Oh you're very welcome, PHX31. If I may ask, when did your mother leave Alhambra? Did she ever see movies at the Garfield Theatre? I live in South Pasadena which is just north of Alhambra; I go into Alhambra to get to the 10 freeway, plus there are a few restaurants I go to in Alhambra. There's a good Vietnamese place there, and there's also a good Lebanese place there.
And yeah, often in old pictures of old buildings that still exist, they look better. They're newer in them, obviously, so they're cleaner-looking; but as you pointed out, sometimes a lot of detail they used to have was removed over the years. I think in an effort to "modernize" them in that period from the 1950s-the 1970s, a lot of that intricate detail was considered old-fashioned and outdated, so it was removed. And in California, architectural embellishments that were considered unsafe during earthquakes also were removed.