Quoting John E. Fisher of the L.A. Department of Transportation, the L.A. City Nerd recently shared this interesting fact on Facebook: in 1924, the downtown L.A. intersection of Seventh Street and Broadway was the busiest in the world with 504,000 people crossing those streets each day.
The chaotic scenes captured in the photograph above would have been unfathomable to someone standing at Seventh and Broadway in middle of the nineteenth century. Running more than a mile southwest of the original pueblo, Seventh Street was little more than a line on surveyors' maps. Broadway, then known as Fort Street, lost itself in the agricultural lands that separated Seventh street from L.A.'s original urban core.
The intersection first gained notability in 1865, when St. Vincent's College opened on the intersection's northwest corner. Since renamed Loyola Marymount University, the boys' college occupied the entire city block bounded by Broadway and Seventh, Hill, and Sixth streets. St. Vincent's Court, a quaint alleyway, traces the path of the college's driveway.