Victorian Downtown Los Angeles

This article is about the area which formed the central business district during the 1880s and 1890s. For the neighborhoods famous for Victorian residences, see Angelino Heights, Los Angeles and Bunker Hill, Los Angeles.

1894 drawing by Bruce Wellington Pierce: portion from Third Street (bottom left) to Plaza (top right). The Red Sandstone Courthouse with its clocktower is prominent at center. At upper right is Los Angeles High School on Fort Moore Hill.

The late-Victorian-era Downtown of Los Angeles in 1880 was centered at the southern end of the Los Angeles Plaza area, and over the next two decades, it extended south and west along Main Street, Spring Street, and Broadway towards Third Street. Most of the 19th-century buildings no longer exist, surviving only in the Plaza area or south of Second Street. The rest were demolished to make way for the Civic Center district with City Hall, numerous courthouses, and other municipal, county, state and federal buildings, and Times Mirror Square.[1][2] This article covers that area, between the Plaza, 3rd St., Los Angeles St., and Broadway, during the period 1880 through the period of demolition (1920s–1950s).

At the time (1880–1900s), the area was referred to as the business center, business section or business district. By 1910, it was referred to as the "North End" of the business district which by then had expanded south to what is today called the Historic Core, along Broadway, Spring and Main roughly from 3rd to 9th streets.[3]

  1. ^ "Early Los Angeles Historical Buildings (1800s)", Water and Power Associates
  2. ^ "Los Angeles Fifty Years Ago: The Re-Creation of a Vanished City". Los Angeles Times. November 15, 1931. p. 90. Archived from the original on June 7, 2019. Retrieved May 13, 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  3. ^ "Fact and Comment". The Los Angeles Times. January 16, 1910. Archived from the original on October 31, 2023 – via Newspapers.com.