Downtown Los Angeles (DTLA) is the central business district of Los Angeles. It is part of the Central Los Angeles region and covers a 5.84 sq mi (15.1 km2) area. As of 2020, it contains over 500,000 jobs and has a population of roughly 85,000 residents, with an estimated daytime population of over 200,000 people prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Historic Core is a district within Downtown Los Angeles that includes the world's largest concentration of movie palaces, former large department stores, and office towers, all built chiefly between 1907 and 1931. Within it lie the Broadway Theater District and the Spring Street historic financial district, and in its west it overlaps with the Jewelry District and in its east with Skid Row.
Broadway, until 1890 Fort Street, is a thoroughfare in Los Angeles County, California, United States. The portion of Broadway from 3rd to 9th streets, in the Historic Core of Downtown Los Angeles, was the city's main commercial street from the 1910s until World War II, and is the location of the Broadway Theater and Commercial District, the first and largest historic theater district listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). With twelve movie palaces located along a six-block stretch of Broadway, it is the only large concentration of movie palaces left in the United States.
The Financial District is the central business district of Los Angeles It is bounded by the Harbor Freeway to the west, First Street to the north, Main and Hill Streets to the east, and Olympic Boulevard and 9th Street to the south. It is south of the Bunker Hill district, west of the Historic Core, north of South Park and east of the Harbor Freeway and Central City West. Like Bunker Hill, the Financial District is home to corporate office skyscrapers, hotels and related services as well as banks, law firms, and real estate companies. However, unlike Bunker Hill which was razed and now consists of buildings constructed since the 1960s, it also contains large buildings from the early 20th century, particularly along Seventh Street, once the city's upscale shopping street; the area also includes the 7th and Flower area at the center of the regional Metro rail system, restaurants, bars, and two urban malls.
The Million Dollar Theatre at 307 S. Broadway in Downtown Los Angeles is one of the first movie palaces built in the United States. It opened in 1917 with the premiere of William S. Hart's The Silent Man. It's the northernmost of the collection of historical movie palaces in the Broadway Theater District and stands directly across from the landmark Bradbury Building. The theater is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
Paramount Theatre, formerly Metropolitan Theater or Grauman's Metropolitan Theater, also known as Paramount Downtown, was a movie palace and office building located at 323 W. 6th Street and 536 S. Hill Street, across the street from Pershing Square, in the historic core of downtown Los Angeles. It was the largest movie theater in Los Angeles for many years.
The STILE Downtown Los Angeles by Kasa, originally built as the California Petroleum Corporation Building and later known as the Texaco Building, is a 243 ft (74 m), 13-story highrise hotel and theater building located at 937 South Broadway in downtown Los Angeles, California. It was the tallest building in the city for one year after its completion in 1927, and was the tallest privately owned structure in Los Angeles until 1956. Its style is Spanish Gothic, patterned after Segovia Cathedral in Segovia, Spain.
The Broadway Theater District in the Historic Core of Downtown Los Angeles is the first and largest historic theater district listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). With twelve movie palaces located along a six-block stretch of Broadway, it is the only large concentration of movie palaces left in the United States. The same six-block stretch of Broadway, and an adjacent section of Seventh Street, was also the city's retail hub for the first half of the twentieth century, lined with large and small department stores and specialty stores.
Spring Street in Los Angeles is one of the oldest streets in the city. Along Spring Street in Downtown Los Angeles, from just north of Fourth Street to just south of Seventh Street is the NRHP-listed Spring Street Financial District, nicknamed Wall Street of the West, lined with Beaux Arts buildings and currently experiencing gentrification. This section forms part of the Historic Core district of Downtown, together with portions of Hill, Broadway, Main and Los Angeles streets.
Main Street is a major north–south thoroughfare in Los Angeles, California. It serves as the east–west postal divider for the city and the county as well.
Haas Building, also known as the Broadway Exchange Building, is a historic twelve-story building located at 219 West 7th Street, at the corner of Broadway and Seventh Street, in Downtown Los Angeles's historic core. It was originally owned by Abraham Haas, and was completed in 1915.
Morgan, Walls & Clements was an architectural firm based in Los Angeles, California and responsible for many of the city's landmarks, dating back to the late 19th century. Originally Morgan and Walls, with principals Octavius Morgan and John A. Walls, the firm worked in the area from before the turn of the century.
The Metropolitan Building, in Los Angeles, California, was completed in 1913 and is one of a number of buildings built along Broadway in the early decades of the twentieth century for commercial and retail uses in what had then become the busiest and largest shopping district of the city. Located at the intersection of W. 5th Street and S. Broadway, the Metropolitan Building replaced a two-story, Romanesque Revival style building with storefronts on S. Broadway and W. 5th Street. This building was called the Mueller Building for its owner, Michail Mueller. The date of the building's construction is not known, nor has any additional information about it been located.
The Blackstone Building is a 1916 structure located at 901 South Broadway in Los Angeles, California. It has been listed as a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument since 2003. The Blackstone Department Store Building is an early example of the work of John B. Parkinson, Los Angeles’ preeminent architect of the early 20th century, who also designed Bullocks Wilshire. The building is clad in gray terra cotta and styled in the Beaux Arts school.
The May Company Building on Broadway in Downtown Los Angeles, a.k.a. Hamburgers/May Company Department Store and the May Department Store Building, later known as the California Broadway Trade Center, was the flagship store of the May Company California department store chain. It is a contributing property to the NRHP-listed Broadway Theater and Commercial District.
Robert Brown Young was a Canadian-born architect who designed numerous buildings in California, particularly in downtown Los Angeles.
The Bumiller Building is a residential building in the Los Angeles Historic Broadway Theater District. Built in 1906 and designed by the architects Morgan & Walls, the Bumiller Building was constructed of reinforced concrete in Renaissance Revival style. Historically the building has been a department store and a theater.
The late-Victorian-era Downtown of Los Angeles in 1880 was centered at the southern end of the Los Angeles Plaza area, and over the next two decades, it extended south and west along Main Street, Spring Street, and Broadway towards Third Street. Most of the 19th-century buildings no longer exist, surviving only in the Plaza area or south of Second Street. The rest were demolished to make way for the Civic Center district with City Hall, numerous courthouses, and other municipal, county, state and federal buildings, and Times Mirror Square. This article covers that area, between the Plaza, 3rd St., Los Angeles St., and Broadway, during the period 1880 through the period of demolition (1920s–1950s).
7th Street is a street in Los Angeles, California running from S. Norton Ave in Mid-Wilshire through Downtown Los Angeles. It goes all the way to the eastern city limits at Indiana Ave., and the border between Boyle Heights, Los Angeles and East Los Angeles.
Walter P. Story Building, also known as the New Story Building, is a historic eleven story high-rise located at 610 S. Broadway and 236 W. 6th Street in the Broadway Theater District in the historic core of downtown Los Angeles.
Location of Lankershim Hotel; note adjacent Van Nuys Building (Isaac Newton Van Nuys was Lankershim’s brother-in-law)
Hotel Lankershim with airships postcard 1909
Exterior view c. 1907
Looking west from Pacific Electric Building
