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Explore
L.A.’s Chinatown, Little Tokyo and Olvera Street.
These
three diverse and historic districts all are within easy walking
distance of Union Station. For advice and highlights, we turned to
Sociology Professor Emeritus Robert Herman, who literally wrote the
book on downtown L.A. An updated version of his Downtown Los Angeles:
A Walking Guide is just off the press.
Olvera
Street and El Pueblo Historic Monument
is billed
as the birthplace of L.A., but that’s not quite right. After the
original 1781 pueblo along the nearby Los Angeles River washed out, the
settlers moved to this site in 1818. The oldest church in Los Angeles,
La Placita, still remains a spiritual center for many Latinos. A plaque
reveals L.A. was multicultural from the start: Of the 44 settlers, more
than half were of African descent and most others of mixed Indian and
Spanish heritage. Herman describes the main attraction here. Olvera
Street, as a “facsimile of a Mexican village marketplace with vivid
colors, sounds and a buoyant atmosphere.” With more than 80 stalls and
shops, vendors hawk everything from candied cactus to castanets to
posters of Pancho Villa.
 The area
known as Chinatown is not the original Chinese settlement in L.A.
In the 1930s, city leaders chose the heart of the Chinese community as
the site for the new Union Station. Residents were forced to move up
Alameda Street to the current location. Despite discrimination and
hardships, these Chinese-Americans built a thriving shopping and
residential district. Shops sell ginseng, teas, dried octopus and herbal
medicines. Aquariums brim with live fish, and bakeries tempt with sugar
rolls and cookies. Nowadays, this urban Chinatown faces competition from
Chinese shopping districts of the suburbs. But Chinatown leaders are
fighting back, promoting the district as a haven for authentic Chinese
food.
Little
Tokyo
remains in its original spot but has changed dramatically since the
1880s. It’s more of a business district of stores, banks and hotels than
a residential neighborhood. Most of the historic buildings are gone,
save for the row of shops and apartments on First Street between San
Pedro and Central. Still, restaurants are plentiful and so are cultural
destinations. The Japanese American National Museum is housed in what
was once an ornate Buddhist temple, and the collection has expanded into
a second building. Among the displays is a barracks saved from a World
War II internment camp in Wyoming. “Visit Little Tokyo for a fascinating
mixture of old and new, Western and Eastern, kitschy and classy,” writes
Herman in his book. “All attractions lie in a safe, compact and walkable
area.”
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