Friday Eye Candy: Tour Downtown L.A. Before Urban Renewal

The New Yorker has produced a video comparing the streets of Downtown Los Angeles on either side of a 70-year span of history.

1 minute read

July 22, 2016, 2:00 PM PDT

By James Brasuell @CasualBrasuell

This view of Los Angeles was captured of the Bunker Hill neighborhood circa 1910. | California Historical Society / Wikimedia Commons

Aimee Custis shares news of a New Yorker video that provides a side-by-side comparison of the streets of Downtown Los Angeles between the 19040s and today.

The tour takes different views of Bunker Hill, mostly while traveling along Grand Avenue, the infamous site of the city's largest acts of urban renewal. City Hall is visible at 0:34 in both frames, and the Frank Gehry-designed Disney Music Hall comes into view in the view of today's L.A. at 0:40. The famous Biltmore Hotel survived the entire 70-year span of this video comparison, as visible at 2:18, and the city's Central Library comes into view on both screens at 2:31. The disruption of the street grid in the intervening years is also documented beginning at 2:59.

Custis, writing for Greater Greater Washington, makes the point that "[w]hile this video is of LA, one can imagine a similar then-and-now for DC."

FULL STORY: Seventy Years of Los Angeles, Then and Now

Monday, July 18, 2016 in The New Yorker

History / Preservation Infrastructure Urban Development California Los Angeles Historic Views View More

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