Picture This! is an occasional series featuring (hopefully) interesting and enlightening photographs from the Homestead Museum Collection.
William M. Godfrey, "7. Los Angeles, from Fort Hill (Bird's-eye)," ca. 1870. From the Homestead Museum Collection.
William Moloch Godfrey (1825-1901), an early photographer of Los Angeles and its environs, took some of the most recognizable images of the developing town starting around 1870. This stereoview, entitled “7. Los Angeles, from Fort Hill (Bird’s-eye),” has appeared in several histories of the town. Today’s blog entry will focus on the location from which the photo was taken.
Godfrey took this photograph from the lower west side of Fort Hill (also called Fort Moore Hill), located west of the Plaza, the historic heart of Los Angeles. The hill’s name came from a fort built there by U.S. forces during the Mexican-American War and named after Captain Benjamin D. Moore. Moore was killed by Californio forces at the Battle of San Pasqual near San Diego in December 1846. The fort, built in early 1847 and formally dedicated on July 4, 1847, was quickly abandoned on the orders of William Tecumseh Sherman, later a renowned Civil War general for the Union Army.
Fort Moore Hill was known for its cemetery (called the Protestant, Fort Moore Hill, Fort Moore, or City cemetery), which existed for about a quarter century from the 1850s to about 1880. Starting in the early 1890s, Los Angeles High School’s second location remained there for about twenty-five years. The headquarters of the Los Angeles Unified School District then operated on the school site until about a decade ago, where a new high school for the visual and performing arts opened in 2009.
The hill was also the home of the Philippi beer garden, completed in the early 1880s. When the location closed, Mary Hollister Banning, widow of influential figure Phineas Banning, converted the location into a mansion. The structure remained there until the mid-twentieth century, when “urban renewal” brought its demolition. The controversial redevelopment program also meant that a sizable chunk of the south side of the hill was removed to construct the Hollywood Freeway (U.S. 101). A bas-relief memorial of Fort Moore was placed on the hill several years later.
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