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Images of America: California
Historic Core of Los Angeles
In the early 20th century, there was no better example of a classic American downtown than Los Angeles. Since World War II, Los Angeles's Historic Core has been "passively preserved," with most of its historic buildings left intact. Recent renovations of the area for residential use and the construction of Disney Hall and the Staples Center are shining a new spotlight on its many pre-1930s Beaux Arts, Art Deco, and Spanish Baroque buildings.
- GenresNonfictionHistory
130 pages, Hardcover
First published November 16, 2004
About the author
Curtis C. Roseman
17 booksCurtis C. Roseman is professor of geography at the University of Southern California.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 4, 2026
First book of 2026! I've always seen a ton of these "Images of America" books and when I saw one at a used bookstore about my very own neighborhood in Los Angeles (the "Historic Core," but really just downtown LA), I decided to finally pick one up.
It's hard to fault the amazing content in the books - spectacular images from hundreds of years in the past, it's so insane seeing the high-rise where I live, surrounded by other high-rises and skyscrapers, and seeing a photo of the same location when there was just, like, a farmhouse, green pasture, a gravel road, not even paved yet. And seeing progress over so many years.
One thing that's not the book's fault - how sad it made me feel. We had SO MUCH COOL STUFF. Trolleys, tunnels, some SPECTACULAR Victorian buildings, towers, underground pedways, one amazing thing after another. And at least 50% of the time the caption would read "this too was razed in 1955 for a parking lot" and "this also met the wrecker's ball in 1962 and is now the site of a parking tower." Man FUCK the postwar automobile lobby, the infrastructure of DTLA was leagues better in 1926 than it is in 2026 and we're barely crawling back to that level even now.
Same with Pershing Square - what a delight it looked in its previous versions! The "artistic redesign" in the 90s that is still with us today is ugly as shit.
I had to knock the book a bit though because the organization is a little silly. It goes by street - not through history by time period. While this does allow for some side-by-side photos of "here's the same place in 1900 vs. 1980" which is really cool, only one chapter really has these. (Each chapter is written by someone else, for the most part, so they can be a little different or repetitive.) And then they don't really stick to those streets anyway, they're just the main topic, but they often mention other streets, because why wouldn't you - we're only talking about an area that's like 5-8 streets wide, so isolating by one street at a time just doesn't work when talking about trends over the centuries. Or at least, it makes it clunky.
There were also some straight-up factual errors in the book. One photo claimed to be from Spring Street - but it was on Broadway. I know, because it's across the street from me! It's MY VIEW!! How's the caption going to say it's from Spring Street when it's right across the rooftop from me on Broadway?
In another instance, it shows a photo of a certain fancy-architecture building that the Los Angeles Theater Center moved into. Except, no, I've BEEN to the LA Theater Center building, it is extremely distinct, and it is NOT the building in the photo.
And there were various typos and little things like that too - I recall on one page it gave a date as April 1919th instead of 19th.
Sometimes the captions on the photos didn't say which direction they were facing or which intersection we were looking at exactly. I found myself wishing that the captions had arrows pointing to things, or even little diagrams next to each picture just with lines that represented the roads saying which was which and which direction we were looking. Otherwise it was hard to orient yourself in every single photo each time, and that's coming from someone who's seen every intersection here a million times.
One page was particularly stupid - it had a photo of a famous old businessman's house, except the house was COMPLETELY hidden behind palm trees, as the caption even noted - so it's just a photo of some palm trees! You can barely see a hint of a house poking through. What's the point of showing this photo? And below it, they had a photo of the guy himself, with the caption saying how he so avidly believed that the Aryan race was superior. I mean sure racism was common in these times but why are we devoting a page to a racist guy's portrait and his house that you can't see? It was just dumb.
Also I should repeat the point about repetition (heh) - you could tell that this was written by a team of multiple people who each took a separate chapter or two because they each introduced concepts that another person had already discussed earlier in another chapter. I guess it drilled it into my head, but it made for a slightly jarring reading experience.
Overall I would still really recommend this book, 3.5 stars, the photos were 95% great and the info was incredibly interesting. But MAN it really could've used a couple passes through an editor to put a little polish and professionalism on it. Oh well.
It's hard to fault the amazing content in the books - spectacular images from hundreds of years in the past, it's so insane seeing the high-rise where I live, surrounded by other high-rises and skyscrapers, and seeing a photo of the same location when there was just, like, a farmhouse, green pasture, a gravel road, not even paved yet. And seeing progress over so many years.
One thing that's not the book's fault - how sad it made me feel. We had SO MUCH COOL STUFF. Trolleys, tunnels, some SPECTACULAR Victorian buildings, towers, underground pedways, one amazing thing after another. And at least 50% of the time the caption would read "this too was razed in 1955 for a parking lot" and "this also met the wrecker's ball in 1962 and is now the site of a parking tower." Man FUCK the postwar automobile lobby, the infrastructure of DTLA was leagues better in 1926 than it is in 2026 and we're barely crawling back to that level even now.
Same with Pershing Square - what a delight it looked in its previous versions! The "artistic redesign" in the 90s that is still with us today is ugly as shit.
I had to knock the book a bit though because the organization is a little silly. It goes by street - not through history by time period. While this does allow for some side-by-side photos of "here's the same place in 1900 vs. 1980" which is really cool, only one chapter really has these. (Each chapter is written by someone else, for the most part, so they can be a little different or repetitive.) And then they don't really stick to those streets anyway, they're just the main topic, but they often mention other streets, because why wouldn't you - we're only talking about an area that's like 5-8 streets wide, so isolating by one street at a time just doesn't work when talking about trends over the centuries. Or at least, it makes it clunky.
There were also some straight-up factual errors in the book. One photo claimed to be from Spring Street - but it was on Broadway. I know, because it's across the street from me! It's MY VIEW!! How's the caption going to say it's from Spring Street when it's right across the rooftop from me on Broadway?
In another instance, it shows a photo of a certain fancy-architecture building that the Los Angeles Theater Center moved into. Except, no, I've BEEN to the LA Theater Center building, it is extremely distinct, and it is NOT the building in the photo.
And there were various typos and little things like that too - I recall on one page it gave a date as April 1919th instead of 19th.
Sometimes the captions on the photos didn't say which direction they were facing or which intersection we were looking at exactly. I found myself wishing that the captions had arrows pointing to things, or even little diagrams next to each picture just with lines that represented the roads saying which was which and which direction we were looking. Otherwise it was hard to orient yourself in every single photo each time, and that's coming from someone who's seen every intersection here a million times.
One page was particularly stupid - it had a photo of a famous old businessman's house, except the house was COMPLETELY hidden behind palm trees, as the caption even noted - so it's just a photo of some palm trees! You can barely see a hint of a house poking through. What's the point of showing this photo? And below it, they had a photo of the guy himself, with the caption saying how he so avidly believed that the Aryan race was superior. I mean sure racism was common in these times but why are we devoting a page to a racist guy's portrait and his house that you can't see? It was just dumb.
Also I should repeat the point about repetition (heh) - you could tell that this was written by a team of multiple people who each took a separate chapter or two because they each introduced concepts that another person had already discussed earlier in another chapter. I guess it drilled it into my head, but it made for a slightly jarring reading experience.
Overall I would still really recommend this book, 3.5 stars, the photos were 95% great and the info was incredibly interesting. But MAN it really could've used a couple passes through an editor to put a little polish and professionalism on it. Oh well.
Displaying 1 of 1 review