View of City Hall from Bunker Hill, circa 1960s. Photo by George Mann, courtesy of On Bunker Hill.

One of these lost hills still survives in the public consciousness today. Bunker Hill is the subject of bus tours and fond reminiscences of a neighborhood condemned as blighted and demolished in the name of economic progress. It also survives physically, albeit in radically altered form; although the redevelopment projects of the 1960s reduced its profile, its rise is still evident to drivers and pedestrians, and Angels Flight once again ascends its eastern slope.

Unlike Bunker Hill, two neighboring promontories--Poundcake Hill and Fort Moore Hill--are today almost invisible features of the city's landscape.

Poundcake Hill
Located at the southeast corner of Temple and Broadway, Poundcake Hill historically has been the site of important civic buildings. Known to early Spanish settlers as Loma de las Mariposas (Hill of the Butterflies), the hill was renamed by later English-speaking arrivals for its resemblance to the plump, round dessert food.

In 1873, Los Angeles High School--the first high school in Southern California--opened atop Poundcake Hill. The Los Angeles Times wrote retrospectively in 1936 that the two-story wooden structure was so admired that tourists "came from miles around to see it, quite the finest school south of San Francisco. Its lines were classic, and it even had a cupola with a clock in it."

By 1887, though, the Los Angeles City Hall and other important government buildings had moved nearby, and civic leaders relocated the high school from atop Poundcake Hill to make room for a new county courthouse. The new Romanesque building, built of red sandstone at a cost of $500,000, opened in 1891. Its striking color and architecture visually dominated the civic center area until L.A.'s current City Hall arrived on the scene in 1928.

For decades the courthouse hosted countless courtroom dramas, wedding ceremonies, and divorce proceedings until the 1933 Long Beach earthquake rendered the building structurally unsound. It was torn down three years later.

In the 1960s, Poundcake Hill was flattened to make way for a new county criminal courts building. The truncated hill is now home to the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center.

Fort Moore Hill
Bounded roughly by today's Temple Street on the south, Spring St. on the east, Hill St. on the West, and Cesar E. Chavez Ave. on the north, Fort Moore Hill once stood less than a quarter-mile away from Los Angeles' historic plaza at the south end of what is now called Olvera Street. The once-prominent hill served a variety of purposes over the years.

Shortly after capturing Los Angeles from Mexican forces in 1847, U.S. troops built the hill's namesake fort to discourage a counterattack. The conclusion of the Mexican-American War several months later called into question the continued need for the fort, and in 1853 it was decommissioned.

The hill served as a cemetery until 1882, when Jacob Philippi opened a beer garden there. In what was still a rough frontier town, Philippi's garden quickly gained a reputation for attracting a rowdy crowd. By 1887, he had seen enough. He sold the complex to Mary Hollister Banning, the wealthy widow of the businessman Phineas Banning.

Banning's presence transformed Fort Moore Hill into one of the city's first upscale neighborhoods. Soon, many of L.A.'s so-called first families followed Banning up the steep slope, building elaborate mansions that overlooked the growing city.

From 1891 to 1917, the hill was also the site of L.A.'s second high school. Civic leaders had initially planned to move the original Los Angeles High School several blocks from Poundcake Hill to Fort Moore Hill. A contractor who claimed he could accomplish the task hoisted the building onto scaffolding and, using rollers, horses, and human labor, slowly moved the schoolhouse toward its new location. After work was underway, the contractor decided that the task was impossible after all. The building remained where his crew left it, repurposed as a schoolhouse for younger students while a new, grander high school was built atop Fort Moore Hill.

By the 1940s, Fort Moore Hill had gained a reputation as an obstacle to efficient traffic. The city had long ago tunneled under the hill to extend Broadway north into what is today Chinatown. But the hill now stood in the way of the planned 101 Freeway, and a tunnel would not accommodate the new superhighway. In 1949, construction crews transported away most of the hill by the truckload. Today, driving down the freeway that bisects Fort Moore Hill's original site, little evidence remains of the commanding views once possible from the hill's summit.

Many of the archives who contributed the above images are members of L.A. as Subject, an association of more than 230 libraries, museums, official archives, personal collections, and other institutions. Hosted by the USC Libraries, L.A. as Subject is dedicated to preserving and telling the sometimes-hidden stories and histories of the Los Angeles region. Our posts here will provide a view into the archives of individuals and cultural institutions whose collections inform the great narrative—in all its complex facets—of Southern California.