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Los Angeles From an "Auto" : Part 3
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5843 Reads
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The third installment [part 1 & part 2] of the Los Angeles From an "Auto," historical tour guide scan from 1906, series covers the Bank District and the Pacific Electric Building and also touches on the Chinese Quarter, which is not the same as modern day Chinatown, now actually known as New Chinatown.
As I mentioned in the last post, I created a google map with links to the engravings featured in the book so far along, to which I have added the buildings which I found addresses for. I have also set up a google map of Los Angeles Historical Cultural Monuments that currently covers Downtown LA and soon will cover all of LA and Long Beach.
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Adjoining the great court of the Pacific Electric Building are spacious waiting rooms, an excellent cafe, and the most attractive public dining hall in Los Angeles. Several important shops and offices occupy other portions of the ground floor. Among these is the city office of the Willmington Transportation Department, which operates the line of steamers making daily trips between the port of San Pedro and that most beautiful of California's islands, Catalina, rightly termed "An Isle of Summer."
The great building also is the home of several of Southern California's most important corporations. Mr. Huntington's own companies occupy the entire seventh floor, while the general offices of Senator Clark's new and direct railway to the east, known as the Salt Lake Route, are located on the fifth floor. Here also are the general offices of the Wilmington Transportation and the Catalina Island Companies, and the division offices of the Southern Pacific Company.
The eighth and ninth floors of the Pacific Electric Building are the home of the Jonathan Club, one of the most important and the largest social organizations in Southern California. Its highly elevated quarters are most elaborately furnished and equipped, while from the principal apartments there are commanded panoramas of snow-capped mountains, green fields, glistening orchards, flower-bowered suburbs, and bustling city streets, giving to this club a novelty of location individual to itself.
Gliding northward on Main street, we pass on the left the new home of the oldest financial institution, and one of the most important in Southern California, the Farmers and Merchants National Bank. Its banking house is one of the few in America which occupies an entire building. Architecturally this building is among the most beautiful in California, while its interior is a perfect model, from a banking standpoint, nothing being omitted which might in any way tend to facilitate the transaction of its enormous business. Magnificently constructed and easily accessible safety deposit vaults occupy the basement of the handsome structure.
As we look west we see, one block distant, two new structures which have greatly added to Los Angeles' architectural grandeur. That on the right as we glance along Fourth street, is the Herman W. Hellman Building, a model of modern designing, both in appearance and accommodation.
Directly opposite looms the twelve stories of the Union Trust and Title Company's structure, the tallest building in Southern California. Like its opposite neighbor this sky-scraper is as striking in its beauty as in its size, and emphasizes the rapid progress ot this wonderfully prosperous city. The lower floors of both these gigantic structures are occupied by banking institutions, the Union Trust Building being the home of the Southern California Savings Bank, with its immense safe deposit vaults, while the Security Savings Bank and its accompanying safe deposit department, is located in the Hellman Building.
One half block to our right on Fourth street is the General Headquarters building of the Edison Electric Company, a corporation which has been directly identified with the building up of Los Angeles and her suburban sisters. Operated under the presidency ot Mr. John B. Miller and a directorate made up of men who are in the forefront of the country's business affairs, this company has grown to be one of the most extensive and important electric distributing companies in America. In the Edison Company's history one can trace, step by step, every advance made in electric power generation and transmission up to the present time.
Today this great company is distributing electric current for light, heat and power purposes in almost every city, town and district,-from the mountains to the sea-in Southern California. It operates at the present six electric water power plants and large auxilliary steam plants, with a total generating capacity of over 34,000 horse-power. In addition, there are in course of construction five water power plants with a capacity of 100,000 horse-power. A large amount of money has been expended in harnessing the waters of the Kern and Santa Ana rivers, and those in Lytle Creek and Mill Creek canyons, and transmitting the power to Los Angeles and adjoining cities.
The Edison Electric Company does not confine its business to electricity alone, but also handles a sister product, as it owns and operates a system of eleven gas plants, located in as many different cities of Southern California.
Along Main street our journey lies, passing on our left, at Third and Main streets, the new home of the Citizens National Bank, which, when completed, will be another addition to Los Angeles' architectural development, the old home of this same institution being one block north at the intersection of Third and Spring streets.
A block further, at the crossing of Second street, we pass on the right the building of the Merchants National Bank, an old and trusted institution.
Further along Main street upon our left hand and north of Second street, stands the Mott Market, the first important market in the new Los Angeles. Half a block further, and we are at the intersection of First and Main streets. Upon the corner to the right is one of the city's leading financial institutions, the German American Savings Bank, which, by a late coalition with the Union Bank of Savings, has become one of Southern California's powerful institutions. Here we find ourselves in a veritable net-work of electric car lines.
At these corners there converge lines which tap nearly every section of the city as well as the Inter-Urban lines running to Pasadena, Mount Lowe, San Gabriel Mission and Monrovia. The city lines which lead eastward from this point reach across the valley, passing the railway stations of the "Santa Fe" System and the "Salt Lake Route," and connecting the center of the city with a most attractive suburb known as East Los Angeles, noted for Its beautiful homes, wellkept streets and magnificent parks. Our journey through the city proper is too long to permit of a digression to that charming locality, so we proceed further north on Main street, passing on the left the Bullard Building, a modern structure erected on the site of Los Angeles' original City Hall. A block further we turn into Commercial street for a short trip to the Oriental quarter. At one block from Main street we cross Los Angeles street in the very center of the city's wholesale district, and from even our rapid glance over its commercial activity it is easy to judge of the great commercial advancement which has lately come to this Metropolis of the Southwest.
Eastward of Los Angeles street we descend a slight hill through the warehouse district, and with a sharp turn we are on Alameda street, the thoroughfare along which the lines of the Southern Pacific System enter and leave the city. A short distance along Alameda street and a right-hand turn brings us within the limits of the Chinese quarter. How suddenly everything changes. No longer the modern stores with their plate-glass windows and broad fronts, but instead the dingy shops of the Asiatic, their narrow windows filled with odds and ends of haberdashery... [To Be Continued]
I have posted the raw photos here.
Dave Bullock blogs at eecue.com
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| Posted by: eecue on Monday, July 18, 2005 - 09:26 PM
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