Shakespeare in Los Angeles?
“If you are not willing to risk the unusual, you will have to settle for the ordinary.” - Jim Rohn
The Shakespeare Bridge officially known as the Franklin Avenue Bridge was designed by civil engineer J.C. Wright. It was built to connect the Franklin Hills neighborhood to the East Hollywood and Ivanhoe district opening up the Franklin Hills area for development.
Originally built in 1926 of concrete in a gothic style it was subsequently retrofitted after the Northridge earthquake to reinforce it to withstand earthquakes in the local area.
Designated a historic cultural monument in 1974, the gothic towers vaguely reminiscent of architectural features that you’d expect to see in Elizabethan England are what caused it to be named after famous British playwright William Shakespeare.
Anecdotally, given its location close to Hollywood and Walt Disney’s original home and studios, the bridge has been featured in several Hollywood movies.
While I didn’t see anybody dropping off or picking up books these turrets offer an eclectic selection of books for the casual browser.
The bridge runs 260 feet long with a quartet of Gothic-style steepled towers at each end. It’s also quite narrow — about 30 feet including the half-sized sidewalks lining each side of the road. Fortunately, I was alone and did not need to adjust to walking single file across the narrow sidewalk.
While the neighborhoods on either side of the bridge were dreaming in the afternoon sunshine, the bridge itself saw a steady stream of cars that crossed it in both directions during the time that I spent out there.
The bridge is something of an architectural oddity in that it looks like nothing else around it, which really makes it stand out.
The entire hillside is dotted with homes with a dry creek that runs below the bridge. There is a staircase that takes you from the bridge to the Shakespeare Garden that is a wild and overgrown spot below the bridge. I personally did no brave this feat.
As I left the neighborhood around the bridge and headed towards home, I saw the top of this interesting building which made me follow my eyes and turn down a street where I found another cultural monument.
The John Marshall High School which seems to still be a functioning high school originally established in 1931.
While I had originally made my way to this neighborhood because my cousin had told me about the Shakespeare bridge, I decided to wander a bit through the interesting streets and absorb a little bit more about this eclectic neighborhood.
I found my way to Sunset Avenue, which is full of street art, interesting coffee shops, farmers market style shops and some well-known restaurants. Definitely a street where I need to spend more time browsing and sampling.
Along Sunset Avenue, I found the entrance to these stairs that are a part of a hidden network of stairs that riddle this neighborhood, a left-over relic from when people had to come down to Sunset Ave from their homes up in the hills to catch a cable car.
This particular staircase has been painted in colors of the rainbow and hearts by artist Corrinne Carrey in 2013. At the crossing of Sunset and Micheltorena this is known as the Micheltorena Stairs.
As you gaze up at the beautiful homes dotting the hillside of one of the oldest neighborhoods in Los Angeles you are reminded that while Los Angeles may seem like a relatively new city it in fact has many pockets of historic neighborhoods.