Downtown Los Angeles

Downtown Los Angeles, often abbreviated to Downtown LA, is the downtown Los Angeles. It is located approximately in the geographic center of the extended urban area and is located almost exactly at the place where the city was founded by Spanish missionaries and settlers nearly 250 years ago. Today, the political center is there in both the city and the County of Los Angeles. In addition, Downtown LA is the seat of numerous cultural and economic institutions.

Like most neighborhoods of Los Angeles also has Downtown LA no official boundaries. However, can take place in the West an approximate classification based on the Los Angeles River to the east, the Hollywood Freeway in the north, the Santa Monica Freeway to the south and the Harbor Freeway.

History

The first settlers in what is now downtown area were Indians from the tribe of the Tongva. Juan Crespí, a Spanish Franciscan reached the area in 1769 as a participant of the expedition of Gaspar de Portolà. He found that the region had " all the conditions for a larger settlement ." Was September 4, 1781 in what is now Olvera Street is located on the northern edge of the city, officially founded the city.

In 1876, Southern California was connected from Los Angeles for the first time by rail to the rest of the vast country. More railway lines were added quickly. Two systems of tramlines incurred for connection of the rapidly developing metropolitan area of ​​Los Angeles coincide with Downtown Los Angeles in their midst. At the beginning of the 20th century, the network of public and private railways that ran through Downtown LA from the city and region, surpassed only by those in Chicago and New York. But already in the 1920s grew the railways in the form of the automobile a serious competition that would change the city forever. In the year 1939, north of the Union Station downtown, the new central station, opened. But only a year later welcomed the auto enthusiastic Angelenos with the Arroyo Seco Parkway, the first of many other urban motorways, the Downtown Association with the neighboring city of Pasadena.

In the 1950s, it was decided in Los Angeles, Bunker Hill, a formerly middle-class downtown district, to undergo a site remediation under the so -called Bunker Hill Redevelopment Project. So until about the late 1960s, virtually all the buildings were demolished. The hitherto hilly residential area was also graded in part and realigned the roads according to the criteria of the car-friendly city. The empty blocks filled gradually with new office towers, plazas in the entrance areas and last but not least some major cultural institutions. Today this area is a old recordings by not again to be recognized part of the Financial District in Downtown.

Since the mid-20th century, the city was shunned by more affluent residents. Even shopping for a long time were other areas of the city preferable. But since the mid- 1990s, Los Angeles significant features of gentrification can be seen in Downtown. An ever-increasing number of older office buildings from the first half of the century, some of them long vacant, is converted into lofts. This is also supported by the fact that the city since 1993 after a break of more than thirty years back by public transport (see Metro Los Angeles ) from other parts of the metropolis is reachable.

Traffic

Downtown LA is located in the center of a growing rail network for public transport. These include the Metrolink commuter trains that stop at Union Station. There is also access to the Amtrak long-distance trains. In addition, the system of subway and light rail metro Los Angeles, in or under the center have stations at various points. In addition, the downtown Los Angeles on a variety of urban highways with the other parts of the metropolis and the rest of the country is connected.

Quarter

At Downtown LA as a larger city region also includes numerous other clearly distinguishable from each district, for example:

  • Bunker Hill Bunker Hill is the cultural heart of the city. There, the world-famous Walt Disney Concert Hall, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the Ahmanson Theatre and the Museum of Contemporary Art are ( MOCA ). But the modern Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, the cathedral of the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles is one of the sights in this area. Bunker Hill is finally also the U.S. Bank Tower, with a height of 310 meters, the tallest skyscraper in the city. Despite the high cultural density Bunker Hill part because of the many office towers from the 1960s to the 1980s and because of its small pedestrian friendliness to the less busy parts of the city center.
  • Chinatown: the north and west of Union Station Chinatown is located in Los Angeles. The origins of the district are in the 1880s when Chinese immigrants settled in the area around Alameda and Macy Street. After a lengthy period of decline, the remains of the district were cleared in the 1930s to make room for the new building of the main station. In exchange for a few blocks was further today's district. Chinatown is a neighborhood with mixed structure full of restaurants, bars and art galleries, which is still inhabited predominantly Chinese. The neighborhood is served by transport links the station Chinatown Gold Line.
  • Civic Center: The Civic Center numerous authorities are focusing on a few blocks away. So here are the Los Angeles City Hall, much of the city administration, the administration of Los Angeles County, various federal state and federal agencies, but also several local, regional and federal courts.
  • Historic Core: This neighborhood is west and east of the Hill and Main Street bounded to the north and south of 3rd and 9th Street. Here can be found to this day many old goods and office buildings and movie palaces from the period around 1890 until 1930. One of them is the 1893 built Bradbury Building, which is one of the oldest surviving buildings in downtown LA and has been the setting for several films served. Until about the Second World War, when this was the actual business center of Los Angeles. In the postwar period, the district made ​​as a result of suburbanization of the city through a period of decline, in prostitution imposed itself on the streets and vacancies in the buildings. In the 1970s and 1980s, the low point was reached when street gangs made ​​the area unsafe. As late as the 1990s ended the last of the old cinemas in the 1920s. For several years, however, clear signs of a renaissance are visible. For this, the extensive renovations of this part ( the first time ) opened in 1926 Orpheum Theatre as well as the growing number of renovated office palaces from the period before the Second World War. These now serve as houses and help to increase the population of the city, which was very low compared with other municipalities for long.
  • Financial District
  • Jewelry District
  • Little Tokyo Little Tokyo is the Japanese district in Los Angeles ( see also Japantown ). Although Little Tokyo does not have the same dimensions, such as Chinatown, yet be found there numerous Japanese restaurants, shops, Buddhist temples and even some Japanese churches.
  • Skid Row: Skid Row is adjacent to the Historic Core and is known for its high number of homeless people. According to Census data for the city of Los Angeles there are some places more than 50,000 homeless people in the district, which extends east of Main Street.
  • South Park: South Park is the new entertainment district of Downtown. The LA Live Complex that Staples Center and the LA Convention Center are located in the southernmost district of Downtown.
List of districts and neighborhoods of Los Angeles Native Americans in the United States Union Station (Los Angeles) Pasadena, California Automotive city Metrolink (Southern California)
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