What’s in a street name? Hollywood Blvd is torn between its historic past and economic future MORE Hollywood Boulevard wasn’t always where you’d come to make it in show business. It used to be “where you would come after you had made it to enjoy the rest of your life surrounded by beautiful flowers and gardens and … be restored to health and sanity,” says journalist and local historian Hadley Meares. “(It’s) crazy to think you would be restored to health and sanity if you moved to Hollywood. Photo by Mike Schlitt.
Hollywood Boulevard is one of the most famous streets in the world a universal symbol of glamour and fame. It attracts 10 million tourists a year. It’s the destination for dreamers hoping to “make it” in show business.
Judge Benjamin Hayes knew the eyes of Los Angeles were on him. In January 1856, the hard-living judge presided over a hearing that would rock Los Angeles, a dusty, dangerous pueblo of approximately 4,000 souls. Out of the hearing would emerge Biddy Mason, a formerly enslaved woman who would become one of the most important and one of the wealthiest landowners, midwives and philanthropists in early-American Los Angeles.
Mason was so beloved that people in need would line up in front of her house on First Street, eager for Aunt Biddy s assistance, which she always gave until she grew too old and infirm. She showed people what could happen when they were free and could set their own destiny, says Jackie Broxton, executive director of the Biddy Mason Charitable Foundation.
December 11, 2020 7:00 AM
Terri de la Peña at the Pascual Marquez Family Cemetery in Santa Monica Canyon, where some of her ancestors are buried. (Courtesy Terri de la Peña)
Over the next year, we re hoping to hear your stories about how race and ethnicity shape your life and, hopefully, publish as many of these stories as we can, so that we can all keep on talking. We re calling this effort
Race in LA. Click here for more information and details on how to participate.
By Terri de la Peña
In October 2019 eons ago, it seems I watched John Leguizamo s Latin History for Morons unfold at the Ahmanson Theater.