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IT WAS WHERE UNION STATION IS NOW: A History and Genealogy of the Macy Street Neighborhood PLUS: A Reflection Upon the Plague In Los Angeles and the Current Typhus Scare. BONUS: The Top Secret "Ratatorium" That Still Stands by Damian Gatto Bottom left: The Lajun family's Date Street home in the Macy Street neighborhood, which would later be the epicenter of the 1924 Los Angeles Plague Outbreak, juxtaposed with Union Station (bottom right) which would be built in the neighborhood's place 14 years later. (Source: Calisphere Digital Library [Lajun home] ; unionstationla.com [Union Station] ) Union Station is one of Los Angeles' great architectural gems, representing an elegant fusion of Art Deco, Mission Revival, and Spanish Revival features. It was designed by John and Donald Parkinson and constructed by Robert E. McKee Inc. during the period 1937 to 1939, and expanded upon several times thereafter. It is by far the busiest transportation hub west of the Mississippi River, and the 12th busiest in the United States overall, serving over 100,000 passengers on any given day. What many do not know is that Union Station's rise to prominence came after a long and contentious development process, one marked by racist and classist overtones. As was the case with Dodger Stadium and the Terminal Annex (which were proceeded by the Chavez Ravine [Palo Verde, La Loma, & Bishop] and Naud Junction neighborhoods, respectively), so too did the construction of Union Station demand the total razing of a whole neighborhood that lay in its path...... ......The Macy Street neighborhood. Actually....... the site was originally home to the village of Yaanga, one of the largest Tongva villages in pre-colonial Los Angeles. Its inhabitants, the Yaangavit, occupied an area that spanned approximately from modern-day Fletcher Bowron Square to the west, the Los Angeles River to the east, 1st Street to the south, and the base of Radio Hill to the north. The Yaangavit cultivated sages, grasses, and corn, the last of which they ground and fried into pinole. They smoked from baked clay pipes. They also paid homage to an ancient Sycamore tree dating from the 15th century, known to the Spaniards as "El Aliso." This tree was central to the Yaanga settlement, so much so that it served as a unit of measurement for the Yaangavit. It was also used as a reference point by the pobladores--the founders of Los Angeles-- and by traders throughout the southwest. Between the arrival of the Portola expedition and the 1840s, the Yaangavit were exploited as slave labor. The original Yaanga village stood until circa the 1810s, when it was forcibly relocated southward to the vicinity of what is now Alameda and Commercial Streets. For the Tongva, this marked the beginning of a series of forcible relocations around the city. The City Council even passed a law that required the Tongva villagers to work or be arrested. In 1845, the villagers were again relocated to a site called Pueblito, which lay across the Los Angeles River in what is now Boyle Heights. In winter of 1847, Pueblito was completely razed, and the forcible quartering of the remaining Yaangavit into Anglo and French homes was finalized. El Aliso, the last trace of the village of Yaanga, was slowly cut down throughout the 1890s. (In case you're wondering, the tree stood roughly at the northwest corner of Garey and Commercial Streets.) The only evidence of the Yaanga civilization that remains are the archaeological remains that have been uncovered in various stages beginning in 1937-1939 with the construction of the Terminal Annex Building and Union Station.
The street named "Macy" has its origins in 1851 with the arrival of Doctor Obediah "Obed" Macy and his family, who moved from Indiana on an oxen-pulled wagon. During the nine-month journey, their son Charles died of cholera. Once settled in El Monte and later Los Angeles, Obed purchased the Bella Union hotel, which stood until from 1835 to 1940 upon the site that is now Bowron Square--once the focal center of the Yaanga village. Oben would also establish himself as one of the first physicians in the new American territory of Los Angeles. He even opened a bathhouse called The Alameda, one of the budding city's first. Obed and his wife Lucinda eventually raised thirteen children, two of which--Obediah Jr. and Oscar-- went on to become civic leaders in Los Angeles. On July 19th, 1857, six years after his arrival in Los Angeles, the elder Obediah Macy died. The street bearing his surname survived its first attempted erasure in 1920 when the City Engineer recommended consolidating the street into Brooklyn Avenue, a proposal that the Native Sons of the Golden West lobbied strongly against and effectively stymied. (Ultimately, Macy Street, Brooklyn Avenue, and part of Sunset Boulevard would be renamed Cesar Chavez Avenue in 1994.) By the mid-late 19th century, as Los Angeles was becoming an increasingly Anglo-American city, the Macy Street neighborhood, or the "Mexican section" (called as such by newspapers and civic leaders of the time) became one of Los Angeles' first melting pots. It is perhaps best remembered as the first Chinese enclave in the city--the original Chinatown. It was also home to one of the city's first Italian enclaves, and by the turn of the 20th century bore a predominance of Mexican residents. Top left: The Macy Street School (Source: Los Angeles Public Library) Top right: An 1893 advertisement by the Cudahy Packing Company (Source: Los Angeles Times) Many immigrant entrepreneurs realized the American Dream in this community. In the mid-19th century, Frenchmen Louis Bauchet and Louis Vignes operated their own vineyards north and east of Union Station where the streets that bear their surnames now run. The Sepulveda family's land holdings and vineyards were located at the corner of Date Street and Ogier Street. The German-American Kerckhoff & Kuzner Lumber Company supplied lumber for countless early structures in the city. The Irish-founded Cudahy Packing Company was the City's then-largest slaughterhouse. The Italian immigrant-founded American Foundry was located here. Countless Chinese restaurants and laundries also operated in the Macy Street neighborhood. Like the humble communities of Palo Verde, La Loma, Bishop, and Naud Junction, this humble community in the city's 8th Ward was not unlike the one you and I live in. Children froliced in the streets. Honest, hardworking people provided quality goods and services. The Macy Street School, which stood for less than two decades before being ripped down, was an elegant edifice and one of the city's first schools built for working class youth. The Catholic-run Sisters of Charity held fundraising events that brought together men and women of all denominations. However, to many of the city's politicians and elites, the industrial, working-class community was too unsightly to continue in its place, given the much more grandiose plans that they had for the site. By the early 20th century, they began to search for pretexts to get rid of the community once and for all. In fall of 1924--two years before the ballot initiative that sealed the community's fate--the elites of the city found their first excuse to tarnish the community. Click "READ MORE" below.
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