- Horse-drawn streetcar in front of the Los Angeles post office on Main Street, circa 1892
- Los Angeles Courthouse and Post Office in A History of Public Buildings (1901)
- Post office photo gallery in Los Angeles Herald (1905)
United States Post Office and Courthouse | |
---|---|
Alternative names | Los Angeles Federal Building |
General information | |
Coordinates | 34°02′50″N118°14′52″W / 34.0472°N 118.24772°W Coordinates: 34°02′50″N118°14′52″W / 34.0472°N 118.24772°W |
Opened | 1892 |
Demolished | 1901 |
Height | |
Architectural | Richardsonian Romanesque |
The first Los Angeles federal building, more formally the Los Angeles Federal Courthouse and Post Office or U.S. Post Office and Custom House [1] was a Richardsonian Romanesque red brick, brownstone and terra cotta structure [2] designed by Will A. Freret. [3] The building, located at the corner of Main Street and Winston Street, between Fourth and Fifth Streets, [4] was used for about nine years, [5] from 1892 to 1901, to house the Southern District of California, [6] a U.S. post office, and the customs office. The building was partially demolished in 1901; Court moved to the Tajo Building in the meantime. The post office was housed at a series of locations until the second Los Angeles federal building opened in 1910.
In 1887, Congress allocated funding for federal building number 198. [7] The building was occupied in summer 1892 [2] and the cost was said to be $150,000. [8] The building, after a modest expansion, eventually contained three main floors, a basement and an attic, altogether offering approximately 460,000 cubic feet of workspace. [2] [7]
However, circa 1901, the building was deemed inadequate for the needs of the growing city, vacated, [8] and partially but not wholly demolished. It was initially hoped that new construction on the same site could use some of the original framework. However, by 1905, as funding languished, the fenced-off ruin was generally described as a forlorn and hopeless wreck. [8]
Meanwhile, the post office moved between a series of temporary quarters:
The federal district court, [10] the U.S. attorney and the U.S. marshal [11] moved to fourth floor of the Tajo Building on the northwest corner of First and Broadway in 1901, [12] and remained there until 1910.
The site of the first federal building was sold in October 1906 for $314,000. [13] Construction on the replacement on the site of the former Downey Block began 1906 on donated land. [14] Circa 1910–11, the various federal offices relocated to the second Los Angeles federal building.
Broadway, until 1890 Fort Street, is a thoroughfare in Los Angeles County, California, USA. 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.
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The late-Victorian-era Downtown of Los Angeles grew year by year, around 1880 centered at the southern end of the Los Angeles Plaza area, and over the next two decades, extending 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.
Clarence E. Shurtleff was involved in the film business in the U.S. including as a producer for his namesake film company, C. E. Shurtleff, Inc.
Robert Whitaker was a Baptist minister and political activist born in 1863 in Padiham, Lancashire, England. He died in Los Gatos, CA in 1944. In 1869 he moved with his family to the United States. After attending Andover Newton Theological School he went on to hold several pastorates in the western United States including Oakland, CA, Los Gatos, CA., and Seattle, WA.
Retail in Southern California dates back to its first dry goods store that Jonathan Temple opened in 1827 on Calle Principal, when Los Angeles was still a Mexican village. After the American conquest, as the pueblo grew into a small town surpassing 4,000 population in 1860, dry goods stores continued to open, including the forerunners of what would be local chains. Larger retailers moved progressively further south to the 1880s-1890s Central Business District, which was later razed to become the Civic Center. Starting in the mid-1890s, major stores moved ever southward, first onto Broadway around 3rd, then starting in 1905 to Broadway between 4th and 9th, then starting in 1915 westward onto West Seventh Street up to Figueroa. For half a century Broadway and Seventh streets together formed one of America's largest and busiest downtown shopping districts.
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The second Los Angeles federal building in Los Angeles County, California, more formally the United States Post Office and Courthouse, was a government building in the United States was designed by James Knox Taylor ex officio and constructed between 1906 and 1910 on the block bounded by North Main, Spring, New High, and Temple Streets. The location was previously known as the Downey Block.
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The Tajo Building was a six-story office building on the northwest corner of First and Broadway in downtown Los Angeles, developed by Simona Martinez Bradbury. The building, named for the Bradbury family's Tajo silver mine in Mexico, was variously home to USC Law School, the Los Angeles Stock Exchange and, for the first decade of the 1900s, the United States District Court for the Southern District of California.