It’s hard to believe that Los Angeles ever looked like this, let alone downtown L.A. This is Figueroa Street south of 16th Street, circa 1890. (16th Street is now Venice Blvd. Figueroa was re-zoned commercial after World War II.) It looks to have been an elegant street filled with large Queen Anne Victorian homes whose broad front yards featured enormous palm trees. I’ve never seen ones with such short trunks before. They took up a lot of space, but would have been easier to maintain. No climbing up 20 feet to trim them! As far as I can tell, this stretch of Figueroa is now where the Santa Monica Freeways cuts across the south of downtown, so all this is long gone.
Here’s an auto-colorized version, which does a pretty good job, I think. A bit more blue in the sky might have been nice:
I always loved looking at old photos of this area, which are scarce. I grew up on 17th and Figueroa on a 1910 Apartment building that its still standing but its abandoned. They kicked us all out supposedly because they were going to demo the block and built condominiums, well that never happened. I have slowly been unlocking some of the history of this area and its pretty interesting.
I’m glad I was able to find a photo for you. And yes, photos of that area from that era are rare. How annoying that after getting kicked out, they never even went ahead with their plans. But with the redevelopment of downtown LA going on like it is, I’m sure that land will be used soon.