Centers

86. Hill and 9th Streets, Downtown Los Angeles, 1924. Far more dispersed than its predecessors, the central cluster grew until World War II in the conventional form of a multipurpose, retail, office, government, theater, hotel, wholesaling, and manufacturing center. History Division, Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History

87. Republic and New High Streets, Los Angeles, ca. 1925. As in all cities, the immigrant quarters appeared at the fringe of the downtown. Here, the Mexicans have taken over shops and houses abandoned by their Yankee predecessors. History Division, Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History

88. Beginnings of the Civic Center, Los Angeles, 1940. Since the early twentieth century, huge and expensive government buildings were deemed to foster citizenship and heightened civic pride. Los Angeles refashioned its downtown with arid malls and colossal government offices, monuments to bureaucratization. The first stage: City Hall, 1927 (left), U.S. Court House, 1937 (right). History Division, Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History

89. A Quarter of a Mile from City Hall, Los Angeles, 1936. Mexican-American slum housing at the industrial fringe of the downtown. Library of Congress

90. Brand Boulevard, Glendale, ca. 1926. Typical suburban subcenter eight miles from the downtown with the Pacific Electric Railway's "big red cars" stopped on the main street. Until left-turning automobiles clogged the streets and grade crossings, a 1,200-mile electric interurban system enabled Los Angeles to function as a single suburbanized, low-density, multicentered metropolis. History Division, Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History

91. Manchester Avenue and Santa Ana Freeway, Anaheim, 1965. Shopping centers with big stores and specialty shops, service roads, and freeways have solved automobile traffic circulation problems, but fail as social institutions because private developers cannot profitably offer low-rent space. California Division of Highways, District VII

92. Westwood Village, Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, ca. 1965. Wilshire (lower left to right) connects a line of high-income settlements running from the old downtown through Hollywood and Beverly Hills to Santa Monica. A continuous downtown, it is lined with stores and parking lots and at intervals with specialized apartments and office subcenters. Here is the University of California node (upper center); note the large proportion of street and parking area. History Division, Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, Spence Air Photo