Monthly Archives: September 2019

A Depressive’s Tour of Downtown — El Pueblo; Yangna

[huff, puff] Thanks for keeping up… Looks like our weather is cooperating, with lots of lovely gloom. Okay, here we are coming into the oldest part of LA, El Pueblo de la Reina de los Angeles, the Town of the Queen of the Angels. The town site has migrated three times, up and down the LA River bank, which used to be near here, a lush, broad, meandering green ribbon. Underneath this blacktop, lie the finest soils and most productive farmland in the world.

It’s tough to imagine today, with prosperous modern civilization all around us, that this plateau was once a sleepy village of tule-thatched domed huts, full of hunters and gatherers, a place called Yangna.

The white church is Our Lady Queen of the Angels, built 1818-24. For years it served the mounted dons and donas, and footsore tired and poor of Los Angeles in the Franciscan tradition. Today that noble service is in the generous hands of the Cathedral, just back there, up Aliso Street…er, the 101.

Still through the cloven skies they come, on peaceful wings unfurled; and still their heavenly music floats, o’er all the weary world.

Twin stumps of frontage road straddling the freeway, one called Arcadia and one called Aliso, is what remains of Aliso Street, which was the in-town name of El Camino San Gabriel, aka El Camino Real, the road into (and out of) The Angels. Now Aliso Street is the 101. Since it was chopped down by the railroads, we can’t really follow this road down to the site of the street’s former namesake: El Aliso, the massive sycamore tree that loomed over the road. It lowered over travelers’s horses wading the river at the ford, over the nodding ostrich plumes on the helmets of Cmdr. Stockton’s troops as they rode in, and for centuries, its branches reached out over the little domed huts of the Tongva, the only shade for miles in this (usually) oppressively sunny plateau.

The tall sandstone building is Patsouras Plaza, the h.q. of Metro. They received billions in financing to build subways — and spent it building this skyscraper instead! Metro bigwigs then spent ten years making phone calls from their corner offices, asking city, state and federal officials for more billions to build the actual tracks, now that they could oversee them. The handsome brick block is the Brunswick block, built to house the first modern drug store in LA. Angelenos have been mad for modern drugs ever since!

This parking lot on Arcadia Street was put up when the fabulous Baker Block was razed, to put up this parking lot. See the VVV blog entry on Dona Arcadia Bandini de Stearns Baker. Its absence, or negative space as the architects call it, lets us View two other equally important buildings, the two handsome white Italianate structures rising on Main Street beyond. These are, left, Pico House, where Jules Herder was the chef (1870); and right, the Merced Theatre, the first professional playhouse in Southern California (1876). Both became: burlesque house/bawdy house, Chinese rooming house, opium den, flophouse, and now empty, closed-off, hollowed-out state monument. But you can see them, now the rest of the city is leveled.

Follow me to the right; we’re heading south, now, toward the new city that the Yankees built. You won’t believe your eyes! We just have to get over there somehow. Ready — GO!

Thine alabaster cities gleam, undimmed by human tears!

A Depressive’s Tour Of Downtown — Meet At Fort Hill, 2:00

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Well, it’s 2:35, I guess we’ll start. Hi guys, thanks for joining the tour. We have a rare beautiful day in notoriously “sunny LA,” to kick over whatever fragments are left of the historic sites of the Pueblo. We meet here on Fort Hill, also known as Fort Moore Hill, at the Fort Hill Memorial, also known as the Pioneer Memorial. [Semi-truck air horn…..rush-blast of gritty wind…]

THE MONUMENT HAS just been cleaned, after 22 years as “That hobo jungle crack park off the 101 freeway ramp.” Also known as “Skid Row Heights” during that era. Look down, now they’ve trimmed the overgrown ficus trees — you can glimpse a remnant of the bygone authentic atmosphere from the vanished LA of 2018.

Don’t worry, that’s not a corpse! Just a park visitor napping.

Back in September,1846, the occupying Yankees were besieged up on this hill by the revolt of the Angelenos, down there in the Plaza. When the spirited and brave, or foolish and treacherous, revolt of the Californios was finally defeated, or betrayed, and California was strong-armed, or welcomed, into the Union, U.S. forces returned and built a real fort over “The Angels,” where they could get a sweeping view of the entire Pueblo and the valley of Los Angeles. I guess we should feel lucky we can JUST glimpse this famous view today.

That green patch is the heart of Los Angeles

The redoubt was named for Capt. Moore, who was horribly speared to death and trampled under hoof by the California Lancers on the field of San Pasqual. You won’t learn much about the real history of the site — which is in fact a salient in history as well as geography — from the exhibit. It’s just 50’s-style racist LA civic boosterism about how the Boston Nation brought progress, water, and power to this arid, lifeless, backward Mexican land. Check the VVV post on the blog for the story.

The panels were fired by Gladding, McBean Pottery, who also did the waterfall tiles. The style is dazzling, now that they’ve been cleaned.

“The terra cotta art wall designed by Henry Kreis is the most notable feature of the memorial. Fabricated by the prominent California terra cotta manufacturer Gladding, McBean, it was reported at the time of its installation to be the largest bas-relief in the United States. This is the only public artwork in Los Angeles portraying an historic event that occurred at the actual site of the work. It depicts the ceremonial flag being raised over the fort on July 4, 1847. To insure the authenticity of the uniforms worn by the U.S. First Dragoons, the New York Volunteers and the Mormon Batallion – the units witnessing the ceremony – Kreis was advised by noted California historians Glenn Dumke and Robert Cleland.
LA County Arts and Culture website

Heres a great depressing video, too short, alas, about the monument, free for tour members.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YE2QEv_15g_cqdlWewwOP8H0Uc9pS-0a/view?usp=sharing

Next we’ll head down the grand staircase to the Plaza. We can’t legally cross this street, or any of the four streets that now are now connected by this staircase since there are no crosswalks between. So we’ll have to zig-zag for miles between intersections, or you can follow me and jay-walk sprint — ready, GO! As you flee across the lanes, note the cheerful ghetto mural that enlivens the wall of the lofts. It lures the hipsters into believing they’re moving into a real ethnic community, built up over generations by hard-working Mexican Americans, and memorialized by child graffiti artists trained by nuns at the local Teen Drop-In Center.. Tish-tosh!

Hmmm…we want to go toward the Church…but we’re blocked by traffic and three rings of fencing. Just meet me over there!

[shouts over shoulder] Note also that the ramp has been redesigned into a boulevard leading into Chinatown, the real ethnic neighborhood that is now a vacant ghost town, just waiting for hipsters to discover it, and tear it down to build more of This Shit.

As sinuous as the Dragon Gate, the new corner of North Broadway and Caesar Chavez/Sunset Blvd.

Note how the 1960s street shade-tree planting — gorgeous pink crapemyrtle, obviously taken into account by the color designers of the new lofts — ends with the new lofts.

The Fort Hill View — Gone Forever

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The white blur down the hill is Pico House.

During this last week of September 1846, Seubula Varela issued a pronunciamiento and posted it in the Plaza. Varela was a Mexican patriot, aka, a young hot-head, in the U.S.-occupied Ciudad. Varela somehow had printed a pronunciamiento against Maj. Archibald Gillespie, the U.S. Marine left by Stockton to command the humiliated capital city. Gen. Jose Castro and Gov. Pio Pico had already fled to Mexico — taking the treasury from Monterey, and the provincial records and archives from Los Angeles, with them, respectively.

The earliest photograph of Los Angeles, taken from Fort Hill. That’s the water-tank in the center; the two-story Lugo Adobe behind it; then the glint of the LA River and top right, distant cienegas; in between, the fields and orchards. It’s possible that the HUGE sycamore along the road to San Gabriel, is “El Aliso”, the sacred home-tree of Yangna. Middle right is Carre de los Negros; The white-gabled adobe at right is the Carillo Adobe. La Placita Church and churchyard cemetery are at bottom, far left.

An expensive, handsome renovation has redeemed the monument; now the hipsters won’t overlook a dry, needle-spiked ruin from their balconies.

[A pronunciamiento is a traditional Spanish political appeal — a kind of matching-grant challenge, declaring things very bad, proposing public rebellion, and inviting fellow citizens to mount up under command of whomever issued the pronunciamiento.]

Fortunately, Gen. Andres Pico and Gen. Juan Flores were the first to mount up, so the 600 tardier volunteers were relieved to find that the silver spurs had already taken over command from Varela’s red-hot espuelas.

Pico House, built in 1870 atop the Carillo Adobe, gleams like an Italian palazzo when Viewed from Fort Hill. The swank, modern hostelry was developed with Pio Pico’s proceeds from the sale of the SFV to Isaac Lankershim.

The surprised Americans troops were driven from the Plaza up to the top of the hill rising behind La Placita Church, which thereupon became “Fort Hill.” They whipped up some earthworks, but had no water or food and had to surrender. Before they did, they sent the famous Juan Flaco, “Hungry John” galloping through the Californio lines, and he began his breathless, epic 400-mile ride to Monterey to report the revolt and to request relief for the beleaguered Americans. The Californios wasted no time marching their 50 Marine prisoners of war back to San Pedro at lance-point. Yankee, go home!

The Lugo Adobe (I think now a Catholic girls’ school) and La Placita both got shake-shingle rooves! That’s the adobe of Agustin Olvera, just above the clump of trees at the left. This is just about the time the City changed the name of Vine Street to “Olvera Street,” to honor the U.S.federal judge.

Later, when Cmdr. Stockton, and/or Gen. Kearney, retook LA, the famous Mormon Battalion were ordered to build Fort Moore on the hilltop. Here, on July 4th, with the whole Plaza of LA in view, the 4th of July was first celebrated in LA, 1847, of course with cannons booming and a concert of band music. Which displays, of course, were thoroughly enjoyed by the Angelenos.

When Fort Hill was “The Hills:” PHINEAS BANNING led that ghastly LA phenomenon — “Hilltop levelling” for a millionaire’s super-villa.

Then Fort (Moore) Hill became — think about it — the city’s first Protestant cemetery. Then a clip-joint beer garden, where folks could “roll back home” after a bender. Then Phineas Banning Built His Dream House. Then the LAUSD mangled the site with a horrible succession of school buildings; then the 101 Freeway obliterated the site. Still, until this summer, you could see down to the Plaza from Fort Hill, or up to the hill from the Plaza. It was the most famous view of Los Angeles for many years.

It’s gone – almost completely. Though in fact, they’ve left JUST enough of a sight-line to grudgingly admit the idea that the View was worth preserving, so they left a twenty-foot-wide canyon through their canopy of balconies.

The tiny white box, center, is La Placita

No sign for the Plaza; or the Pueblo; or La Placita; or Fort Moore Hill monument.

Just to rub it in, I actually like filling that space with residential units. It makes all kinds of sense. But overpriced hipster lofts identical to these are everywhere,while the city has lost a vital organ here — a link to geography, and to history, and to the unique spirit of Los Angeles. Sigh. At least they put in a staircase. Though note, no crosswalk links the flights across streets.