Olvera Street/Plaza/Sunset Blvd
 

I still find it incredible that Sunset Blvd, of all things, used to run between the Plaza and Olvera Street. I cannot actually recall when this wasn't a pedestrian-only area. I knew it well by about 1955, but cannot remember any through traffic. Sunset doesn't even make it to downtown anymore.

Yes, that's it.

I'm amazed this is still standing. It gives me goose pimples. ;)

http://imageshack.us/a/img22/6258/aabebaysub1lary.jpg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/metroli...ve/2951184594/


Welcome to the thread shadyguy in Tulsa!

__

Thanks so much, that's the one I was speaking of at the bend.
Are there any photos of it on here yet ?

Plaza LARy Yellow Car Substation
 

Great image e-r! Before the utilitarian, later Spanish fantasy, building was even built. What a treat. Thx
(I wish that car would move so one could see how much of the Avila Adobe is made out of whole cloth.)

P.S.
Plaza Sub Sta was built in 1903 and almost didn't make it out of the early 70s: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plaza_Substation

P.P.S.

A little 'before and after' on the substation's 'historic' next-door neighbor:

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-z...116%2520PM.jpgeBay
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-g...657%2520PM.jpggsv

Mickey Cohen's Exploding Brentwood House
 

Nice post on L.A.curbed today:

http://la.curbed.com/archives/2013/0...eal_estate.php

Mickey Cohen on 6 Feb 1950. Musta driven the neat-freak, OCD gangster nuts:
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-6...613%2520PM.jpg
kcet

Same closet, pre-bombing:
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-L...219%2520PM.jpg
http://la.racked.com/archives/2013/0...ts_killing.php

Here's an aerial shot looking west showing the north ends of both tunnels. The so-called second tunnel empties out onto Sunset, just to the right of that big athletics field and at the base of that road (Hill Street?) wrapping around Fort Moore Hill.

http://img62.imageshack.us/img62/111...ial1947civ.jpg

here's one Brad...(look carefully center left and you'll find the second Hill Street tunnel above Temple Street)

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8354/8...091931d8_o.jpg
Los Angeles, 1924

Beautiful aerial view of Los Angeles in 1924. View looking north up Main, Spring and Broadway Streets from a point just over 1st Street. The new Hall of Records (1910), the newer Hall of Justice (nearing completion here) and the old (1888) County Courthouse are seen in the center as is the Hancock Banning house on Fort Moore Hill, the Prudent Beaudry house on New High Street and the Court Flight funicular up Court Hill. Future city hall site is to the right. Photo by Archie M. Dunning.

LAPL


Here's a shot of the intersection but I'm afraid shows little of the actual tunnel entrance which is just barely out of frame on the left...(and no, that's not Burt Lancaster coming up the sidewalk...)


http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8369/8...72ab1488_o.jpg
Hill Street Tunnel at Temple, 1945


Small businesses and dilapidated hotels and apartments are in this view looking north from the top of the Hill Street Tunnel which was bored through a part of Court Hill in 1909and connects Hill Street from First to Temple. The tunnel has two lanes; one for streetcars, left, and one for automotive traffic. A northbound Pacific Red Car stops for passengers. It will continue across Temple and then bend slightly left (west) and enter a tunnel which will carry it under Fort Moore Hill and come out on the north side adjacent to the intersection of Sunset Boulevard and Hill Street. A billboard for "Rice Krispies" with its "Snap, Crackle, Pop", right, is in front of the 'Temp-Hill' Hotel (get it? Temp-Hill, Temple and Hill?? Yeah corny). Center, a billboard for "GMC Trucks" borders a parking lot. At the back of the lot is a billboard for "Eskimo Pie". A man climbs the stairs at the side of the tunnel. The broken balustrade on top is held together by a wooden frame.

LAPL

This should help:

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-T...0/plazapic.jpg

The view is looking west, basically from the viewpoint of what would become the main entrance of Union Station. I have marked the plaza substation and Brunswig building that are still there today, and the Lugo house which we are seeing from the back. The Plaza church is obscured by all the trees of the plaza. The building with the biggest Brunswig sign is just south of the Plaza church - an area which is now an empty lot. (It might even be the backside of a building which faced New High Street.) The recently-restored Brunswig building is a couple doors to the left, and is just barely visible at the left edge of the photo, with Brunswig lettering along its side. The Avila adobe would be just to the right of the substation, but you can't really make it out. The white building on the left of the substation is the Mexican Cultural Institute building, formerly the Mexican Consulate, which has been remodeled into something better fitting the area, including the addition of an arcade along the Los Angeles Street side.


Welcome, Brad! I believe the tunnel you're thinking of was a streetcar tunnel that curved northwest under Fort Moore Hill and came out on Sunset. On ethereal_reality's 1947 map inset, quoted above in this post, it is along the red dotted line on the left. The streetcar line went up Hill Street, passed under Court Street in a double tunnel (one for rail, one for cars), then at Temple it diverged from the street and only the rail line went into a second tunnel, passing under Fort Moore Hill to come out on Sunset. Part of the old tunnel, under school district land, was used for school district archive storage until 2004.

Edit: it took me so long to make the graphic and the post that most of what I wrote has already been posted! D'oh!

The Other Hill Street Tunnel
 

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-r...031%2520PM.jpg

I have the worst time with this particular streetscape. I cannot conform the before and after and I can't get my head around your two different 'befores'. Did the tunnel empty on to Sunset (now Chavez) or Temple? (north end on Sunset, south end on Temple.

I thought it was somewhere around where Hill flies over Chavez now, north of the Fort Moore Memorial:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-C...512%2520PM.jpg
gsv

But I don't really know and I give up. Will some one please mark up the current Google Maps aerial for me? This has been driving me nuts for a long time. Thx

Hi Brad in Tulsa.

Here ya go....Hill Street tunnels in red, Broadway tunnel in orange:

http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/955...30213at140.png

And I agree that reconciling today's landscape with yesterday's takes a LOT of brainpower.

Acsc flashing stop
 

Hollywood Graham is right, early traffic signs are the best!

Here is a photo of my early 1930s, ACSC STOP with glass reflectors and flashing red light. Sign is 24” x 24” x 6 ½”. Previous owner mounted it to a short pole and base and wired it for 120 volts. Flashes great, just hard to get a shot of it!

More photos of old California porcelain enamel traffic signs from 1920 to 1960 can be seen on my web site. www.caltrafficsigns.com

http://caltrafficsigns.com/pictures/...FLASHER_01.JPG

Here's my version!

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-R...illtunnels.jpg

Marchessault
 

Thank you ProphetM. I should have gotten the other map out:
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-R...618%2520PM.jpg
LAPL http://jpg1.lapl.org/pics30/00034944.jpg

Where did Marchessault St start on the west? My Gillespie's Guide led me astray as it has Sunset running to the Plaza and Los Angeles St ending at the Plaza, but it's very tiny and has many little 'cheats'. Bellevue, I realize now, was on the far side of Olvera.

Sorry to lead you astray e_r. I knew where I was, but not what to call it :-(

The Other Hill Street Tunnel
 

Thank you so much. It was a little west of where I was trying to visualize it. The bottom of N Hill Pl, not near the top.
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-f...013%2520PM.jpg
gsv

N Hill Pl on the left, Fort Moore Pl on the right, Chavez Blvd in the foreground.

No wonder the site of the old tunnel is so hard to visualize. It's completely gone and then some.

Thank you too kznyc2k. It takes more brainpower than I apparently have.

I also understand now that MichaelRyerson was showing us the south end of the tunnel. Took forever for the penny to drop, but it finally did.

I really dislike this part of town. It makes me uneasy, and not just because the old cemetery was so callously desecrated, it's too 'manufactured', too phony, too much seems to be missing, even if one doesn't quite know what.

Here's an aerial from the other direction:

http://waterandpower.org/Historical_...aza_Aerial.jpg

Marchessault goes out of frame at an intersection at bottom center; it apparently stops being called Marchessault at this intersection. Marchessault essentially becomes Sunset, proceeding straight down out of frame and connecting with modern-day Sunset at Broadway. The street proceeding down and left out of frame is Spring Street.

Incidentally, I can see from this photo that the big Brunswig sign visible in the earlier photo is indeed the back side of a building that faces new high street - it's at bottom right and has a water tower and a square tower on it.

Ah, finally found a decent picture:

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-V...335%2520PM.jpg

This indicates that sunset did indeed go all the way to the plaza, at which point it became Marchessault.

Plaza
 

Excellent photo :-) No Mexican Consulate. No forbidding Methodist church. And the Plaza church looks much cozier with neighbors. It's sort of awful now left out in that sea of street-level parking all by itself. It got its own fantasy Spanish makeover.

I thought that the Machessault/Sunset name changeover came at the NE corner of the Plaza. Actually it does in the Gillespie's Guide, but Marchessault had been torn down by then, so the name was gone and Sunset was just finessed between the Plaza and Olvera St. I also thought Los Angeles Street ended at the SE corner of the Plaza when it turned into that big parade ground (or whatever it was used for). I knew Ferguson was in a line with the north facade of Pico House, that's how I usually identify it in aerials, but I just got lost this evening.

Lugo House was a stupid loss. And for what? An unused patch of grass. Same with Ferguson Alley. There's nothing there.

Do you know when the Plaza was closed to east/west traffic?

That's a gorgeous map too. I'm saving that. Thank you ProphetM.

Westmoore found
 

No wonder the old gal was camera-shy. We're looking thru the girders of the Statler Hotel on August 28, 1951:
http://i1165.photobucket.com/albums/...ps2cc402e5.jpg
http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/cdm/co.../16637/rec/109

And here are a couple more pix of the demolition:
Feb 4, 1957
http://i1165.photobucket.com/albums/...psf853fae2.jpg
http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/cdm/co.../58217/rec/159

Feb 10, 1957
http://i1165.photobucket.com/albums/...ps19c64d38.jpg
http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/cdm/si...d/90821/rec/54
Text from the last photo:
"Photograph of a man standing at the head of debris-laden stairs and pointing to the Hotel Statler. "Old Westmoore Hotel bows to wreckers. Reporter points to modern Statler across the street. Another of Los Angeles' early landmarks is giving way to progress this week as wrecking crews are busily razing the old Westmoore Hotel at 1000 West Seventh street. Built in about 1880, [I know we have our doubts about that] the 80-room four-story frame structure once was considered the finest "family" hotel in the Southland. it was among the first to have both a ballroom and a large banquet room. Though often the scene of social functions, the Westmoore failed to keep pace with the Los Angeles and Hollywood models and by the middle of 1920's had even lost it's [sic] distinctive front.; Several stores were built on the hotel's front lot thus hiding the large pillars which had set the building apart from others in the area. As the time passed, the once stately Westmoore gradually declined in class and with the construction of such new hotels as Statler, located across the street, the old dwelling fell prey to the inevitable. A spacious garage and service station will be built in its place."

No service station, but the garage certainly turned out to be spacious, didn't it?
http://imageshack.us/a/img707/2430/a...ooresiteto.jpg
ER/google aerial
Other pics USC Digital Library

This is an amazing map. It's the very core of the old city, with every street and structure precisely detailed. I'd love to have a larger version of it. I remember it being mentioned here that these old insurance maps were available online, but I've forgotten where.

-Scott

...And even England. Part of Captain America was filmed in the Northern Quarter of Manchester (my hometown). 3 days filming for the extras plus a free 1940s short haircut.

There are lots of photos on Flickr -if anyone is interested, just type in Manchester Captain America.

The producers reckoned that the Northern Quarter was the nearest thing to NY in the 1940s -NYC had changed so much there weren't any suitable locations. Cost also came into it.....


alester

tovangar2 and Los Angeles Past: here is a link to the whole set of Baist's real estate surveys, 1921:

http://www.historicmapworks.com/Atlas/US/7441/

I could look at them for hours, even with the 'Historic Map Works' watermark floating across them.

It will even let you do an overlay on a modern map.