Olvera Street marketplace, Los Angeles, CA, circa 1930

About this postcard

Open-air stalls line Olvera Street, hung with serapes, blankets, and Mexican curios, while shoppers and strollers move along the paved walkway beneath trees and brick-fronted buildings. The printed caption gives the street its older name, El Paso de los Angeles, "the pathway of the angels," and traces it to the trail Governor Felipe de Neve followed with his colonists when they founded Los Angeles in 1781. The street lies in the old pueblo core, and the caption points out the Avila Adobe, the 1818 house where Commodore Robert Stockton kept headquarters during the American conquest of California. Craftsmen worked leather, glass, tin, and woven goods at the stalls. Olvera Street in this form opened in 1930, when the Avila Adobe and the surrounding plaza were restored as a Mexican market and a draw for tourists.