13 Facts About Olvera Street

1.

Olvera Street is a historic street in downtown Los Angeles, and a part of El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historic Monument, the area immediately around the 19th-century Los Angeles Plaza, which has been the main square of the city since the early 1820s, when California was still part of Mexico, and was the center of community life until the town expanded in the 1870s.

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2.

Many of the Plaza District's historic buildings are on Olvera Street, including its oldest one, the Avila Adobe, built in 1818; the Pelanconi House built in 1857; and the Sepulveda House built in 1887.

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3.

Restaurants, vendors, and public establishments are along the pedestrian mall, a block-long narrow, tree-shaded, brick-lined marketplace where some merchants are descended from the original vendors who opened shops when a then-decrepit Olvera Street was recreated as a tourist attraction in 1930, a romanticized version with the theme of a Mexican marketplace.

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4.

Olvera Street is in the northeast of modern-day Downtown Los Angeles, between Main and Alameda streets, running north from the Los Angeles Plaza to Cesar Chavez Avenue.

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5.

Olvera Street'sact helped attract additional public interest in preserving the old adobe.

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6.

Some find Olvera Street to be a sanitized fabrication of Latin American culture merely to attract tourists, a "fake" Mexican presence; since 1926, it has garnered controversy as historians and collectors have attempted to preserve the sites for historic study and educational purposes.

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7.

In contrast, there are researchers that often cite that Olvera Street is an "appropriated" misnomer of Latin-American and Hispanic culture, and should therefore not remain as a source of tourism.

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8.

Avila Adobe at 10 Olvera Street was built in 1818 and is the oldest surviving residence in Los Angeles.

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9.

Sepulveda House at 12 Olvera Street is a historic residence built in 1887 by Senora Eloisa Martinez de Sepulveda in the Eastlake architectural style.

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10.

Senora Gallardo's adobe home at number 12 Bath Olvera Street was later enlarged to include by 1870 a second story and hipped roof.

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11.

Olvera Street'sbedroom reveals much about her Mexican heritage and the popular tastes and styles of the time.

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12.

Plaza Substation, at 10 Olvera Street, was part of the electric streetcar system operated by the Los Angeles Railway.

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13.

Pelanconi House at 17 Olvera Street, built in the 1850s, is the oldest surviving brick house in Los Angeles.

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