Are you going to Ray Bradbury Square? If you're headed to the intersection of Fifth and Flower in Downtown, you will be. Last week, Downtown Councilmember Jose Huizar introduced a motion that would rename the intersection after the famous author and ask the Department of Transportation to erect "permanent ceremonial signs" at the location. Ray Bradbury, most famous for writing Fahrenheit 451, was raised in Boyle Heights and passed away earlier this year at his house in Cheviot Hills. Downtown's legions of office workers already know Fifth and Flower as a hub of activity and architecture, surrounded by the Bonaventure Hotel (or the Bonaventure Brewing Company, depending on how you look at it) and the Central Library. The intersection also lies at the center of the lawsuit surrounding the Regional Connector, which will one day make its way below the surface of the possible Ray Bradbury Square. Metro officials recently agreed to use a tunnel boring machine to build the regional connector until Fifth and Flower, but Thomas Properties Group (also located at Fifth and Flower) sued the project anyway; a judge will make a decision on whether or not to stop work on the line in a few weeks. Ray Bradbury, for his part, preferred monorails to subways, writing in 2006 that "The answer to all [of LA's transit challenges] is the monorail."
· 5th Street and Flower Street / Naming Ray Bradbury Square [City Council File 12-1366]
· Ray Bradbury Would've Crisscrossed LA With Monorails [Curbed LA]
Filed under:
Loading comments...