Broadway, until 1890 Fort Street, is a thoroughfare in Los Angeles County, California, United States. The portion of Broadway from 3rd to 9th streets, in the Historic Core of Downtown Los Angeles, was the city's main commercial street from the 1910s until World War II, and is the location of the Broadway Theater and Commercial District, the first and largest historic theater district listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). With twelve movie palaces located along a six-block stretch of Broadway, it is the only large concentration of movie palaces left in the United States.

Route

South Broadway's southern terminus is Main Street just north of the San Diego Freeway (I-405) in Carson. From there it runs 10 mi north through Athens and South Los Angeles to Downtown Los Angeles – at Olympic Blvd. entering downtown's Historic Core, in which the buildings lining Broadway form the Broadway Theater and Commercial District. Crossing 3rd Street, Broadway passes through the Civic Center including Grand Park. After crossing the US-101 (Santa Ana Freeway), signs read "North Broadway" as it enters Chinatown. It then curves northeast, passing through old railyards, crosses the Golden State Fwy. (I-5) and heads due east to its terminus at Mission Road in Lincoln Heights.

History

Founding and extension

Broadway, one of the oldest streets in the city, was laid out as part of the 1849 plan of Los Angeles made by Lieutenant Edward Ord and named Fort Street. Fort Street began at the south side of Fort Moore Hill (a block north of Temple Street) at Sand Street (later California Street). In 1890, the name of Fort Street, from 1st Street to 10th Street, was changed to Broadway. The rest of Fort Street, from California Street to 1st Street, was changed to North Broadway. Proposal for opening Broadway through to Buena Vista Street (now North Broadway), and extending the street south into what was then part of Main Street, below Tenth Street, in order to give a continuous, wide thoroughfare from the southern city limits to the Eastside, was made as early as February 1891. The Broadway Tunnel under Fort Moore Hill was opened in 1901, extending North Broadway to Buena Vista Street at Bellevue Avenue (later Sunset Boulevard, now Cesar Chavez Avenue). A section of Broadway in South Los Angeles was originally named Moneta Avenue until 1923. In 1909, construction on a bridge across the Los Angeles River was begun to connect Buena Vista Street to Downey Avenue, which ran from the river to Mission Road. The names of Buena Vista and Downey were then changed to North Broadway, but not without significant objections from affected residents and landowners. The bridge, which continued to be referred to as the Buena Vista Street Bridge for a good while, was opened to traffic in late September 1911.

Commercial and entertainment center

For more than 50 years, Broadway from 1st Street to Olympic Boulevard was the main commercial street of Los Angeles, and one of its premier theater and movie palace districts as well. It contains a vast number of historic buildings and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Prior to the turn of the 20th century, the city's Central Business District was further north, along Spring and Main streets between the Plaza and 2nd Street. In 1895 J.W. Robinson's opened what was then considered a very large and impressive four-story department store at 239 S. Broadway, signaling of the shift over the next decade and a half of the main shopping district to Broadway below 2nd Street.

Retail hub

From around 1905 through the 1950s, Broadway was considered the center of the city, where residents went to ornate movie palaces and live theaters, and shopped at major department stores and shops. See the Table of department stores on Broadway and Seventh streets below. The square footage of the four largest department stores alone — Bullock's at 806000 sqft, The Broadway at 577000 sqft, May Co. at over 1000000 sqft and J. W. Robinson's (7th St. at Hope) at 623700 sqft — totaled over three million square feet, the size of American Dream Meadowlands, America's largest mall today. Among dozens of significant buildings from that era are the Bradbury Building, Ace Hotel Los Angeles, and the Los Angeles Examiner building designed by Julia Morgan. Some of the movie theaters on the street fell into disuse and disrepair, some were replaced with parking lots, but many have been repurposed and/or restored. The department stores closed in the 1970s and 1980s, but Broadway has been the premier shopping destination for working class Latinos for decades.

Theater District

The Broadway Theater District is the first and largest historic theater district listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). The district, which spans from 2nd to 10th street, contains twelve movie palaces.

Department stores

Broadway since 2008

In 2008, the City of Los Angeles launched a $40-million campaign to revitalize the Broadway district, known as the "Bringing Back Broadway" campaign. Some Latino merchants in the district expressed concern that the campaign was an effort to spread the largely Anglo gentrification taking hold in other parts of downtown to an area that has become the city's leading Latino shopping district. A worker at one of the district's bridal shops noted, "On one side, I like the idea. The only thing is that I don't think they want our types of businesses." The Downtown's real estate revitalization, using the City's adaptive reuse ordinance that makes it easier for developers to convert outmoded and/or vacant office and commercial buildings into residential buildings, has reached the Broadway Historic District. It includes the transformation of the United Artists Theater office tower into the Ace Hotel Los Angeles, and restoration of its movie palace. The Bringing Back Broadway commission is working on further reviving the landmark Los Angeles boulevard in the historic district. Led by City Councilman Jose Huizar, the commission has recommended widening sidewalks, eliminating traffic lanes, constructing new parking structures, and bringing back streetcar service reminiscent of the street's past. A pedestrian-friendly project finished up in December 2014 that widened the sidewalks and replaced the parking lane with planters, chairs and round cafe tables with bright-red umbrellas. The Great Streets Initiative seeks to bolster the street-level health of the city by making several dozen boulevards more hospitable to pedestrians, cyclists and small businesses. Mayor Eric Garcetti said the effort represents "a shift from the way that our neighborhoods have been planned in Los Angeles," with a new focus on "walkability and transit." Broadway retail is transitioning from a broad mix of stores catering to Hispanic immigrants and a burgeoning sneaker and streetwear retail cluster has emerged from 4th to 9th streets: Sneaker Row. Retail in and around the Eastern Columbia, located at the intersection of 9th Street & Broadway, has proliferated in recent years with the opening of Acne Studios, Oak NYC, Aesop, Tanner Goods, BNKR, Austere, A.P.C., and Urban Outfitters located in the Rialto Theater (Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument No. 472).

Buildings and sites

All landmarks in geographic order, north to south:

North of Hollywood Freeway

Hollywood Freeway to Temple

This area south to Second Street is now the Civic Center, as well as the site of the Central Business District during the 1880s and 1890s)

Third to Fourth

South of the intersection of Third and Broadway, sites of interest include:

West side

East side

Fourth to Fifth streets

West side

East side

Fifth to Sixth streets

West side

East side

Sixth to Seventh streets

West side

Southwest corner of Sixth and Broadway

600 block of Broadway, west side

Next to what is now the Jevne building on the south at 609–619 S. Broadway were several buildings in succession:

East side

Seventh to Eighth streets

West side

East side

Eighth to Ninth streets

West side

East side

Ninth to Tenth streets

West side

East side

South of Olympic Boulevard (originally Tenth Street)

West side

East side

Other surviving theaters adjacent to Broadway

Public transportation

The Los Angeles Metro Rail's Historic Broadway station is an underground light rail station near the intersection of 2nd and Broadway, which is served by the E Line east to East Los Angeles and west to Santa Monica, and on the A Line northeast to Union Station, Pasadena, and Azusa and south to Long Beach. Metro J Line bus rapid transit (BRT) has 5 stations adjacent to Broadway in South Los Angeles: 37th Street/USC, Slauson, Manchester/I-110, Harbor Freeway, and Rosecrans. These stations are along the Harbor Transitway, a dedicated busway between Downtown L.A. (Adams Blvd.) and the Harbor Gateway, near Carson, in the median of the Harbor Freeway (I-110), just west of Broadway. J Line BRT runs as far south as San Pedro and as far northeast as El Monte. Metro Local bus line 45 serves most of the length of Broadway, between Lincoln Heights through Downtown to the Harbor Freeway Station. Local routes 4, 30, and 40 serve portions of Broadway downtown.