After exploring the West Adams district for years, west from its generally accepted boundary at Figueroa, I have become intrigued by what was once considered part of the whole. In its earliest days, West Adams extended more or less with the actual boulevard as far east as Main Street which, of course, is the original delineation between the east and west sides of Los Angeles, though this became relatively meaningless in practice as the city spread predominately westward. As I've looked around "East West Adams", I've noticed remnants of neighborhoods--actually, "remnants" is not always the right word at all, since, as one goes east, there are still plenty of large, whole, viable intact neighborhoods of late 19th- and early-20th-century houses, especially beyond Main. A few Victorians remain among more recent, bunkerlike commercial buildings on the north-south (ok, northeast-southwest) streets between Figueroa and Main. Here are few "East West Adams" streetscapes--along with another old-L.A. urban-landscape item, vintage streetlamps. It has been interesting to discover that not all of the old iconic L.A. lamps have disappeared from the main corridors south of the business district.
Main Street-- a type of streetlamp that extends from Main's intersection with 9th and Springs streets down to about Jefferson:
Broadway has a mix of old lamps--what I call "urns" in the vicinity of 28th Street down to Santa Barbara/Martin Luther King, then an early style of gooseneck mixed with newer:
Hill Street remains distinctive for the most part with Hollywood-style spiky lanterns all the way from about 14th Street to 39th:
Grand Avenue uses urn-type double lamps, beginning near downtown with familiar poles that I believe the city refers to as "UM1906" :
These give way to different urns near the old Olympic auditorium:
And then these urns predominate all the way down as far as 39th and the Harbor Freeway:
This "urn" pole at the southeast corner of 33rd is in front of one of a number of Victorian-era houses
somehow still extant among boxy commercial structures in this area (there is a FedEx depot across
Grand from this house, which is pleasant looking compared to the the usual cinderblock-and-razor-
wire variety in this neighborhood).
More old residential LA east of Figueroa:
NE corner of East Adams and Stanford
SE corner of Trinity and 29th
NE corner of Maple and 32nd
NW corner of Broadway and 33rd
Hill near 39th (urns lanterns here rather than the spiky variety, for some reason...)
All photos: Google Street View