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First Street North was once four city blocks. Central Avenue, a short portion of which dead-ends into the block, once ran all the way through it. Jackson Street ran parallel to First Street . The intersection of Central and Jackson was the main intersection of Little Tokyo. The WWII evacuation and internment severely damaged Little Tokyo.
In the early post-war period, the city of Los Angeles continued the assault on the neighborhood. The block immediately to the west of FSN was also part of Little Tokyo. It was taken in the late 1940s/early 1950s in order to build the Los Angeles Police Department Headquarters, Parker Center. In the 1950s, the city of L.A. seized most of the FSN block for civic center expansion. The properties were seized, the residents and businesses were evicted, the buildings were demolished and the land leveled and paved, but the planned developments never happened.
Today, the block has still not been developed. But the pressure to permanently remove it from Little Tokyo has been renewed. A city maintenance garage on the block was lent to the new Museum of Contemporary Art as a temporary site, but it later became a permanent part of MOCA. The City wants to build an underground employee parking garage.
More
of the Story:
• The Search for a Site
