History

Welcome to Los Angeles

By Eric Richardson — August 13, 2007
7 Comments

Former Greyhound Station

If you're on 7th street and glance into the parking entrance for the LA Merchandise Mart, you may just catch a glimpse of signage welcoming you to Los Angeles. It's one of those things that's pretty easy not to notice, but the little leftovers like this that tell the story of what Downtown used to be. Why would a parking garage welcome you to Los Angeles?...


Downtown 1990

By Eric Richardson — June 04, 2007
4 Comments

Thirty-five years ago today the Times ran an interesting piece talking about the $250,000 Downtown plan put together by planning firm Wallace, McHarg, Roberts & Todd. The plan laid out a vision of Downtown in 1990 (pictured at right), and it's a bit different than the Downtown of 2007. Most interesting: the park that was supposed to give some sense to...


History Lesson: Evolution of the Merritt Building

By Eric Richardson — December 10, 2006
13 Comments

There are a lot of odd buildings on Broadway, and each has arrived at its look via a unique path. The Merritt Building sits on the northwest corner of 8th and Broadway, and today is quite an odd sight, seemingly missing its second floor. The Merritt, in fact, looks like someone took a Roman-style building and plopped it on top of a 50-foot tall marble box...


History Lesson: Gas Holders

By Eric Richardson — November 21, 2006
23 Comments

If you look at the photo I linked to in the Sunkist post you'll see an enormously large tank or silo back in the distance. I'd seen these same sort of tanks in various other photos and they always seemed impossibly large. It turns out these tanks were known as "gas holders", and helped supply natural gas to the city. They were in fact laughably large and...


History Lesson: Downtown's Sunkist Building

By Eric Richardson — November 20, 2006
3 Comments

There's really no end to the fascinating things you can find when you start digging into the history of Downtown Los Angeles. Yesterday I was wandering through photos in the USC Digital Archives and came across one that showed the Sunkist Building. The building, which sat at the corner of Flower and 5th, was built in 1935 by the Sunkist Corporation as their...


History Lesson: The Short Life of Goodman's Department Store

By Eric Richardson — September 01, 2006
10 Comments

Great Western Plaza

Walking west on 7th street there's a faded sign that's always fascinated me. I've been intending to write about it for months now; I even took a photo in January to go along with that. Somehow, though, I never wrote that post. Until now, I guess. Today the building at the corner of 7th and Hill is the Great Western Jewelry Plaza. Sort of wrapped around it...


History Lesson: What's the Story with the New Story Building?

By Eric Richardson — August 30, 2006
3 Comments

New Story Building

One of the cool things about Downtown is the history you can find on the sides of buildings. Vestiges of past occupants and previous uses are still to be found in fading signs and window shades. In some cases these signs are even layered, with an older use partially visible under some newer paint. It's a fascinating glance at what this area used to be. Looking...


Tracing the Old State Building

By Eric Richardson — April 26, 2005
5 Comments

shannon over at sha in LA had a post yesterday titled urban exploration in which she wrote: It all began about a year ago. I give tours of City Hall. The highlight of the tour is when we go up to the 27th floor observation deck and get a 360 view of Downtown. One day I noticed that across the street from City Hall there was a fenced off empty lot where some...