Quote:
Originally Posted by alester young
Pershing Square looked way better with the banana trees...
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http://urbandiachrony.wordpress.com/...aza-1939-2011/
...although the quote from the 1948 LA Times article doesn't really quite get it right. The park wasn't so much invaded by rats after dark, the rats, being nocturnal, were already there, they just woke up. They like to nest in banana trees.
More on the Square:
http://www.kcet.org/updaily/socal_fo...e-decades.html
And speaking of rats, Pershing Square's namesake could be a bit of one. In January 1920 a crowd of 500 welcomed Gen John J. Pershing, leader of the American Expeditionary Force in World War I to a banquet in the Hotel Alexandria's Palm Court. Speeches were given "of 100 per cent Americanism" and condemning the menaces of internationalists, isolationists, anarchists, and profiteers. Pershing noted that ignorance had caused the fall of Russia and advocated requiring every foreigner to learn to read and write or be shipped back to "the foul nest from which they came."
quoted from wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_Co...exandria_Hotel)
I vote for renaming
and rehabbing the park (and extending it to Lindley Place so it's, duh, square).