We met a fellow on the Metro from North Hollywood the other night who told us about friends of his who lived Downtown in the days when they [whoever 'they' are] were demolishing block after block. You can get a good sense of what Downtown was once like from Clint Eastwood's film Changeling set in the 1920s, but Downtown is now in the throes of a revival. The city is trying to encourage loft living and there seems to be quite a healthy Historical LA movement that offers walks around districts like NoHo or Angeleno Heights.
History is not the first thing you'd associate with the San Fernando Valley either, but the other week when I got out at Universal City station on my way to Toluca Lake I found this just outside the station carpark, across the road from Universal Studios - the footings of the adobe where the settlement ending hostilities between the United States and Mexico in California was signed in 1847. It's lovely to happen upon historical sites like this - better, in many ways, than actually knowing you're going to find them and on the day when I chanced on this site, the surrounding mountains towered up in spectacular clarity. It's inspirational scenery and I don't quite understand why so few people speak of it.
On our walk down Ventura Boulevard back in March, near the corner of Balboa Boulevard, near today's Prudential Real Estate, the Smart and Final mall and honking cars, we also came across Los Encinos State Park. The suburb is named Encino because the valley was originally called El Valle de Santa Catalina de Bononia de Los Encinos (The Valley of St. Catherine of Bononia of the Oaks). You can still find the occasional remnant oak, Quercus lobata (Valley Oak) or Quercus agrifolia (Coast Live Oak). The adobe here (to the left) was built in 1850 by Don Vicente de la Osa or de la Ossa, but archeological surveys in the vicinity reveal habitation by humans for 3,000 years.
The natural spring nearby (seen here fronting the 1900 Garnier house; Garnier made a pond out of it 1874) was the site of the ancient village of Suitcanga, home of the Tongva people.
I love the story of a former owner of this property who decided to quit ranching the day the cartload of ice he'd bought in the village of Los Angeles had melted by the time he got home. I wonder if he said, 'Dagnabit'.
History is not the first thing you'd associate with the San Fernando Valley either, but the other week when I got out at Universal City station on my way to Toluca Lake I found this just outside the station carpark, across the road from Universal Studios - the footings of the adobe where the settlement ending hostilities between the United States and Mexico in California was signed in 1847. It's lovely to happen upon historical sites like this - better, in many ways, than actually knowing you're going to find them and on the day when I chanced on this site, the surrounding mountains towered up in spectacular clarity. It's inspirational scenery and I don't quite understand why so few people speak of it.
On our walk down Ventura Boulevard back in March, near the corner of Balboa Boulevard, near today's Prudential Real Estate, the Smart and Final mall and honking cars, we also came across Los Encinos State Park. The suburb is named Encino because the valley was originally called El Valle de Santa Catalina de Bononia de Los Encinos (The Valley of St. Catherine of Bononia of the Oaks). You can still find the occasional remnant oak, Quercus lobata (Valley Oak) or Quercus agrifolia (Coast Live Oak). The adobe here (to the left) was built in 1850 by Don Vicente de la Osa or de la Ossa, but archeological surveys in the vicinity reveal habitation by humans for 3,000 years.
The natural spring nearby (seen here fronting the 1900 Garnier house; Garnier made a pond out of it 1874) was the site of the ancient village of Suitcanga, home of the Tongva people.
I love the story of a former owner of this property who decided to quit ranching the day the cartload of ice he'd bought in the village of Los Angeles had melted by the time he got home. I wonder if he said, 'Dagnabit'.
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