Looking south on Spring Street from near its intersection with First Street, right around the turn of the 20th century...
Note the early electric sign on the rooftop in front of us. (It's too early for it to be neon - that started after 1910.) As best I can tell, this sign says:
CRANDALL
AYLSWORTH
COMPANY
UP TO DATE
BARGAINS
USC Digital Archive
Here we are looking north(east) on Spring from First, around the same time period. There's the electric sign again, through which we can see Hamburger's Department Store in the Phillips Block (1887).
USC Digital Archive
See the policeman inside the elevated traffic kiosk on the northwest corner of the intersection? Every major intersection in L.A. had a police kiosk like this. Many of these were still standing well into the 1920s...
-Scott