Quote:
Originally Posted by westcork
Simpson Building
Description: Diamond Shirt Co., OlvIera Street Trading Post
Photo Date: late 1940's
Description: Soochow Restaurant, main facade, at the corner of Main Street and Sunset Boulevard
Photo Date: early 1950's
Description: Soochow Restaurant and Diamond Shirt Co. on Sunset Boulevard
Photo Date: August 21, 1958
Description: Simpson building, south wall, at Sunset Boulevard
Photographer: Rothschild Photo
Photo Date: December 20, 1958
Renovations
All Wrong Captions at LAPL
Description: Simpson building, post renovation
Photographer: Rothschild Photo
Photo Date: May 1959
All images courtesy of LAPL El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument Photo Archive
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(Bolding mine)
I'm curious as to why you say the LAPL captions are all wrong. Whether or not it was strictly correct, and based on all I have seen in the last few days, it does seem that many people considered Marchessault to be an eastward extension of Sunset. When looking at the area on HistoricAerials.com, it's surprising how wide and busy Marchessault or East Sunset appears to have been, while it was still open to cars. When you see the Marchessault signs in the Plaza today, you tend to think it was never more than a narrow little byway since the Park people want to emphasize only the Plaza's early bucolic character rather than the way it was in the 1940s and 50s.
Remember also that prior to the Plaza being entirely closed off, driving east on Sunset would take you directly past the Plaza Church on your right, then across Main and straight on into Marchessault. I think the Plaza must have been closed off to cars in the early 1960s, at which time Sunset was rerouted north to the other end of Olvera Street. Today if you walk out of the northern end of Olvera, you end up on the south side of Cesar Chavez, or of course Sunset as it used to be called.
ETA: I absolutely don't mean to challenge or "get at" anybody here; I simply want to know if there's some other issue with their captions that I need to be aware of. Certainly I've noticed some minor inaccuracies with the captions, as well.