It's getting so you can't dig a big hole in thin covering some wonderful piece of Los Angeles history. (The original 1800s Zanja Madre aqueduct under Blossom Plaza in Chinatown; an old brick carriage-maker's shop under City Hall's lawn). Now, big-time construction to transform the lot on the northeast corner of First Street and Broadway into a lush extension of Grand Park has turned up what might be the foundation of the second home of the LA Times, a building that was blown up in 1910 by "militant unionists," reports the LA Times. (The turn-of-the-century Times was staunchly and unabashedly anti-union.) The brick and granite building was headquarters for the paper from 1886 to the day in October 1910 when dynamite was detonated outside, triggering a fire fueled by nearby gas lines. As many as 30 people were killed.
The paper's third home was built on the same site and opened in 1912. Its signature feature was an imposing clock tower decorated with a sign declaring it the home of the LA Times. It's possible the foundation pieces discovered at the dig site belong to the third building, or that the remains are from both buildings. The determined building aficionados over at Skyscraper page connected the dots first, but city officials weren't available over the weekend to corroborate or offer any further details about what's been found.
This third building, which opened two years after the 1910 destruction of the second building, was on the same site at First and Broadway, and had a distinctive clock tower. It's possible that the remains found on the site could belong to this building
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