Photographing the Gorgeous Neon Lights of Old Los Angeles

It’s ironic that the survival of neon lights increasingly falls to historic preservationists. As the lights rose to prominence in the urban landscape in the first half of the 20th century, they signaled newness, innovation, and the bright promise of modern life—as well as its dimmer, more tawdry aspects. In the U.S., Los Angeles wholeheartedly embraced and embodied that symbolism. A new book of photographs chronicling the early heyday of neon signage in southern California, Spectacular Illumination: Neon Los Angeles, 1925-1965, makes a compelling case for L.A. as the 20th-century city of lights.

The pages are filled with more than 200 vintage photographs of the young metropolis dazzling neon with Hollywood marquees, drug store signs, neighborhood markers, and roadside restaurants. The mostly black-and-white images span an era that authors Tom Zimmerman and J. Eric Lynxwiler dub the city’s “Golden Age” of neon. In an introduction they write about how technological advances by French physicists—who discovered that sending currents to a glass tube filled with neon and argon gave off red and blue glows—coincided with the explosive growth of Los Angeles after World War I: