Neighborhood in Downtown Los Angeles
The Wholesale District or Warehouse District in Downtown Los Angeles, California, has no exact boundaries, but at present it lies along the BNSF and Union Pacific Railroad lines, which run parallel with Alameda Street and the Los Angeles River. Except for some ancillary commercial uses, its cityscape is mostly occupied by warehouses and refrigerated storage facilities. This area is known as Central City North in the Los Angeles city zoning map.
In early days, Los Angeles Street, to the west, was considered the "heart" of the Wholesale District, which over the years expanded southerly along the same thoroughfare, and, to a lesser extent, northward. Warehouse buildings were also constructed on Alameda Street, and plans were made for a new center at First and Alameda, but it was never brought to fruition. Warehouses were built on San Pedro Street and on Central Avenue. Eventually the district spread farther on the east side of Downtown, and by 1990 it was described as being bounded by San Pedro Street, the Los Angeles River, First Street and the Santa Monica Freeway .
Crime and prostitution were reported rampant in the District. Structure fires, some caused by electrical shorts or by arson, were common in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The traditional center.
1898–1902. The "wholesale business quarter" of Los Angeles was centered on Los Angeles Street around First and Second streets,
New buildings were constructed in the existing Wholesale District over the next years, including one at 147-149 North Los Angeles Street for the Davenport Company, dealer in agricultural implements and heavy hardware; the American Notion building at 131–133; the E.P. Bosbyshell building at 125–129, occupied by S.J. Smith and his pumps and pumping machinery; and a building on the west side of the street for two wholesale houses, one of which was to be the Zellerbach &amp; Son paper company. A three-story building was constructed between Second and Third streets for the Standard Woodenware Company and John Wigmore and Sons Company — said to be "one of the best equipped wholesale buildings in Southern California."
1910-11. Construction included the six-story W.H. Perry Building on the southeast corner of Second and Los Angeles street and the H.W Hellman building on Second Street in 1910. It was said then that the District would naturally be extended to the east, and indeed in 1911 plans were announced to build a $100,000 building on the northeast corner of East Fourth and Wall streets, strictly for the printing and publishing businesses. In 1911 notice was made of new buildings for the P.H. Mathews Paint Company, the Pioneer Roll Paper Company, the Klein-Norton Company, the Golden State Shoe Company, the Stewart-Dawes Shoe Company, all moving into new buildings of their own, and all on Los Angeles Street.
Plans were announced in September 1911 for the construction of a five-story building on the northwest corner of Second and Alameda streets, to be occupied by Haas-Baruch and Company in "one of the largest and most modern wholesale grocery companies in the West. Architects were Morgan, Walls &amp; Morgan.
1912. Warehouse District structures had spread farther south on Los Angeles Street. One of the largest leases ever concluded in the District, up to then, was for a fireproof seven-story-plus-basement building on the east side of Los Angeles between Seventh and Eighth streets. The "Los Angeles Times" opined: "The project marks another link in the chain of modern fireproof buildings erected on Los Angeles Street in the past two years."
1913. Landowner David Hewes of Orange, California, announced plans to expand the District to the entire block from Los Angeles Street, where he contracted with the Willard-Slater Company to build twelve stores, to Santee Street between Eighth Street and Ninth Street, where he was planning six more. He said that increased traffic to Los Angeles through the newly opened Panama Canal was one of the reasons he predicted success for his venture. Hr had already placed Hewes Market at Ninth and Los Angeles, where it became one of the busiest corners in the city.
It was noted that dozens of auto repair garages and machine shops lined Los Angeles Street between First and Tenth.
1917. Los Angeles Street between Seventh and Eighth streets was regarded as "the center of the wholesale dry goods and apparel business in this city, as well as for light manufacturing of those and kindred lines." At that time it was announced that "The biggest structural enterprise yet launched in the wholesale and jobbing district" would go ahead with two ten-floor fireproof loft buildings to be erected by M.J. Connell at the corner of Seventh and Santee.
1992. The Warehouse District was described as "a realm of cinder block and sheet metal, a bleak landscape" that lay from San Pedro Street on the west to the Los Angeles River on the east and from First Street on the north to the Santa Monica Freeway on the south.
Expansion.
First and Alameda.
1898–99. In 1898 an entrepreneur named A.E. Weeks had gathered enough properties from some thirty to forty owners to announce his plans to build a new wholesale center of four blocks on the west side of Alameda Street and the west side of Vine Street between First and Jackson streets and on the north and south sides of Jackson between Alameda and Wilmington streets. The purchase price was "well up toward a million dollars," and the sale was made to P.M. Daniel of the Pacific Crockery and Tinware Company, president of the Los Angeles Board of Trade, who was presumed to be representing other investors as well as himself. Buildings on the site were to be leveled, and "fine business blocks adapted to the need of wholesale houses" would be constructed in such a way that the Southern Pacific Railroad would have access to the Alameda frontage for easy loading and unloading of goods. The idea for such a district was taken from a similar project in St. Louis, Missouri, and its backers stressed the advantage for Los Angeles merchants in competing with San Francisco in Northern California. It was said also that the new center would "enable the Southern Pacific Railroad to place its cars at the very doors of the various wholesale houses, and the saving to the trade of this city will run into hundreds of thousands of dollars per year as a result of dispensing with drayage." The destruction of some sixty cottages and tenement houses was envisioned. A lumber yard had to be removed from First and Alameda to a new location near the La Grande depot
A "Los Angeles Times" opinion article on January 6, 1899, however, argued against completion of the project, which would redound to the advantage of the Southern Pacific as opposed to its rival Santa Fe Railroad. The "Times" stated that the "proper place" for a new wholesale district would be between the Southern Pacific's Arcade Depot and the Santa Fe depot in the Palmetto Street-Santa Fe Avenue area because "The tracks of the two companies are only about 1700 feet apart there, so that switches could easily be made into warehouses."
The plan envisioned freight cars being brought from the Southern Pacific line on Alameda Street into the new center, where "a force of clerks" would work in a station office named "Daniel," in honor of P.M. Daniel, the author of the enterprise. This center was to be shared by both the Southern Pacific and the Santa Fe railroads. Nevertheless, the plan unraveled, and by July 1899 the scheme had apparently been abandoned because Daniel "found it impossible to capitalize the project."
1905. An increase in the cost of Los Angeles Street property was said to be the impetus for the expansion of the Wholesale District in 1905 along East First and Alameda streets, helped by a decision of the Santa Fe Company to build a switch track on Banning Street.
San Pedro Street.
1904. The "congested condition of traffic on Los Angeles street, in the wholesale districts, and the fact that this class of business cannot well move westward on Main street" impelled the City Council in December 1904, by a vote of 4 to 3, to order the reconstruction, straightening and widening of San Pedro Street (a portion of which had historically been known as Wilmington Street) to eighty feet across in order to provide new opportunities for business growth. The job also provided for an entirely new "highway" from Fifth Street to Aliso Street.
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They would have to take out my dead body before getting possession of this place . ... Have a street run through [it]? Never! Why they'd have to chop my head off before I would cease to protest.
The plan was opposed by some longtime property owners, in part because two landmarks were marked for destruction — a two-story residence owned by Mrs. M.A. Woodworth on San Pedro "where for more than a quarter century the hospitality of old Spanish families has been dispensed, and which for many years was the center of much of the social activity of the city." A contemporary account noted that "Around the Woodworth home there are beautiful grounds, and a really refreshing oasis in the desert of brick walls, dingy store fronts and shabby buildings in the neighborhood. One of the most prized features of the grounds is a noble magnolia tree, notable for the profusion of its waxy flowers, and flanked to the eastward with a row of stately fan palms. These all must go down before the march of commercial supremacy." Also to be sacrificed was a 100-year-old adobe house that had been occupied by the Spanish and Mexican pioneer Lugo family, which for three generations had been maintained as a "typical Spanish-American home." It had been built by Mrs. Woodworth's grandfather, Don Antonio Manuel Lugo.
1925. San Pedro Street was noted as the "principal north and south artery" of the wholesale district when a six-story building was completed at East Sixth Street for the City Towel Supply Corporation, with a portion to be leased to wholesale and manufacturing companies.
Central Avenue.
1905. "The greatest wholesale and jobbing plant ever undertaken in the Southwest — a whole city block devoted to one firm's building and trackage" was promised in May 1905 for the Los Angeles Wholesale District in an area bounded by East First Street, Jackson Street, North Central Avenue and Alameda Street. The property had a frontage of 700 feet on Alameda Street, where the Southern Pacific tracks lay. Architects Morgan &amp; Walls promised two four-story brick buildings with plate glass for the first story and a main entrance of polished marble and oak. Ancillary buildings were also planned for the Union Hardware and Metal Company.
1905. In August 1905, the "Los Angeles Herald" reported that the Wholesale District had expanded beyond the confines of Los Angeles Street, particularly with the completion of a two-story building on the west side of Central Avenue between Second and Third streets, which was to be occupied by Simon Levi, produce and grocery dealer, and the California Door and Sash Company. The structure indicated the "high class of permanent structures" being raised near the Central Market, the newspaper said.
1936. A Coca-Cola bottling plant, shaped like an ocean liner, was built at 1334 South Central Avenue in 1936.
Third Street area.
1912. In April 1912 the definition of the Wholesale District spread farther east when plans were announced for the construction of a fireproof warehouse, the largest in the city, by F.W. Braun on Avery Street between Third Street and Stephenson Avenue.
Police and crime.
Police.
The District is patrolled by the Central Division of the Los Angeles Police Department.
Crime.
Criminal activity has been the topic of public interest.
1889–1902. The area was categorized as a "sink of iniquity" because of asserted prostitution as well as the existence of "dives which are allowed to flourish in the center of the wholesale district on Los Angeles Street."
The Manhattan Club, just across the way from the Republican Club, is the same sort of dive, with the exception that it is given to the cultivation of pugilism rather than politics . ... Both places are provided with bars, for which they pay no taxes to the city. Both are sinks of iniquity, where the dregs of society of both sexes and all colors congregate nightly to indulge in unbridled vice. Occasionally the police arrest some of the women who frequent