Los Angeles Plaza

The 18th century plaza vieja (old plaza) predates the 19th century plaza nueva. The old plaza of El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora, La Reina de Los Angeles (the town of our Lady, the Queen of the Angels) as decreed by Gov. Felipe de Neve in his "Instruccion para La Fundaccion de Los Angeles" (26 August 1781), was a parallelogram one hundred varas in length by seventy-five in breadth. It was laid out with its corners facing the four winds or cardinal points of the compass, and with its streets running at right angles to each of its four sides, so that no street would be swept by the wind. Two streets, each ten varas wide, opened out on the longer sides, and three on each of the shorter sides. Upon three sides of the plaza were the house lots, 20x40 varas each, fronting on the square. One half of the remaining side was reserved for public buildings—a guard house, a town house, and a public granary; the other half was an open space. Around three sides of the old plaza clustered the mud-daubed huts of the pioneers of Los Angeles, and around the embryo town, a few years later, was built an adobe wall—not so much perhaps for protection from foreign invasion as from domestic intrusion. It was easier to wall in the town than to fence in the cattle and the goats that pastured on the ejidos or commons, outside the walls. The boundaries of the plaza vieja, as nearly as it is possible to locate them, are as follows: The southeast corner of the plaza would coincide with the northeast corner of Marchessault and Upper Main streets. From the said northeast corner of these streets draw a line land boundaries were of rare occurrence and title deeds when given were loosely drawn. The more or less in a conveyance never worried the party of the second part. In the minutes of the ayuntamiento may be found the grant of a certain piece of land now known as the Requena tract which is described and deeded as that lot or tract on which the "Cows ate the apples". ==19th century plaza==

(1890) In 1814, when the foundation of the La Iglesia de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles was laid, it, too, fronted on the old plaza; but the great flood of 1815 changed the Los Angeles River’s channel from the eastern side of the valley to the western and the waters came up to the foundations. The location of the church was changed to higher ground—its present site. When the final location of the Nueva Iglesia had been decided upon by Gov. Sola in 1818, next in importance was a plaza on which the church should front and since there was none, the evolution of plaza from the ejidos or common land and house lots began. There were evidently some buildings on the designated area, for old records note that the pueblo authorities, in 1825, ordered a house torn down that stood on the plaza. One of the conditions of that lease was the building within a year at a cost not to exceed US$1,000 of an ornamental spring fountain on the Plaza. Juan Bernard and Patrick McFadden, who had acquired possession of the Dryden franchise and water works, disposed of their system and the old brick reservoir on the Plaza came into the possession of the City Water Company, the successors of Griffin, Beaudry, et al. Three years passed, and still the unsightly debris of the old reservoir disfigured the center of the square. At a meeting of the council, December 2, 1870, Judge Brunson, attorney of the City Water Company, submitted propositions as a settlement of what he styled “the much vexed question of the reservoir and Plaza improvements. The council, frightened at the prospect of a lawsuit and fearful of losing the Plaza, hastened to compromise. The fence was built, the walks were laid, and the ornamental fountain, too, was erected by the company. Its form was changed from a square to a circle. ==Los Angeles Plaza Park==

Los Angeles Plaza Park is an unstaffed, unlocked and open area within the plaza. It is the site of the demolished Lugo Adobe. ==California Historical Landmark==

The Los Angeles Plaza was designated a California Historic Landmark (No.156) on Jan. 11, 1935. The Marker on the site reads: • NO. 156 LOS ANGELES PLAZA - A part of the original pueblo lands of El Pueblo de la Reina de Los Angeles de Porciuncula founded in 1781 under the Spanish Laws of the Indies during the reign of King Carlos III, the plaza is located close to the site of the original plaza. It was the center of the settlement founded by Governor Felipe de Neve. When the Plaza Church was completed in 1822, this site was reserved as a public plaza. It was landscaped in 1871 and has served since that date as a public park. ==Map==