Somebody Has to Know...

I found this interesting reminiscence from losangelesmetro.net:

“In the early 1950s my family moved to Los Angeles. We all quickly got jobs paying us twice what we made in our hometown in southern New York State. My mother and I worked downtown. I worked for the Santa Fe Railroad on 6th and Main. On my noon hour I would walk the streets, often going to the public library.

“The streets were always packed with people, even late into the evening. There must have been at least a dozen movie theaters downtown (including several first-run houses), three or four concert halls, many hotels, tons of restaurants of all kinds (all filled during the noon and early evening hours), drug stores (most with crowded lunch counters), bakeries, newsstands, several big department stores, night clubs, bars, bookstores, and even burlesque theaters. The Harbor freeway didn’t exist yet, but the old Pasadena freeway, the Hollywood freeway, and a freeway to the San Gabriel Valley were up. The air was terrible downtown, and on many days you couldn’t see more than two blocks through the acrid brown haze. There were many streetcars, and some Red Line cars, still running. Crowds of people got off of street cars in front of the Santa Fe building to go to the Pacific Electric station and make their bus or Red Line connection to other parts of the county. Cars could park on the downtown streets.”

With the advent of Amtrak, Greyhound’s ultimate monopoloy on bus travel, and, of course, Union Station, I would guess that the old Santa Fe Depot was torn down sometime in the 80s, though it probably lingered beyond its demise as travel depot as some form of mixed use facility.

Oops. I should have posted the URl to the full piece. Where’s my netiquette?

http://www.losangelesmetro.net/decline.htm

By then, there was zero demand for office space on Main Street, but still very high taxes (and upkeep and insurance and utility costs)for a building that size; so it made financial sense to tear it down, get the taxes reduced and then lease it out as a parking lot.

I often walk downtown and think of what buildings used to be at some parking lots. It’s sad to think of what did the buildongs look like,how big were they and how old were they. I recentlycame across this photo of what used to be The Richfield Tower which stood on 5th and Flower. One can only wonder what treasures we lost. http://www.usc.edu/dept/geography/losangeles/lawalk/new/rich2.gif

The old bus depot was torn down to make way for the now abandoned Greyhound bus depot. Anyway, that is what Tom Owen once told me. It was located at the southeast corner of 6th and Los Angeles, I believe.

The bookstore on Grand Ave. just south of the Biltmore once had a framed copy of the photo hanging in it’s display window.