In case you just tuned in, Times artist Charles Owens and columnist Timothy Turner did a weekly series on some of the old landmarks in Los Angeles, many of them doomed by the impending construction of Union Station. Unlike the later series Nuestro Pueblo, by Owens and Joseph Seewerker, Rediscovering Los Angeles was never published in book form. The Times encouraged readers to clip and save the items.  It is worth noting that even as early as 1935-36, when these stories were being written, Los Angeles was already being “rediscovered.”

Feb. 3, 1936: In this week’s installment of Rediscovering Los Angeles, Owens and Turner visit Tortilleria Jalisco on Republic Street near the Plaza. Notice the Hall of Justice in the background.

Turner describes women making Mexican women making corn tortillas by hand:

There is not one difference in this process of bread making than when found by Cortez and Pizarro. Corn culture indicates that the more civilized American Indian had skillfully and really scientifically cultivated it for millennia, longer than any European or Asiatic vegetable had been grown by man. So the tortilla is possibly the oldest prepared article of food in the world.

Mexicans especially of the lower classes have never given up their taste for the corn tortilla.

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