PERMANENT EXHIBIT: 5TH & MAIN: 140 YEARS

THIS IS A 4 PAGE ARTICLE.

Please follow links @ bottom of each page, then resume.

Before Tom Gilmore, "The Father of the New Downtown", and many years before the Downtown Renaissance; the "Arts District", BID, DLANC, or Bert Green and Pharmaka Galleries, it was known as "5th & Main". The following pages are dedicated to the years 1868-1980.

We were so fortunate to get first hand accounts and comments regarding life on Fifth & Main. Our thanks goes to the Gwinn Family, The Belknap Family, Jeannie Williams & Family, The Bofto Family, Robert Culver Family, Mrs. Gloria Gilmore-Dahl & Family, The Noyes Family, and many others that were so kind as to share their memories and photos. Additionaly our thanks to the good people at the Central Library.

Follow Page Links on Each Page.

(Page 2 Link @ Bottom)

SEE AN AMAZING SHORT FILM FROM 1898 DOWNTOWN!

5th and MAIN

Call it "5th and Main, The Nickel or Skid Row" it's always been where dreams grew, prospered, and then after many years went into a slow and seedy decline until the 21st century dawns.

c. 1868-1870 5th and Main Streets.

Late c. 1870's to Early 1880's

Bucolic and Lovely no trace of it's future seen here.

c. 1906

Add people and transportation and you know have a central city location.

c 1918

It was the year of the horrible influenza outbreak. A street of shopkeepers and the "professions."

AUDIO: You are listening to the same sound you would have heard @ 5th & Main in the 1880's. This is an actual horse and wagon on brick cobblestones, the same as the original street paving for 5th & Main Streets.

Downtown's future infamous "Skid Row" in the mid 1880's is bustling with commerce and new buildings.

c. Mid 1880's

New Buildings start to dot the landscape.

c. Late 1890's

Paving bricks and buildings are now the new 'urban' Los Angeles.

c. 1900-2

Trolly's clang down the street. Horse drawn wagons and carts carry freight.

5th & Main Memories

"I remember the gas lights and the man who would light them. We kids would take the old wick the lamplighter threw to the ground and used it to make hop-scotch boxes on the pavement. The first automobile I saw was on Main street, it was a big event for us children. There was smoke all over the place from that auto. We never saw it's future back then. There was also an ice cream parlor on Main street near 5th where they served ice cream in little cookie shells."

Mrs. Blanch Bjork,92 years old, 1975.

GO TO THE 1920's & 1930's