Olvera Street

rdf:langString Olvera Street

rdf:langString Olvera Street (also Calle Olvera or Placita Olvera, originally Calle de los Vignes, Vine Street, and Wine Street) is a historic street in downtown Los Angeles, and a part of El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historic Monument, the area immediately around the 19th-century Los Angeles Plaza, which has been the main square of the city since the early 1820s, when California was still part of Mexico, and was the center of community life until the town expanded in the 1870s. Many of the Plaza District's historic buildings are on Olvera Street, including its oldest one, the Avila Adobe, built in 1818; the Pelanconi House built in 1857; and the Sepulveda House built in 1887. Restaurants, vendors, and public establishments are along the pedestrian mall, a block-long narrow, tree-shaded, brick-lined marketplace where some merchants are descended from the original vendors who opened shops when a then-decrepit Olvera Street was recreated as a tourist attraction in 1930, a romanticized version with the theme of a Mexican marketplace. The exterior facades of the brick buildings enclosing Olvera Street and on the small vendor stands lining its center are colorful piñatas, hanging puppets in white peasant garb, Mexican pottery, sarapes, mounted bull horns, and oversized sombreros. Olvera Street attracts almost two million visitors per year who can find, while not an authentic Mexican or Mexican-American market, an homage to the history and traditions of the pueblo's early settlers and the city's Mexican heritage.