Downtown Los Angeles
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Downtown Los Angeles , often abbreviated to Downtown LA , also DTLA , is downtown Los Angeles . It is located roughly in the geographical center of the extensive urban area and is almost exactly at the place where the city was founded by Spanish missionaries and settlers almost 250 years ago. Today it is the political center of both the city and County of Los Angeles . In addition, Downtown LA is the seat of numerous cultural and economic institutions.
Like most Los Angeles neighborhoods , Downtown LA has no official boundaries. However, an approximate classification can be made using the Los Angeles River in the east, the Hollywood Freeway in the north, the Santa Monica Freeway in the south and the Harbor Freeway in the west.
history
The first settlers in what is now the inner city area were Indians from the Tongva tribe . The Tongva settlement Yangna was roughly on the site of today's Civic Center in downtown. Yangna was the central settlement of the Tongva and a nearby sacred tree was the meeting place of the people.
Juan Crespí , a Spanish Franciscan , arrived in the area in 1769 as part of Gaspar de Portolà's expedition . He found that the region had "all the requirements for a larger settlement". The city was officially founded on September 4, 1781 where Olvera Street is today on the northern edge of downtown.
In 1876, Southern California was connected to the rest of the vast country by rail for the first time from Los Angeles. Other railway lines were added quickly. To connect the rapidly developing Greater Los Angeles area, two systems of tram lines with downtown Los Angeles in their center were created. At the beginning of the 20th century, the network of private and public railways that criss-crossed the city and the surrounding area from downtown LA was only surpassed by those in Chicago and New York . But as early as the 1920s, the railways faced serious competition in the form of the automobile , which was to change the city forever. Union Station , the new main train station, was opened north of the city center in 1939 . But only one year later, the car-loving Angelenos welcomed the Arroyo Seco Parkway, the first of many other city highways that connected downtown with the neighboring city of Pasadena .
In the 1950s, a decision was made in Los Angeles, Bunker Hill, a formerly middle-class inner city district, to undergo an area renovation as part of the so-called Bunker Hill Redevelopment Project . Virtually all of the buildings were demolished by the end of the 1960s. The residential area, which had been hilly up to that point, was also partially leveled and the streets re-routed according to the criteria of a car-friendly city . The empty blocks were gradually filled with new high-rise office buildings, plazas in their entrance areas and, last but not least, some important cultural institutions. Today this area is a part of the downtown financial district that cannot be recognized from old photos.
Since the middle of the 20th century, the city center has been shunned by wealthier residents. For a long time, other areas of the city were also preferred for shopping. However, since the mid-1990s, signs of gentrification have been evident in downtown Los Angeles . A steadily growing number of older office buildings from the first half of the century, some of which have been vacant for a long time, are being converted into lofts . This is also due to the fact that the city center has been easily accessible again from other parts of the metropolis by public transport (see Metro Los Angeles ) since 1993 after a break of over thirty years .
traffic
Downtown LA is at the center of a growing rail network for public transportation . These include the Metrolink suburban trains that stop at Union Station. There is also access to the Amtrak long-distance trains . In addition, there is the subway and light rail system of the Los Angeles Metro , which have stations at various points in or below the city center. In addition, downtown Los Angeles is connected to other parts of the metropolis and to the rest of the country by a variety of city highways.
quarter
Downtown LA as a larger metropolitan area includes numerous other clearly distinguishable districts, e.g. B .:
- Bunker Hill : Bunker Hill is the cultural heart of the city. There you will find the world famous Walt Disney Concert Hall , the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion , the Ahmanson Theater , the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) and The Broad , a museum for contemporary art. But the modern Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels , the cathedral of the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, is one of the attractions of this district. Bunker Hill is also home to the US Bank Tower , which was 310 meters tall for a long time the tallest skyscraper in the city until it was surpassed by the 335-meter-high Wilshire Grand Tower in 2017 . Despite the high cultural density, Bunker Hill is one of the less busy parts of the city center because of the many office towers from the 1960s to 1980s and because of its poor pedestrian-friendliness.
- Chinatown : North and west of Union Station is the Chinatown of Los Angeles. The neighborhood's origins date back to the 1880s when Chinese immigrants settled in the area around Alameda and Macy Streets . After a prolonged period of decline, the remains of the area were cleared in the 1930s to make way for the new central station. In exchange for this, today's quarter was built just a few blocks away. Chinatown is a mixed-structure neighborhood of restaurants, bars, and art galleries that is still predominantly Chinese . The district is served bythe Gold Line's Chinatown station.
- Civic Center : In the Civic Center, numerous authorities are concentrated on a few blocks. This is where the Los Angeles City Hall, large parts of the city administration, the Los Angeles County Administration, various state and federal agencies , but also several local , regional and federal courts are located .
- Historic Core : This neighborhood is bounded by Hill and Main Streets to the west and east, and 3rd and 9th Streets to the north and south. Here you can still find numerous old department and office buildings and cinema palaces from around 1890 to 1930. One of them is the Bradbury Building , built in 1893 , which is one of the oldest preserved buildings in Downtown LA and has already been used as a backdrop for several films served. Until about World War II , this was the actual business center of Los Angeles. In the post-war period, as a result of the city's suburbanization , the district went through a period of decline, with prostitution on the streets and vacancies in the buildings. The low point was reached in the 1970s and 1980s when street gangs made the area unsafe. The last of the old cinemas from the 1920s closed in the 1990s. However, in the last few years there have been clear signs of a renaissance. This includes the extensive renovation of the Orpheum Theater , which opened (for the first time) in 1926, as well as the growing number of renovated office palaces from the time before the Second World War. These now serve as residential buildings and help to increase the population of the inner city, which has long been very low compared to other city districts.
- Financial District : This is located south of the Bunker Hill District (from 5th Street) and extends along Flower Street to the 7th Street Metro Center subway station (link with Purple- / Red- and Expoline of the Los Angeles Metro Rail ) . The development of this district only began in the last third of the 20th century, as a replacement for the old financial district along East Spring Street, which had been derelict since the 1960s. The numerous distinctive buildings in the Financial District include the 55-story 777 Tower , completed in 1991, the Los Angeles Public Library built in 1926 in neo-Egyptian style , the 191-meter-high skyscraper of the Citi Group Center and the Wilshire Grand Tower, completed in 2017 .
- Jewelry District
- Little Tokyo : This is the Japanese quarter in Los Angeles (see also Japantown ). Little Tokyo may not have the same dimensions as Chinatown, but there are numerous Japanese restaurants, shops, Buddhist temples and even some Japanese churches.
- Skid Row : Skid Row adjoins the Historic Core and is known for its high number of homeless people. According to census data from the city of Los Angeles, there are more than 50,000 homeless people in the neighborhood, which stretches east of Main Street.
- South Park : South Park is the new downtown entertainment district. The LA Live Complex, Staples Center, and LA Convention Center are located in the southernmost neighborhood of Downtown.
Web links
- Zoning plan for downtown Los Angeles (PDF; 804 kB)
- Central City Association of Los Angeles
- Downtown Los Angeles community site
- South Park entertainment district
Individual evidence
- ↑ Yangna - Early Los Angeles Community in: Los Angeles Alamanac.
- ↑ Glen Greason, CityDig: The Tongva Tribe's Los Angeles , Loos Angeles Magazine, October 166, 2013.
- ↑ Father Crespi in Los Angeles, University of Southern California (USC) ( Memento of the original from July 7, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
Coordinates: 34 ° 3 ′ N , 118 ° 14 ′ W