** UPDATE **- I didn’t get the facts right on this one.
See below from the comments by Al Donnelly
for more accurate information.
Looking at this photo makes me think of that L.P. Hartley quote from “The Go-Between” – “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” We’re looking north toward the junction of Main and Spring Streets in downtown Los Angeles. (I don’t have a date, but I’m seeing no automobiles, I’m guessing it was taken around the turn of the century.) In the distance on the right, we can see the ornate tower of the old City Hall. There’s lots of room for those horse-drawn carriages to move out of the way of that streetcar, and I love that blurry little girl in the big white bonnet crossing the street ahead of her family. I hope she knew how to dodge runaway horses—not to mention their—ahem—calling cards.
Ray L. says: “You are looking SOUTH along Main Street at its intersection with Spring Street. All this vanished in 1925 with construction of New City Hall which changed the alignment of Spring to a street parallel to Main. Temple Street is immediately off-camera to the right. An electric streetcar would date the photo to post June 1896.”
This is roughly how that view looked in June 2022.
Oh, no, Mr. Bill! This one looks south from up on the old junction where Spring curved east to join Main, with the roadway running out toward the rail yards and the river bridges (re-named North Spring Street). Temple dropped in from the right but is out of site here. The car on the left is the Main Street & Agricultural Park Rail Road heading southbound and carrying US Mail (the little white sign below the car end). The one on the right is a Pasadena bound trolley on an early routing. So everything in the center is now the City Hall area, the roads having been altered.
Tower to right of City Hall’s pyramid style should be the Times which was blown up in 1910, same year that the new Post Office Federal Building was constructed to the right where Temple came downhill.
The guy sweeping or whatever to the right of the wagon is standing where the rail under the lead child curves toward Spring. So, there is only one rail on Main here and the Ag. Park car is not running against any right hand rules even if it looks like it is. Temple tracks, once a part of a cable operation that was abandoned, will be controlled by Pacific Electric as a local line until it is surrendered to LARy around 1907. LARy will continue to operate down to the intersection until some access is made to use the future Hill Street tunnel #1(blt. 1909) in the 1930’s era. But when this shot was made (late 1890’s or so), conjestion Victorian-style ruled at this intersection.
Definitely not the Times tower (blt. 1912), so it must be the old courthouse tower from which many great photos were made.
Nope. Certainly glad I’m not the only person who has mis-identified this before. That’s the top of the Phillips Block with Hamburger’s Department Store (began as the People’s Store) which remained to about 1908 moving south. The City Hall tower is seen behind the Nadeau Hotel (at 1st Street). I had a feeling you couldn’t see the courthouse tower from this angle…it would be out of view. The much earlier courthouse was down past the Temple Block at the Market Street area.
Looking at the circa 1900 photo I was wondering how many states there were then and the flags on the left are the 1896-1908 version with 45 stars.