The Aliso Tree

A large sycamore tree near the Los Angeles River was one of the early pueblo's most visible landmarks and served as the center of the Tongva village of Yaanga. In 1837, the site became home to the Vignes Winery, founded by Jean-Louis Vignes, a native of France and California's first commercial winemaker. In tribute to the Tongva, a new sycamore tree, also known as Aliso, now stands at the entrance to LA Plaza Village on Spring Street. Pío de Jesús Pico, Alta California's last governor under Mexican rule and one of the pueblo's wealthiest and most influential citizens, commissioned local architect Ezra Kysor to build the Pico House on the southern end of the Old Plaza, likely to help restore the historic center of the Mexican pueblo. Completed in 1870, it became the city's first grand hotel, with 82 rooms on three floors, running water and restrooms on each floor, an interior courtyard, and a grand staircase. The adjoining Merced Theatre, also built in 1870, is the city's oldest surviving theatre. Today, the City of Los Angeles owns and operates the Pico House for events and exhibitions and is restoring both structures as living landmarks of the pueblo's history. La Plaza de Cultura y Artes opened in 2011 as a museum and cultural center celebrating the city's Mexican and Mexican American history. Its two buildings, restored by the County of Los Angeles to their original Victorian design and listed as federally registered structures, are the two-story Plaza House, built in 1883 as a commercial and retail office building and later used as a rooming house with shops and a popular bakery-restaurant, and the five-story Vickrey-Brunswick Building, completed in 1888 with apartments and commercial spaces before later becoming the Brunswick Drug Company.

Los Angeles, California · United States