Los Angeles's showpiece of its day: the Baker Block, ca.1880. In a town still consisting mostly of simple frame houses and adobes, this palace of commerce must truly have been a wondrous apparition.
LAPL/Litho. C.L. Smith & Co., Oakland, CA.
Main Street looking north from atop the Temple Block, ca.1880.
LAPL
The upscale commercial heart of the old city, ca.1880. The Baker Block at left, and the old Bella Union Hotel building at far right. Note the second Coulter's Dry Goods store in the Baker Block at lower left, having moved from the Downey Block across the street
in 1879.
LAPL
Baker Block, 1880.
LAPL
Still lookin' good ca.1920.
LAPL
ca.1940.
LAPL
SE corner Arcadia and Main, 1940.
LAPL
ca.1940.
LAPL
1939. After a hundred years, the old Bella Union/St. Charles Hotel building is admittedly starting to look a bit seedy.
LAPL
ca.1937. And there goes the neighborhood – the new Federal Building begins to rise across Main Street.
LAPL/Herman Schultheis, Photographer.
-Scott
Post on my blog
here.