At the time of my arrival, the Plaza, long the nucleus of the original settlement, was the center of life in the little community, and around it clustered the homes of many of those who were uppermost in the social scale, although some of the descendants of the finest Spanish families were living in other parts of the city. This was particularly so in the case of José Andrés Sepúlveda, who had a beautiful old adobe on some acreage that he owned northwest of Sonora Town, near the place where he constructed a stone reservoir to supply his house with water. Opposite the old Plaza Church dwelt a number of families of position and, for the most part, of wealth--in many cases the patrons of less fortunate or dependent ones, who lived nearby. The environment was not beautiful, a solitary pepper, somewhat north of the Plaza, being the only shade-tree there; yet the general character of the homes was somewhat aristocratic, the landscape not yet having been seriously disturbed by any utilitarian project such as that of the City Fathers who, by later granting a part of the old square for a prosaic water tank, created a greater rumpus than had the combative soldiers some years before. The Plaza was shaped much as it is at present, having been reduced considerably, but five or six years earlier, by the Mexican authorities: they had planned to improve its shape, but had finished their labors by contracting the object before them. There was no sign of a park; on the contrary, parts of the Plaza itself, which had suffered the same fate as the Plaza in San Francisco, were used as a dumping-ground for refuse. From time to time many church and other festivals were held at this square--a custom no doubt traceable to the Old World and to earlier centuries; but before any such affair could take place--requiring the erecting of booths and banks of vegetation in front of the neighboring houses--all rubbish had to be removed, even at the cost of several days' work. Among the distinguished citizens of Los Angeles whose residences added to the social prestige of the neighborhood was Don Ygnácio Del Valle, father of R. F. Del Valle. Until 1861, he resided on the east side of the square, in a house between Calle de los Negros and Olvera Street, receiving there his intimate friends as well as those who wished to pay him their respects when he was _Alcalde_, Councilman and member of the State Legislature. In 1861, Del Valle moved to his ranch, Camulos. Ygnácio Coronel was another eminent burgher residing on the east side of the Plaza, while Cristóbal Aguilar's home faced the South.