Since 1853 there have been five buildings called Los Angeles City
Hall. The current city hall opened in
1928. The fourth city hall, on the east
side of Broadway between Second and Third Streets, was used for 39 years
(1889-1928). The third Los Angeles City
Hall opened on Second Street in 1885. It
was the seat of city government for four years and also Los Angeles Police Department
Headquarters for 11 years. Despite these
distinctions, the building is little-known.
The Second Street City Hall was designed by Los Angeles architect
Robert Brown Young (1855-1914), who planned a three-story building at the northwest
corner of Second and Spring, with a two-story wing of the main structure mid-block
along Second Street. However, only the
two-story wing was ever built. It was widely
viewed as a failure soon after it was completed, and it eventually became a major
civic embarrassment. This may account
for the apparent lack of an extant front-elevation photograph of the structure
while it was owned by the city.
When construction on the building began in late 1884, there
was already standing a substantial, well-built brick building of two stories
that had been Los Angeles City Hall.
So before getting into the story of the Second Street City Hall, a
review of why it was built is in order.
Part 1: Background and Construction
In August 1853, an adobe home that had been built in the
1820s at the northwest corner of Spring and Franklin Streets was sold by Los Angeles merchant and landowner John Temple (1796-1866) to the city and to Los Angeles
County for a city hall and courthouse (the site is now mostly under Spring Street by the southwest corner of the current City Hall).
The city owned a one-quarter interest in the property, and the county
owned a three-quarters interest. A brick
jail used by both the city and county was constructed behind the adobe in 1853,
the first (non-adobe) brick building built in Los Angeles.
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| This 1876 photo looks south on Spring Street from about Temple Street. The building with the red dot on the roof, on the northwest corner of Spring and Franklin Streets, became Los Angeles City Hall in 1853. Los Angeles City and County shared the building. The taller building in the distance, below the green dot, is the city’s first synagogue, built in 1873. |
