Quote:
Originally Posted by Those Who Squirm
There was a time when the Plaza Church, now addressed on the west side of Main, and the Plaza Methodist Church both had Sunset Boulevard addresses, W and E respectively.
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There's some contention about this. The more reliable maps I'm familiar with all show Bellevue/Sunset ending at the complicated intersection on the NW corner of the Plaza, with Marchessault then running east from Main.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Those Who Squirm
Having seen all of these images, it is impossible not to feel resentment, nay, a simmering rage, at what has been lost, and for nothing more than a parking lot. Here we see images from a time when this neighborhood was full of crazy-angled streets and old architecture--a sort of Southern Californian Altstadt. In hindsight, it seems that this area became the poster child of the suburbanist urban renewal ethos of making Downtown America car-friendly and everything-else-unfriendly. Another factor, perhaps, was the priggish urge to rid the neighborhood of "unsightliness", including any evidence of nightlife like the Bamba, and for that matter the working people who used to live here, taking their evening rest and amusement at the bars, clubs, and cafes that were to be found here. We couldn't have busloads of school children coming down here to see Olvera Street and let them see that, could we?
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I too wish we still had an "old town".
Jane Jacobs cautioned cities to "respect – in the deepest sense – strips of chaos that have a weird wisdom of their own not yet encompassed in our concept of urban order."
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