Today Los Angeles is a city of millions, but its oldest streets still trace four square leagues laid out around a plaza in 1781. Our Los Angeles designs gather that founding story — the City of Angels, the 1781 pueblo, and Los Pobladores — and pair it with vintage Southern California styling: sunshine, palms, mountains meeting the coast. From a 1781 adobe pueblo to the City of Angels — wear a little of Los Angeles's real beginning, not its billboard.
The founding block survived all of it. El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument still holds the Old Plaza, the Plaza Church that Angelenos call La Placita, and the Avila Adobe of 1818 — the oldest standing house in the city. Olvera Street, the lane beside it, was a service alley headed for demolition until a preservation campaign reopened it in 1930 as a Mexican marketplace; it has been one ever since. A short walk away, Little Tokyo, Chinatown, and Olvera Street sit within a few blocks of one another, which is about as honest a summary of the city as any map can give.
Why People Visit Los Angeles
Travelers come for the climate, the coast, and the culture, but the quietest surprise is the history: a two-hundred-and-forty-year-old pueblo tucked into the middle of a modern metropolis. History and everyday life sit side by side here in a way few American cities can match, and the founding block asks nothing but a walk.
