A Lot of History : Parking Structure Houses Memorial to L.A. Pioneer

Born a slave in 1818, Biddy Mason walked to California behind her Mississippi master’s covered wagon, won her freedom in a Los Angeles court and saved the wages from her job as a midwife to buy a $250 plot near downtown’s 4th and Spring streets in 1866.

She built a wooden house, then a mixed-use brick building with business space on the first floor and her home above. From that home she founded a day nursery and a school and, in 1872, the First African Methodist Episcopal Church of Los Angeles. In 1885, her grandsons started a livery stable on the bustling block.

On Thursday, which was declared “Biddy Mason Day in Los Angeles,” her descendants returned to the site of the old homestead and snipped two ribbons at a new mixed-use building called the Broadway Spring Center.

The first ribbon cutting officially opened the $24-million facility’s 1,274-space public parking garage, which will serve the Ronald Reagan State Building due to open across Spring Street next fall.

The second ribbon, officially snipped by Biddy Mason’s 95-year-old great-granddaughter, Gladys Owens Smith, was mounted on a new city monument to black history.

Only after turning into the modern version of the livery will unsuspecting drivers see the monument by graphic designer Sheila Levrant de Bretteville. The memorial, located outside the garage’s west end, is a striking 8-by-81-foot time-line wall of Los Angeles’ and Mason’s intertwined history during the 19th Century.

Any driver taking elevators to retrieve a car in the 10-story facility will see another public work of art, a collage reminiscent of Biddy Mason’s original wood frame home, done by sculptor and assemblage artist Betye Saar.

The melding of historic art with a functional parking structure--”no small challenge . . . to do with dignity,” noted James Wood of the Community Redevelopment Agency--was accomplished through the joint efforts of the Power of Place, a UCLA-affiliated organization that promotes Los Angeles’ multicultural history, and City Councilwoman Joy Picus.

They persuaded city planners that the CRA requirement that developers provide public art in downtown projects could be used to memorialize Biddy Mason’s pioneer contributions to the city.

“It’s just marvelous,” said Smith, accompanied by her great-granddaughter, Linda Cox, and Cox’s daughters, Cheryl, 11, and Robynn, 9.

“More people will see this in a parking garage, and recognize what she did, than they would a painting somewhere else,” said Smith, who was in no way upset that her energetic ancestor has been memorialized in a parking structure.

The new complex, which stretches from Spring Street on the east to Broadway on the west mid-block between 3rd and 4th streets, will also include 35,000 square feet of retail space, sidewalk cafes and a food court, and a landscaped, walled and gated park.

Parking is available now. The park is under construction.

Thomas Phillips of System Parking Investments, a co-developer in the project, said that although the street-level retail shops are not yet open, the space is 65% leased. The center should be in full operation within six months, he said.

Responding to concerns that the 3,000 future Reagan Building employees might not be safe in the area, which is on the edge of Skid Row, developer Robert Silberman of Allied Parking Ltd. said the complex will have 24-hour, state-of-the-art security designed by the Los Angeles Police Department.

Asked about homeless people who frequently sleep on nearby sidewalks, Silberman pointed out that even the park and food court will have locking gates.

“They can still sleep on the sidewalk,” he said. “We are not building a park for people to sleep in.”