Los Angeles Plaza

Los Angeles Plaza is located in Los Angeles, California, US. It is the central point of the Los Angeles Plaza Historic District. When Governor Felipe de Neve founded the Pueblo de Los Ángeles, his first act was to locate a plaza for the geographical center from which his town should radiate. De Neve’s plaza was rectangular in form—75 varas wide by 100 in length. It was located north of the church; its southerly line very nearly coincided with the northerly line of West Marchessault street. On this, the cuartel (guard house), the public granary, the government house and the capilla (chapel), fronted.

The 18th century plaza viejo (old plaza) predates the 19th century plaza nuevo. The old plaza of El Pueblo de Nuestra Sonora, 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 viejo, 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".

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