Bunker Hill was the city's most exclusive residential neighborhood
during the 1880s and 1890s.
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above: The view east down 2nd Street from Bunker hill in 1886.
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above: The view southeast from the southern tip of Bunker Hill in 1880.
The large structure in the distant far right is the Bellevue Terrace Hotel
located at Figueroa & 6th Street.
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above: Another view of the Bellevue Terrace Hotel at Figueroa & 6th.
Today it is the site of the Jonathan Club.
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above: The Bellevue Terrace Hotel and neighbors in 1895.
I know these buildings aren't exactly ON Bunker Hill, but they're
fine examples of the Gothic architecture in the immediate area.
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above: This is a view of Bunker Hill in 1898.
This is looking west from Spring Street near 3rd Street.
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above: Bunker Hill in 1900.
By the end of world War I, Bunker Hill was increasingly populated by
transients, pensioners, and derelicts and developed a crime rate
DOUBLE the city average.
The Los Angeles author Raymond Chandler wrote the following
description in his novel 'The High Window' (1942).
"Bunker Hill is old town, lost town; shabby town, crook town.
Once, very long ago, it was the choice residential district of the city,
and there are still standing a few of the jigsaw Gothic mansions with
wide porches and walls covered with round-end shingles and full corner
bay windows and spindle turrets. They are all rooming houses now,
their parquetry floors are scratched and worn through the once glossy
finish and the wide sweeping staircases are dark with time and cheap
varnish laid on over generations of dirt. In the tall rooms haggard
landladies bicker with shifty tenants. On the wide cool front porches,
reaching their cracked shoes into the sun, and staring at nothing,
sit the old men with faces like lost battle."
Richard Schave
above: The Brousseau Mansion in 1960.
Shortly before the leveling of Bunker Hill.
Richard Schave
above: The Brousseau Mansion (far left) and neighbors in 1960.