El Pueblo de Los Angeles and Olvera Street

El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument marks the place where the city began. In 1781, forty-four settlers, known as Los Pobladores, founded the pueblo of Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles beside the Los Angeles River, under Spanish colonial authority. The settlement later passed to Mexico after 1821 and to the United States after the Mexican-American War and California statehood in 1850. The monument occupies about 44 acres in Downtown Los Angeles, at 125 Paseo de la Plaza in California, and preserves a cluster of buildings that span the Spanish-Mexican, early American and Victorian periods. The central Plaza remains the focal point, surrounded by the Old Plaza Church, completed in 1822, and historic structures such as the Avila Adobe, the Pico House hotel of 1870, the Merced Theatre of 1870 and the Sepulveda House of 1887. Olvera Street, a narrow brick-paved lane opened as a Mexican marketplace in 1930 after a campaign led by civic activist Christine Sterling, runs north from the Plaza and holds stalls selling crafts, leather goods and food. The area also contains the Italian Hall, which carries the controversial 1932 mural America Tropical by David Alfaro Siqueiros, whitewashed soon after it was painted and since conserved with Getty Conservation Institute support. The curatorial approach blends a living market with interpretive museums: visitors can read plaques, join docent-led walking tours, and enter several buildings that function as small exhibit spaces on Los Angeles history. Architecturally the district mixes adobe construction, Italianate commercial fronts and Mission Revival touches. Preservation began in the late 1920s, and the site was designated a California Historical Landmark and later a city monument, with ongoing seismic retrofits and restoration work managed by the City of Los Angeles through the El Pueblo Historical Monument Authority. The monument sits steps from Union Station and the Metro A and L lines, and it hosts annual events such as Las Posadas in December and Dia de los Muertos observances.