Downtown LA
Where the pueblo began and the trains still meet: El Pueblo, Chinatown, Little Tokyo, Bunker Hill and Broadway, walked between the stations.
48 places · 5 walks in the app · 1 episode
The episode
Places worth stopping at
With the app in your pocket, you get a note about each one as you walk by.
Stories5
The Plaza
The old Plaza: Governor de Neve laid out the pueblo around a plaza in 1781, just north of the Tongva village of Yaanga, his reference point.
Ávila Adobe
Step inside the city's oldest house: Francisco Ávila built it in 1818. Christine Sterling stopped its demolition and made it a museum.
Fort Moore Pioneer Memorial
The long stone wall is the largest bas-relief military monument in the US, where the flag went up over Fort Moore on July 4, 1847.
Chinatown gates & Central Plaza
The gates of 1938–39 open onto Central Plaza, built when Chinatown moved here. The East Gate honours its builder's mother.
Go for Broke Monument
The black stone arc names Japanese Americans who served in the US Army in WWII, while families were interned. Free; dedicated 1999.
Buildings13
Pico House
Pío Pico, the last Mexican governor of Alta California, opened this Italianate hotel in 1870, the most lavish in Southern California for a town of 5,700.
Terminal Annex
The Mission-style twin across Cesar Chavez is the Terminal Annex: every letter in LA passed through here from 1940 to 1989.
City Hall
City Hall's concrete holds sand from all 58 California counties and water from the 21 missions. Free observation level on the 27th floor, weekdays.
SCI-Arc (Santa Fe Freight Depot)
The architecture school lives in a 1907 freight depot a quarter-mile long and, for half its length, only 37 feet wide: as long as the Empire State is tall.
Biscuit Company Lofts
Built in 1925 as Nabisco's West Coast headquarters factory, a $2 million sensation in its day; live/work lofts since 2006.
Westin Bonaventure
John Portman's 1977 towers have no 7th or 13th floor, and four colour-coded lift banks; plaques mark lift scenes from True Lies and In the Line of Fire.
U.S. Bank Tower
The glass crown lit at night tops the 1989 Library Tower, 1,018 feet, by Pei Cobb Freed: the skyline shot in countless films.
Wilshire Grand Center
Wilshire Grand, 2017: with its spire, the tallest building west of Chicago at 1,100 feet, though the Library Tower's roof is higher.
Central Library
Bertram Goodhue's library opened in 1926; with the 1993 Bradley wing it holds the third-largest collection of any US public library.
The Biltmore
When the Biltmore opened in 1923 it was the largest hotel in the US west of Chicago: 1,500 rooms. Baron Long put the world's biggest nightclub in its basement.
Oviatt Building
James Oviatt, once a shop-window dresser, built this Art Deco tower for his haberdashery. On the National Register since 1983.
Bradbury Building
Step into the 1893 atrium of iron walkways and open lifts under a skylight: one of four LA office buildings that are National Historic Landmarks.
Eastern Columbia Building
Glossy turquoise terra cotta and a four-sided clock: Claud Beelman's 1930 store, built in nine months. The clock got an exemption from the height limit.
Museums5
Old Plaza Firehouse
LA's oldest fire station, 1884; later a saloon, a cigar store and a flophouse. A free fire museum since 1960, Tuesday to Sunday 10–3.
Chinese American Museum
The Garnier Building, oldest surviving Chinese building in Southern California: Old Chinatown stood here until Union Station displaced it.
The Broad
Eli and Edythe Broad paid $140 million for the building. General admission to the collection is free; it opened in 2015.
MOCA Grand Avenue
MOCA: art made after 1940, nearly 8,000 objects. Its first, "temporary" space in Little Tokyo is still open, as the Geffen Contemporary.
Japanese American National Museum
JANM tells 130 years of Japanese American life, with 100,000 feet of home movies from the 1920s to the 1950s. A Smithsonian affiliate.
Art & galleries5
América Tropical (Siqueiros)
Look up at the Italian Hall: Siqueiros painted América Tropical here in 1932; it was whitewashed, then revealed again in 2012, 80 years to the day.
Bruce Lee statue
Bruce Lee in bronze, nunchucks ready: the only statue of him in the US, brought here after a five-year effort by his daughter Shannon.
Chung King Road
Chung King Road was all Chinese importers' shops; since the late 1990s its storefronts are art galleries, with openings most weeks.
Triforium
Triforium: 60 feet of concrete, 1,494 Venetian glass prisms and a 79-bell carillon, meant to turn passers-by into light and sound. 1975.
Hauser & Wirth (Globe Mills)
Hauser & Wirth opened its LA gallery here in 2016, in the old Globe Mills flour mill; the LA Conservancy gave the reuse an award in 2018.
Stage & screen9
Merced Theatre
Next door to Pico House: the Merced, the first theater in the pueblo, by the same architect, Ezra Kysor. California Historical Landmark 171.
The Music Center
The Music Center: Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Ahmanson and Mark Taper Forum, home of the LA Opera; 1.3 million people a year come for shows.
Walt Disney Concert Hall
Lillian Disney gave $50 million in 1987 to build it; Gehry's hall opened in 2003: 2,265 seats, half vineyard, half shoebox.
Million Dollar Theatre
Sid Grauman's first Los Angeles movie palace, opened 1 February 1918, before his Egyptian and Chinese moved the show to Hollywood. Across from the Bradbury.
Los Angeles Theatre
Built in under six months in 1931: a French Baroque palace said to copy Versailles' Hall of Mirrors, with a crystal fountain on the staircase.
Palace Theatre
The Palace, 1911: reported to be the oldest surviving theatre built for the Orpheum circuit.
Tower Theatre (Apple)
The Tower, 1927: the first downtown cinema wired for Vitaphone sound, and S. Charles Lee's first theatre. An Apple Store since 2021.
Orpheum Theatre
The Orpheum, 1926, the most restored of the old movie palaces, keeps its 1928 Mighty Wurlitzer: the last theatre organ surviving on Broadway.
The United Theater on Broadway
United Artists' Gothic movie palace, 1927: Pickford, Fairbanks and Barrymore broke ground; it opened with Pickford's My Best Girl. The United Theater now.
Temples & churches4
Thien Hau Temple
A temple to Mazu, goddess of the sea, run by Teochew refugees from Cà Mau, Vietnam, in a building that was once an Italian church.
Koyasan Buddhist Temple
Koyasan, founded in 1912, is one of the oldest Buddhist temples on the North American mainland, and Shingon's regional headquarters.
Hompa Hongwanji Buddhist Temple
Nishi Hongwanji: its second home here was the first Buddhist temple in Los Angeles and one of the most influential in the US.
St. Vibiana's
LA's cathedral from 1876 for over a century; the 1994 quake damaged it, preservationists fought demolition, and it's an events hall now.
Parks3
LA State Historic Park (the Cornfield)
The Cornfield: Southern Pacific's River Station, where newcomers arrived, called LA's Ellis Island. Corn spilled from trains grew on the tracks.
Grand Park
Grand Park runs 12 acres from City Hall up to the Music Center, joining Bunker Hill to the Civic Center. Opened 2012 on the 1966 Civic Center Mall.
Pershing Square (Biddy Mason Park)
The square of 1866, with Legorreta's purple bell tower of 1994. In 2026 the council voted to rename it for Biddy Mason, who was born enslaved.
Stations & rails2
Union Station
Union Station, 1939, gathered the Santa Fe, Southern Pacific and Union Pacific under one roof; it's the busiest station in the western US.
Angels Flight
Olivet and Sinai counterweight each other up 96 feet of hill. Since June 2025 a ride is $1.50, or 75¢ with a TAP card.
Shops2
Grand Central Market
LA's public market since 1917, when Bunker Hill rode Angels Flight down to shop. Old stalls share the hall with newer food counters; Angels Flight is a short walk.
The Last Bookstore
California's largest new-and-used bookstore fills an old bank, the vault included; find its tunnel made of books.
Walks
Start a walk in the app and put your phone away. It tells you when you reach each stop.
Walk
Union Station → 7th Street, station to station
17 stops · 4.8 km · 2 hr
Get off at Union Station and walk to 7th St/Metro Center: the Plaza, Old Chinatown's last building, City Hall, Little Tokyo, the Bradbury and Broadway, Pershing Square, the Central Library. Take the…
Walk
Little Tokyo and the Arts District
7 stops · 3.3 km · 1 hr 30
From Little Tokyo/Arts District station: JANM and the temples, then east across Alameda to Hauser & Wirth and SCI-Arc's quarter-mile depot.
Walk
Broadway's movie palaces
8 stops · 1.8 km · 1 hr
South down Broadway from the Bradbury: Grauman's first LA palace, the Versailles-style Los Angeles, the Orpheum circuit's oldest, downtown's first Vitaphone house, the Orpheum, the Eastern…
Walk
Chinatown to the Plaza
11 stops · 3.4 km · 1 hr 15
From Chinatown station and the Cornfield, through Chung King Road and Central Plaza, past Thien Hau Temple and the Fort Moore wall, down to the Plaza and Union Station.
Walk
Bunker Hill to City Hall
8 stops · 2.2 km · 1 hr
Through Grand Central Market and up Angels Flight to Grand Avenue: MOCA, The Broad, Disney Hall and the Music Center, then down Grand Park to City Hall.
The Yesteryard app
A guide that taps you on the shoulder.
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