Libi's California Adventure

Today we went in search of treasures near downtown Los Angeles, and made it our goal to hit ten spots today.

Image from Google Maps; locations mapped by landmarkquest.com

To get there, we rode the Metrolink from the Via Princessa Station in Canyon Country, CA, to Union Station in Los Angeles. Metrolink is currently offering $10 weekend passes, so it was a great opportunity to save the driving and parking and ride the rails. We have ridden the Metrolink a few times, but this was the first time we have ever seen anyone cited for failing to have a ticket. I didn't go up to the offender and ask him how much his fine was, but word on the internet is that the fine is around $250 right now. We're glad we just ponied up the 10 bucks each for us.

About an hour later, we arrived at Union Station. Union Station is a beautiful 1930s era, art deco-inspired train station. According to some of the information we learned today, the land that was used to build Union Station was the site of the original Chinatown here in LA.

Before we left the Union Station property, Heather showed Libi how to use a sundial for the first time. The time on the sundial matched the time shown on the giant clock on the Union Station façade.

Our first landmark of the day has a definite location, but no marker. It's the southeast corner of the entrance to Union Station, and is the site of the The Lugo Adobe (CHL #301). "Said to have been built in the 1840s by Don Vicente Lugo, it was one of the very few two-story houses in the pueblo of Los Angeles." (CA Office of Historic Preservation).

No marker, no plinth, so we quickly cross Alameda Street and head toward one of our favorite LA places, Olvera Street, located within the larger "El Pueblo de Los Angeles" site.

There's our friend, Father Junipero Serra. Libi is starting to see a recurring theme among the various sites we have visited so far. She's going to be seeing a LOT more of Fr. Serra before we are done with our travels throughout California.

Our next stop was the Plaza Fire House (CHL #730), the first building in Los Angeles to be built exclusively for the purpose of being a firehouse. Today, it's a firefighting museum.

My favorite part of the firehouse were the old fire helmets hanging on the wall.

Adjacent to the firehouse is the Pico House (CHL #159). Pío Pico was the last governor of Mexican California right before the Americans seized Los Angeles in 1846. Years later, the Los Angeles pueblo area was in decline, and in the late 1860s, Pico decided that he wanted to revitalize the area by building a grand hotel. Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles is named for Pío Pico, and Pico Canyon right here in Santa Clarita gets its name from another major player in 1800s California history, Pío's younger brother Andres Pico.

Next stop is Los Angeles Plaza (CHL #156). The city of Los Angeles was founded in 1781. 3,000 miles away this same year Lord Cornwallis surrendered to General George Washington on the Atlantic coast to end the fighting of the Revolutionary War. Meanwhile, on the Pacific Coast, Spain's King Carlos III granted this land to the city's first 44 settlers.

If anyone ever doubted the Catholic Church's influence on the lives of Mexican citizens back in this time, look no further than the origins of Los Angeles. First, the full name of the city is El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Angeles del Río de Porciúncula, literally translating to "the Village of Our Lady, Queen of Angels, of the Porciúncula River." The Porciúncula River is the LA River, and Our Lady, Queen of Angels, is a reference to the Virgin Mary. Look a little further, however, at the names of the first 44, listed on this marker (click on the image for a larger view):

There were 20 named María, 1 named Mariana (a variation of María), and 12 named José. So 33 out of the original 44 were named after Mary or Joseph. My mother's family's own naming also reflects this same respect for Catholic tradition. My maternal grandfather was José, and my grandparents named their oldest son José as well. My mom was the first born child of the family, and was born Blanca Cristina Limon, although everyone called her Cris. Blanca was my grandmother's name. And "Cristina"? If you look at the Church calendar the year my mom was born, June 16, 1949, it is the feast day of Corpus Christi.

Speaking of my grandmother, one of my favorite childhood food memories was of her fideo soup, so I made sure to order some when we went to El Paseo in Olvera Street for lunch.

It wasn't quite as good as my grandmother's, but it still brought back some memories. The homemade tortillas were pretty delicious also.

Libi was enthralled by the giant piñata in the center of the street, and of course she wanted to shop as well.

We were able to pry Libi away from the street vendors and find the one landmark that's actually on Olvera Street: the Avila Adobe (CHL #145). Avila Adobe is the oldest house in LA, dating back to 1818. General Robert Stockton used it as his headquarters when he marched into Los Angeles in 1847. The Avila Adobe was nearly destroyed in the 1920s when it had been condemned and scheduled for demolition.

Image from El Pueblo de Los Angeles website (http://www.lacity.org)

At that time, Olvera Street was nicknamed Wine Street, and it was a dirty, unpaved alley.

Image from El Pueblo de Los Angeles website (http://www.lacity.org)

Los Angeles resident Christine Sterling convinced the city council to save the Avila Adobe and convert the alley into a Mexican marketplace. Her story is actually quite fascinating. As part of her campaign to spare the adobe, Sterling hosted a barbecue on the front patio of the adobe and filled the event with free-flowing tequila (this is 1929, by the way--Prohibition times). One of the invited guests, LA Police Chief James Davis, could have shut the party down. Instead, after a few sips of tequila, agreed to give Sterling 30 inmates from the city jail to clean up and pave the street. The full (fascinating) story of Christine Sterling and the birth of Olvera Street is here: http://articles.latimes.com/2005/apr/17/local/me-then17

Here is a beautiful view of Union Station from the adobe plaza.

Grapes grow in a trellis that serves as a shade structure for the plaza.

One of many pieces of Catholic imagery inside the rooms of the adobe.

Libi is inspired by the Spanish history surrounding her as she strikes a Flamenco pose at the entrance of Olvera Street.

We left Olvera Street and the plaza and hit Main Street. Right across from the plaza is Nuestra Señora Reina de Los Angeles Catholic Church (CHL #144). It was hopping today! There were no fewer than two dozen baptism candidates there, children ranging in age from infants to about 8-years-old, boys and girls alike, all decked out in bright white outfits.

Out in front of the church is another of the El Camino Real bells. El Camino Real ("the Royal Road") that connects all the missions and asistencias along the approximate path that Father Junipero Serra traveled in the late 1700s is California Historical Landmark #784, but we have to either be in San Diego (the start) or San Francisco (the end) in order to see the marker for it. The California Women's League began placing the bells up and down the state in 1906. Their first bell was right here.

After the church, we headed south on Main Street to the front of the old Merced Theatre (CHL #171). The Merced was LA's first building to be exclusively used as a theater.

Sadly, it's no longer a theater anymore, and the windows are simply covered with scenes of old Los Angeles.

I was able to hoist my iPhone high enough to get above the window covering. Yup, definitely not a theater lobby anymore.

But wait, as it turns out, the first floor never was a theater lobby. The theater was located entirely on the second floor of the building, and William Abbott, the Los Angeles cabinet-maker who used his furniture fortune to build the Merced used the first floor of the building as a furniture store (the third floor served as his family's home). The Merced gave its first performance in 1871 (balcony seats were only 50 cents) and its last in 1877. During its brief time, the Merced served as the center of culture for the pueblo-becoming-city. After an evening of music at the theater, an Angeleno wrote in 1873, "I confess to have been as well entertained as by any operatic concert of much greater pretensions in San Francisco."

Full story here: http://dbase1.lapl.org/webpics/calindex/documents/03/166637.pdf

Minstrel shows and burlesque troupes performed there, often poking fun at local politicians and celebrities. One of these lampooned characters was captured in 1874 and housed at the city jail just a few blocks away: Tiburcio Vásquez.

Image from http://www.scvhistory.com

Vásquez plays prominently in our local Santa Clarita history, and that will be the subject of a future one of Libi's California Adventures.
After the Merced Theatre, we had three more landmarks left to find, and our six-year-old's attention span and energy were beginning to wane, so we marched further south down Main Street, coming upon Fletcher Bowron Square. Named for one of the city's mayors (second longest-serving mayor after Tom Bradley), Fletcher Bowron Square is the site of two markers: the Bella Union Hotel Site (CHL #656) and the former home of the Los Angeles Star (CHL #789).

The marker here for the Los Angeles Star doesn't begin to tell the story of the man who led the Star for most of its life: Henry Hamilton. The Star was LA's first newspaper; publication began in 1851. The paper had a readership of only 500 when Hamilton took it over in 1856 (300 copies in English, 200 in Spanish). By scooping some of the hottest stories of the antebellum period, Hamilton was able to grow circulation into the thousands. By the time of the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, Hamilton used this platform to speak out against the war and against President Abraham Lincoln. Hamilton called the conflict "a holy war, waged in defense of the Constitution, states' rights and, above all, white supremacy." Hamilton's rancor against the Union ultimately led President Lincoln to lock him up in Alcatraz, where he spent a few weeks before friends secured his release. After signing a loyalty oath to the Union, Hamilton ran for state Senate and won. He spent increasingly more time in Sacramento, and his absence from Los Angeles caused the Star to go bankrupt in 1864. He gave up on politics in 1868, when he returned to LA and revived the Star back to solvency. He finally sold the paper in 1873 and it ceased publication for good in 1879. He died of asthma in 1891, and his obituary rated a mere two lines in the new #1 newspaper in town: The Los Angeles Times.

This sculpture in Bowron Square is the Triforium, a 60-foot tall structure built in 1975. It was the world's first sculpture to incorporate light and sound played by computer.

We're headed still further south for our final landmark of the day. On the way, we pass Los Angeles City Hall. Completed in 1928, City Hall is not a California Historical Landmark, but is the iconic symbol of the city. It was the city's tallest building from 1928 to 1964.

Our final stop is the Times-Mirror Building. Built in 1935, it has been home ever since to the Los Angeles Times.

Libi is starting to get tired. Don't worry! This is our final stop of the day!

The building isn't even a Historical Site because of the Times. It makes the list because it is the site of the Butterfield Stage Station (CHL #744). The Butterfield Overland Mail Company built an outpost here in 1859. Prior to 1857, all mail bound for the West Coast would have to travel by ship to Panama where it was transported by land over the isthmus and then traveled across the Pacific for the remainder of the journey to California. This took weeks, and the transcontinental railroad wouldn't be completed until 1869. President James Buchanan contracted with the Butterfield Overland Mail Company in 1857 to transport the US Mail over it's stagecoach route from St. Louis to San Francisco, and could do so in six days. The outbreak of the Civil War, along with the completion of the more direct Central Overland Route, led to the government canceling its contract with Butterfield in 1861.

Libi and mommy shooting a couple more photos before we head back to Union Station.

Here is a side-view of Pico House on our walk back. The Merced Theatre is the slightly taller building to the right of Pico House.

One last exterior shot of Union Station, complete with clock I alluded to earlier in the post.

Water bottles for my girls for our travels home; a trenta iced green tea for me. I'm not sure when they put this Starbucks in at Union Station, but I'm happy they did.