Erasing Frenchtown in Maps

I have been mapping historic French LA for 8.5 years.

It's harder than it looks. Among the many, MANY changes to the street grid, the intersection of Alameda and Aliso was erased, with Aliso rerouted into Commercial at Alameda Street in the 1950s to accommodate the 101 Freeway.

I get a lot of questions about this, and I think it's easier to explain with maps.

Aliso Street always had a bend in it - now it's more of a long diagonal. Here we see, from top to bottom, Main, Los Angeles, and Alameda Streets intersecting with Aliso. This is from 1894.

As you can see, Aliso and Commercial Streets are still parallel (and would be for about another 60 years), and Frenchtown still had plenty of houses.

This 1894 map detail shows the Maier and Zobelein brewery, formerly the El Aliso winery, in the bottom left corner. By this point, Jean-Louis Vignes' vineyard (formerly ground zero for the French community in LA) had been thoroughly developed into a mostly-residential neighborhood, and was still full of French residents like the Ducommuns, the Lazards, and Joseph Mascarel (who died in his Lazard Street home just a few years after this map was made). Maier and Zobelein was rebranded as Brew 102 in the 1940s, with the brewery tanks easily visible from the freeway and in photos.

Zoom in and you can see that Ducommun Street (misspelled here as "Ducummen") and Lazard Street were once two separate streets. Today, it's all Ducommun and it no longer reaches all the way to Alameda Street.

Republished in 1923, this map detail shows Aliso and Commercial are still parallel. Lazard Street is now Ducommun, which may be related to the fact that Ducommun Industries was, by then, headquartered along Ducommun Street (a bus parking facility now occupies the old Ducommun Yard).

North of Aliso, Marchesseault, Apablaza, Napier, and Juan Streets still existed in 1923, although multiple corrections to this map (originally published in 1906) show Old Chinatown/Little Paree gradually being torn down. Today, this is Union Station, the Metropolitan Water District, a park, and (what else...) a parking lot.

This revision, added in December 1937, shows Union Station in place of Old Chinatown/Little Paree, and shows the rerouting of Bauchet Street and the disappearance of Marchesseault Street (renamed East Sunset Boulevard). A local Chinatown historian once told me that if you could walk Marchesseault Street today, you'd more or less be walking into Union Station's front door.

Venturing northeast to where Frenchtown, the Plaza, and Old Chinatown formerly collided, we can see that Sanchez Street used to be longer. The Jennette Block, which housed the Hotel du Lion d'Or and the Hotel de Paris at different times, is now gone, along with the western wing of the Garnier Block. (The Garnier Block houses the Chinese American Museum, and ironically now needs to be expanded because too much of the building was lopped off in 1953 and the Museum needs more space. Oh, the irony.) Note that the Pico House is still called the National Hotel here.

This map is from 1953. Here we see one-third of Sanchez Street missing - lost to the 101 (Hollywood) Freeway. Today, Arcadia Street stands between Sanchez and the freeway and Market no longer exists. Look for the words "being dismantled" - much of what is still shown was gone within five years. 

One more snippet from 1953 - this is closer to today's street grid, except widening of the freeway bumped this section of Aliso further south. El Aliso (the tree itself, not the winery where it stood) was about where Vignes Street dead-ends at Commercial Street today (and, again, this section is now Commercial Street).

Want to see the current street grid laid out over the old one? Wikimedia’s got you covered. (While I firmly believe that Wikipedia is unreliable and should not be used for serious research, this map corresponds with what you’ll see in old maps of LA.)

When the original street grid has been altered to this extent, mapping French LA is a bigger challenge than everyone thinks it is. On top of that, LA added numbering fairly late. I do still plan to reveal the Great Big Map of French LA someday; I'm just not sure when (or if) I'll ever be "done" enough. 

BREAKING NEWS: El Aliso Vineyard was NOT on the site of Union Station!

Most sources - including older ones - state that Jean-Louis Vignes' vineyard, El Aliso, was "about where Union Station is today."

Here's the problem with that statement: it wasn't. 

A Gizmodo post by historian Nathan Masters mentions the former location of the giant sycamore tree that gave the vineyard its name. According to landscape architect John Crandell (who according to Masters has researched the matter extensively), if the tree were still standing today, it would be here, growing out of a raised island separating the Vignes Street onramp from the 101 freeway.

For months, I tried and failed to find a boundary map for El Aliso. I knew it was along Aliso Street, and (of course) the 101 Freeway arrived roughly a century after Vignes did. Using the river as a reference was completely out of the question - the LA River shifted its course due to severe flooding, and has since been rerouted by the Army Corps of Engineers. I reasoned that the freeway, which separates the former core of Frenchtown from Union Station, had simply cut through Vignes' property - 104 acres IS a good-sized chunk of land, after all.

Not exactly.

The other day, James Lawson, a seventh-generation Californian (and descendant of the Reyes, Alanis, and Casenave families) reached out to me with a LOT of information to share. This information included an 1849 map of LA showing property boundaries and an 1869 map of the Alanis vineyard tract.

James - who just so happens to be an urban planner - walked me through his research into the location. Basically, Aliso Street's transition into Commercial Street corresponds closely to (now-gone) Labory Lane, which was originally the access path from Alameda Street to the Alanis property - surrounded on three sides by Vignes' land.

Flip the 1849 Ord survey to correctly point north, layer it over the modern street grid using the former Labory Lane as a reference, trim away most of the surrounding properties to better see modern LA's streets, and you get this:

(Yes, I had to print these out and play cut-and-paste. I don't have, let alone know how to use, Photoshop. I should note that the 1849 map printed out a little too big - it's not easy to match the scales on two old maps, with no scale given on either - let alone on an uncooperative 8-year-old laptop.)

This location also makes more sense than Union Station. The giant tree still fits into the property's footprint, we can clearly see Aliso Street in reference to the property, and the property's true location explains why Vignes Street is so far south of Union Station. The (admittedly approximated - and now I have to re-draw it) shaded area to the right, representing the Ballesteros Tract, supports this location - the Ballesteros family, as you can see, owned land right next door to Vignes.

I live for "OH MY GOD" moments like this.

Merci, James.

Where Was Frenchtown? Mapping a Lost Community

In the fall of 2014, I bought an old, well-worn copy of The French in Southern California History and the Southland Today, published in 1932. The book lists no author, but credits Fernand Loyer and Charles Beaudreau (assisted by Catherine Beaudreau) as editors, publishers, and holders of the book's copyright. (A French-language version was also published, but 1. I have never been able to find a copy, and 2. my French is rather limited. So, I only have the English edition.)

I have a tendency to think spatially. So, as I read, I wanted to keep track of who did what and where. I decided to create a Google map documenting the French community - where they lived, where they worked, where important events took place, where they socialized, and even where they are buried.

I have been adding to this map for eighteen months and am nowhere near ready to reveal it to the public (I have SO much more research to do). The focus is on Los Angeles proper, but California's Frenchmen didn't always stay put in LA (farming, ranching, and making wine - three of the more common professions in the community - all require land, which tends to mean moving out of the city). So, while the bulk of the pins are in Los Angeles proper, the map extends from Santa Barbara in the northwest to Ramona in the southeast.

As of this writing, I have 345 different sites mapped. No, that's not a typo.

I began with the one thing I knew I could find: the French Hospital, which still exists under a different name. (Don't worry, the hospital will get its own entry. It's had quite a history.)

Mapping sites in Old Los Angeles is quite a bit harder than it seems. Houses have been re-numbered, streets have been renamed, and some streets have ceased to exist. (Note to self: go to Central Library and see if the maps librarian can help me find Date Street, New High Street, and Requena/Market Street. And, for that matter, help me figure out why Bauchet Street is so strange.) To make matters worse, the aforementioned book rarely gives a specific address, often describing something as close to an intersection or a landmark. I realize that the oldest parts of the city have seen considerable redevelopment, and that in the earliest days, house numbering may not even have been required. But it can still be a bit of a headache.

In some cases, I have had to look at the existing street grid, compare it to old photos, determine the most likely path of a former street or most likely location of something that is not there anymore (in the case of the Long Wharf and Venice Pier, this meant studying the shoreline as well), and make an educated guess. I dislike having to guess at all, but in a city whose 235 years of history have been eradicated by natural disaster, fire, politics, development and redevelopment, etc. over and over again, this is the best I can do.

Thankfully, not too far into the book, its authors give a rough boundary for Frenchtown: Main Street, 1st Street, Aliso Street, and the Los Angeles river. Not surprisingly, this abuts Jean-Louis Vignes' El Aliso vineyard, and is still pretty close to Bauchet Street. (At the time of the book's publication, much of Aliso and Commercial Streets were, incredibly, still French-owned.)

About fifty markers fall within this area (so far; there will probably be more). More are scattered throughout downtown Los Angeles, with the highest concentration around the original plaza.

I hasten to add that the book is not my only source for locations. Old city directories, newspaper ads and articles, a few other books, old maps, and census records (thank you, Ancestry.com) have proven very helpful.

When I was mapping the "original Frenchtown" area, I had to put an extra point at the intersection of 1st and Central, due to the street's unusual obtuse angle. Then I realized I had seen - and for that matter walked - the same angle the previous weekend. I had gone to see the Hello Kitty exhibit at the Japanese American National Museum, which now stands at that corner.

Most of the sites associated with the French community in Los Angeles proper, at least in the 19th century, fall within the modern-day neighborhoods of Little Tokyo, Chinatown, the Historic Core, the Plaza, and the Civic Center.

In previous entries, I have noted what now stands where something or someone French used to be, and I will do so whenever possible. I believe it is important to do this in order to provide context for modern-day readers - especially if they are not very familiar with long-ago Los Angeles (and in 2016, hardly anyone is).