Re-dreaming Downtown circa 1939

D.J. Waldie has turned up a planner's sketched-out concept of a reenvisioned Downtown Los Angeles that centered in 1939 or '40 on the newly built Union Station, the recently opened Olvera Street tourist trap and an imaginary cityscape that reminds Waldie of Italy under Mussolini. From his blog on the KCET website:

The narrative intent of this plan was, perhaps, instructional. A visitor to Los Angeles would have walked out of Union Station – a sleek interpretation of Spanish Colonial architecture – crossed Alameda Street to the enclave of tourist shops along Olvera Street, skirted the historic plaza and church, and entered the embrace of an Anglo triumph of imperial dimensions.

No mistaking here the relationship of the past to the present, of the winners to the losers.

Other American cities have historic cores, and a few of those – New Orleans is a good example – present a similar collision of American expansion with an alien culture. Los Angeles isn’t unique, but its relationship to its past – to history in general – is distinct.

Photo: USC Libraries Special Collections