Olvera Street

1781

Los Angeles began here in 1781 with 44 settlers

Los Angeles was founded in 1781 by Spanish settlers, 44 men, women and children in 11 families. They came from the nearby Mission San Gabriel to set up a secular town on the banks of the Porciúncula River, at the Indian village of Yaanga. Of the 44 settlers, only two were white. Twenty-six had some degree of African ancestry and 16 were Indians or mestizos.

44settlers founded Los Angeles in 1781, in 11 families

Wine Street

It was Wine Street until 1877, when it took a judge's name

The street has been called Calle de los Vignes, Vine Street and Wine Street. In 1877 the City Council changed the name to Olvera Street, to honor Agustin Olvera, the first Superior Court Judge of Los Angeles County. The Pelanconi House on the street was a winery in the 19th century, and the grapes that still grow there match the DNA of those at Mission San Gabriel, established in 1771.

Christine Sterling

One woman saved the oldest house in the city from demolition

In 1926 Christine Sterling learned of a plan to demolish the Avila Adobe, the oldest existing home in Los Angeles. In 1928 the city posted a notice of condemnation on it, and she answered with her own hand-painted sign. Public interest grew, the City Council reversed its order, and support for restoring the adobe came from throughout the city.

1930

It opened on Easter Sunday 1930 as a Mexican marketplace

The street was closed to cars in 1929. On Easter Sunday 1930 it opened as a Mexican marketplace, called "A Mexican Street of Yesterday in a City of Today", and it was an instant success. The publisher Harry Chandler backed the plan. The area had been a neighborhood of new immigrants, especially Mexicans and Sicilians, and a Chinese community there later moved to the present Chinatown to make way for Union Station.