This is one of those photos that makes me want to climb through my computer screen and walk around for a day or two. This was taken in downtown Los Angeles in 1910 on Hill Street looking west up 5th Street. On the other side of those trees on the left is Pershing Square, which at the time was called Central Park. (It was renamed after the WWI U.S. Army General John Pershing in 1918.) That building in the distance with the turret was the Normal School, which was a teacher training college. I love the genteel feeling of this photograph, but most of all I love that 5-globe street light on the right. This model was known as a Llewellyn, and they were installed in downtown L.A. around the turn of the century.
This is a blow up of the Llewellyn.
Roughly the same view in December 2020. Not a whole lot of gentility left, but at least the public square is still there.
Let me know when you want to go. I’ll meet you on the corner under the Llewellyn. The State Normal School was torn down when the Central Library was built, and 5th Street was extended through to Flower and Figueroa. The Normal School was moved to the present site of LACC and then relocated to Westwood where it became UCLA.
Very interesting for me. My great-grandmother had a millinery shop on 5th, about where the the vertical hotel sign is on the south side. She arrived here as a refugee from the SF earthquake, and selling clothing in the Klondike. I loved her stories.
She sounds like she’d have had a whole traveling trunkful of interesting stories!
It’s strange to not see the Biltmore on the far side of Pershing Square.
That’s my usual landmark but of course this photo was taken 13 years before the Biltmore opened.
Like Bill, I can’t picture the area without the Biltmore. On the right though, with the marquee, down a block at Olive, is the new Philharmonic Auditorium, maybe still called the Temple Auditorium at the time of this photo. It was home to the LA Phil for a long time.