Quote:
Originally Posted by JScott
Excellent, thank you! That's the closest view I've ever seen of the old jail. I'm still wondering about that other building on Pound Cake Hill which we think is/was an earlier jail. For awhile there, I thought it might be the Fulton Block as indicated on the Baist map, but double-checking, I noticed they are two quite different-looking buildings.
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LAPL has the 1888 and 1894 Sanborn maps available online (with library card). Home access of the database didn't work today (librarians at a loss to explain), so I went to my local branch and looked online at the maps there. The building immediately south of the courthouse was, as
MichaelRyerson said, an old jail, and is labeled in some detail on the 1894 map. To me it looks more like a church than a jail.
Here's the New High Street side in c. 1895 (I like that "DRUG" sign at lower left). On the Sanborn map the "church" building is labeled "Off's 1st / D 2nd." Maybe that means "Offices 1st floor" and "Detention 2nd floor"?:
USC Digital Library (
http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/cdm/si...id/2719/rec/28)
It seems to have lost the cross atop the right front corner in this c. 1904 pic:
USC Digital Library (
http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/cdm/si...id/2722/rec/22)
In this c. 1906 shot looking I guess NE, we see the church-like building from the side/rear. The Sanborn map marks the slightly smaller building attached to the rear of the "church" as the actual jail; unseen and attached to the back side of the jail is a workshop.
USC Digital Library (
http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/cdm/si...id/2723/rec/69)
Here are the back of the jail and a little of the workshop building in this c. 1900 pic from the corner of Broadway and Temple:
USC Digital Library (
http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/cdm/si...d/90118/rec/63)
Looking down Broadway in c. 1906 we see -- along with the shaded courthouse in the upper left quadrant of the photo -- a structure with smokestacks that according to the 1894 Sanborn map was behind (west of) the workshop, although they look to have been two halves of the same building. It housed a compression tank, steam plant, and oil and air pumps (seems like a big power plant just for that jail building; it must have also served the courthouse). Feeding the power plant, in the southwest corner of the courthouse lawn, was a 10,000-gallon crude oil tank with its top even with the ground.
USC Digital Library (
http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/cdm/si...id/1725/rec/36)
I couldn't find out what this older jail was used for between 1902, when the next jail was built, and when it was torn down and replaced by the Hall of Records less than a decade later.