This is photo dates all the way back to 1875, and shows horses and buggies lined up in front of the St. Charles Hotel (formally the Bella Union) on the 300 Block of N. Main St in downtown Los Angeles. (Of course back then, it was just “Los Angeles.”) Not only was the street not even paved yet, but as we can see from the “Rifle and Pistol Shooting” sign in the foreground, LA was still a wild west town.
Horses and buggies lined up in front of the St. Charles Hotel on the 300 Block of N. Main St, downtown Los Angeles, 1875
This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged 1800s, Downtown Los Angeles, Hotels. Bookmark the permalink.
The sign may be designating the location (off street) of a practice fire range that would have been an enclosure. Notice what looks like tin cans on top of the sign…maybe what they used for target shooting. I expect that a dealer in guns would have a shop next door and ran the range unless it was a public facility. Bank of Los Angeles accross the road) must have felt very protected with an armed citizenry to keep out the bandits. Hotels served as central stage stops right into the era of intercity highway bus lines. But back then the hotel might also have its’ own coach for transfer services to the main rail stations. When trolleys (horse, cable, then electric) hit the streets, they often were designated as serving a station route and could make stops at all the various big hotel sites in their loop. This relieved hotel owners of the problem of providing transport, but in many places it continued well into the auto age…thus the “station wagon” best exemplified by the Fords of the Model A era that became surfboard haulers later. Chicago gives the best example of the continuation of the “Transfer” company, but Los Angeles may have held some services up until all the railroads were under one roof. And of course, Pacific Electric rendered a lot of handling services that could cover baggage and freight movements right to all the stations along the lines including the joint LAUPT (mail too). With L.A. Railway, the Pasadena lines, and other city cars picking up the local passenger hauls there wasn’t any great need for having reserved transports later on. And then came the auto & chauffers, not to mention Rent-a-Wreck.
Looking at Google Maps’ street view, it appears this address is now the home of the building that was formerly the Childrens Museum, along with the Triforium. Having worked for more than 30 years in City Hall, located diagonally across the street from this location, it’s nearly impossible to imagine the scene pictured in this photo having once stood in that same spot.