The Sunday Times February 6, 2022 13Travel USA special
A
t certain hours of
the night you can
still see the ghosts
of Downtown Los
Angeles (DTLA).
The helicopter with the
spotlight; the screaming police
car; the homeless burning
cardboard on Skid Row. When
we holiday in LA we go to Santa
Monica, Beverly Hills or, at a
push, Venice Beach: the glitzy
low-rise suburbs thatperpetuate the myth of
Hollywood’s glamour. We’ve
forgotten, it seems, about the
city’s dark heart.
Droughts forced Mayan
cities to be abandoned.
Persepolis was depopulated
after Alexander burnt it down.
But the desertion of Downtown
was driven by the car. The
freeways that now enmesh the
city provided workers,
residents and businesseswith an escape route.
Within a decade many
buildings of the golden age
were bulldozed: their locations
more profitable as car parking
for commuters. Shops closed.
Rents collapsed. Corporations
relocated, and in Aldous
Huxley’s words LA became
“19 suburbs in search of a
metropolis”.
By the late 1980s DTLA had
mutated into a dystopianzombie town: a glimpse into
a lawless future for the benefit
of the film-makers and game
developers who gathered in
the downtown dive bars.
The Cecil Hotel on South
Main Street epitomised the
decline: a once-elegant beaux
arts property reduced to
offering rooms by the week
— or the hour — that gained a
grisly reputation for suicide
and murder. The serial killerDOWNTOWN
UP
ON THE
After an £18 billion revamp, LA’s dark heart
is looking much brighter, says Chris Haslam
Richard Ramirez is said to have
checked in for a few weeks.
DTLA was no place for tourists.
But in the mid-1990s the
property developer Ira Yellin
declared he felt an obligation
to resurrect the city. He was
helped by legislation in 1999
allowing commercial buildings
to be converted into lofts and
apartments. In 2003 Frank
Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert
Hall opened, establishing a
toehold for culture.
I was there when it opened,
and they said DTLA had been
resuscitated. It hadn’t. I was
there again in 2008 — this time
for the opening of the Broad
Contemporary Art Museum
(BCAM). They said DTLA was
in rehab, but only until sunset,
when all the bright young
things drove back to the ’burbs
and the zombies reappeared.
I returned late last year,
checking in to the Westin. I was
at a loose end, so I called
Lauren at the tourist board.
“When you’re alone and life
is making you lonely you can
always go Downtown,” she
suggested. “Everything’s
waiting for you.” They’d spent
£18 billion on the place, getting
residency rates up to 93 per
cent and commercial
vacancies down to 6 per cent.
They had world-class cultural
and sports attractions, hip
hotels and the breathlessness
that comes with the shock of
the new.
People from Beverly Hills
were crowding in at weekends,
and you couldn’t get tables on
streets where until recently
there had been no restaurants.
Yellin died in 2002 but his
vision lived on. Today people
are saying that DTLA —
comprising the Historic Core;
Chinatown; Little Tokyo; theContinued on page 14 →Arts and Fashion Districts and
Broadway — is the most
exciting five square miles in the
US. They’re probably right.
Ironically for LA, Downtown
is easily walkable, each corner
triggering a bout of Hollywood
déjà vu. Gentrification is
continuing, so that ammonia-
tainted grittiness lingers in the
doors and alleyways along
Broadway, where the 1920s
picture palaces are reborn as
churches and the penitentiary-
style 19th-century apartment
buildings have been liberated
as shared work spaces.
The Bradbury Building,
where Harrison Ford’s Deckard
fights for his life in Blade
Runner, is now home to a
cocktail bar from where you
can at least imagine attack
ships on fire off the shoulder
of Orion (neuehouse.com/
wyman-bar).
The next morning I walked
half an hour east to where it
all began. El Pueblo de Los
Angeles was founded in 1781
with 44 settlers. From that
tiny seed grew a megacity of
18.8 million.
Joyce Ingram arrived from
North Dakota in 1948. Her
father had read Grapes of
Wrath while in the navy and
mistaken it for a lifestyle
guide. I met her over a double-
dipped pastrami sandwich at
Philippe the Original, just up
Alameda from El Pueblo
(philippes.com). She lived
on Ord Street, near theDowntown LA
at sunset; the
regenerated area
is easily walkable
or scootable, rightSHABDRO PHOTO, STEPHEN ZEIGLER/GETTY IMAGES