When it comes to mixed-use in Los Angeles, it’s back to the future. Decades ago, when most people either walked or used street cars, buildings with mixed residential and retail uses were common it’s just that no one labeled them so.

“In the early decades of the 20th century, mixed-use was ubiquitous,” said Richard Longstreth, director of the graduate program in historic preservation at George Washington University in Washington D.C. and author of a book on the early commercial development of Los Angeles.

Mixed-use was not limited to combining residential and retail uses like today. Commercial uses were also combined, such as offices above theaters or above banks.

In the late 1800s and through about 1910, instead of multiple uses in the same building, the different uses would be tightly packed next to each other. Residents could open their doors and walk a few yards to the local grocer or baker.

“You look at a reverse (phone) directory from 1904 and you see a boarding house next to a restaurant, next to a saloon, next to a baker, and so forth,” said Greg Hise, associate professor with the School of Policy, Planning and Development at the University of Southern California.

“There was no such thing as segregating land uses in those days,” he said. “It was the same in Chicago, Brooklyn, Philadelphia and most major cities at the time. That’s because people had to walk from place to place.”

As Los Angeles grew and street cars came into more widespread use, increasing numbers of buildings sprung up that combined two or more uses. Most common were “walk-up apartments,” above stores or other retail establishments.

“In the 1920s, having a store on the ground floor with apartments above was extremely common in two- or three-story buildings along major commercial streets, many of those with street cars running down them,” Longstreth said. These buildings were the forerunner of the transit-oriented development that’s in vogue today. They also frequently housed the owners of the stores beneath them.

“Most store owners were recent immigrants trying to make it here in Los Angeles. They didn’t have a lot of money and having living quarters where they worked was a great way to economize,” said Robert Nudelman, director of preservation issues for Hollywood Heritage, a non-profit organization. “As soon as they made enough money, though, they bought single-family homes, which were signs of status. Then the apartments were rented to more recent immigrants.”

Most of this mixed-use development took place in what were then the fringes of urban settlement in L.A.: Hollywood, mid-Wilshire, Boyle Heights and the southern part of Downtown. Take, for example, the building that now houses the “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” Museum at the southeast corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue. Eighty years ago, it was a bank building with three floors of residential on top.

In other places, like mid-Wilshire, the 1920s proved the golden age for mixed-use living. Swanky apartment buildings such as the Gaylord Apartments had restaurants or stores on the bottom floor. The Gaylord and other apartment buildings along the Wilshire corridor became Art Deco landmarks.

One newer development in the late 1920s where mixed-use buildings could be found was Westwood, which was sprouting up around the site of the then-new University of California Los Angeles. Some of the first private dormitories for UCLA students were actually on top of retail stores, according to local historian and restaurant partner Steve Sann.

The downtown Los Angeles core itself also had mixed-use development. But residents weren’t in the mix they lived in enclaves like Bunker Hill and Angelino Heights. Instead, many buildings contained mixed commercial uses. Take the Million Dollar Theatre on South Broadway, which was designed by A.C. Martin architects in 1914.

“Our office did the Million Dollar Theatre for Sid Grauman,” said Chris Martin, the firm’s current chief executive. “The amazing thing about that building was that above the theater were several floors of doctors’ offices. Then, in 1928, the (recently-formed) Metropolitan Water District moved into the top floors.”

Other areas also saw mixing of commercial uses. For example, the upper floors of the Wilshire Theatre in Beverly Hills, built in the late 1920s, contained offices. But by then, forces were converging that would bring an end to mixed-use development in Los Angeles.

The onset of the Depression put a stop to larger scale buildings that were suitable for mixed-use. The 1933 Long Beach earthquake prompted building code changes that strongly discouraged mixed-use, especially separate entrances and exits.

But the main culprit was the rise of the car culture. Mixed-use developments simply weren’t convenient in the age of the automobile. Shop owners didn’t like residents’ cars parked outside their stores. And the auto made possible the development of the supermarket, where people could put several bags of groceries into their cars, bypassing the numerous small local stores.

“It was the car culture that ultimately killed mixed-use,” Longstreth said.