppy field shown here in 1907 is now a suburban neighborhood.

(Part of the TICOR/Pierce Collection in the USC Digital Library)

Circa 1908 view of 8th and Hope in downtown L.A., showing the Abbotsford Inn at the intersection’s southwest corner. Constructed between 1885 and 1888 as a boarding school, the building became a hotel in 1893. It was torn down in 1921 and replaced by the First Methodist Church.

The Urban Diachrony recently compared this image with a present-day view of the intersection, where a mixed-use apartment building is rising from the same site.

Part of the Title Insurance and Trust, and C.C. Pierce Photography Collection in the USC Digital Library.

When Hollywood was a country town, circa 1905.

The view looks southwest from Whitley Heights. The curved street in the foreground is Highland Avenue, and the road running roughly left to right through the center of the photo is Hollywood Boulevard.

Part of the Title Insurance and Trust, and C.C. Pierce Photography Collection in the USC Digital Library.

Panoramic view of bucolic Glendale, California, ca. 1900. The view looks northeast toward the Verdugo and San Gabriel Mountains from the present-day site of Griffith Park. The bed of the Los Angeles River is visible toward the bottom of the photo, behind the hills.

Part of the Title Insurance and Trust, and C.C. Pierce Photography Collection in the USC Digital Library.

In 1904, the Isaias W. Hellman residence at Fourth and Main in downtown Los Angeles was moved to make way for the Farmers & Merchants Bank building. 

Part of the Title Insurance and Trust, and C.C. Pierce Photography Collection in the USC Digital Library.

A horse-drawn fire engine speeds down Fifth Street at Broadway in downtown Los Angeles, circa 1900.

Part of the Title Insurance and Trust, and C.C. Pierce Photography Collection in the USC Digital Library.

Corner of Third Street and Santa Monica Boulevard (then named Oregon Avenue) in Santa Monica, circa 1900. Today the intersection is part of the popular Third Street Promenade retail district.

Part of the California Historical Society Collection in the USC Digital Library.

Hollywood, 1906. 

Part of the Title Insurance and Trust / C.C. Pierce Photography Collection in the USC Digital Library.