Quote:
Originally Posted by tovangar2
[...]
This area is interesting too, to me anyway, because of the fascinating, but unsolvable mystery of the location of the previous Plaza (there may have been more than one according so some accounts).
Here's one guess:
nopalera |
From my notes on the Plaza: “The location of the [
original 1781] public square would nearly correspond to the following lines: The southeast corner of Upper Main and Marchessault streets for the southern or southeastern corner of the square; the east line of Upper Main street, from the above named corner, one hundred varas in a northerly direction, for the east line of the square; the eastern line of New High street for the western line of the square; and the northern line of Marchessault street for the southern line of the square” (
Centennial History, p. 21); Narciso Botello, an 1833-1834 arrival, and, with only short interruptions, continuously in L.A. thereafter until his death, rented a structure in 1834 from Jonathan Temple, which structure he stated to have been on the old Plaza, north of the church (
Narciso Botello's Annals, my translation and edition, paragraph 12), which agrees with the information supplied in the
Centennial History; Ygnacio Garcia, eventual centenarian who first came to L.A. in 1825, stated that the previous Plaza lay southwest of the present one (article in
Los Angeles Times, April 23, 1896; likely this was just a slip for
northwest); “The new Plaza was laid out at the present site on Main Street in 1818” (Hafen & Hafen,
Old Spanish Trail, p. 35); one could guess that it was the new church’s being put into service in 1826 which, because it faced on the new Plaza, reinforced the new Plaza’s importance and thus sent the old Plaza into its final decline (I don’t know of any references to its existence continuing after 1834, the year Botello refers to), and the site of the new Plaza had apparently remained unbuilt-upon because it was used, or intended for use, as a cemetery: “The present plaza was first used as a cemetery”
An Illustrated History of Los Angeles County California, 1889 or perhaps 1891, p. 50 footnote.