Calvary Cemetery is the resting place for Angelinos of various ethnicities, including countless Italians.
The Roman Catholic cemetery, now located in East Los Angeles, was originally found on Calle Eternidad or Eternity Street, a name given to the road because it led to the cemetery.
Eternity Street was later renamed Buena Vista, Spanish for “good view,” as it provided a lovely vista of the early gardens and orchards of Los Angeles. As Los Angeles became an “American city,” Buena Vista was renamed North Broadway.
The site of the original Calvary Cemetery, which was relocated to its current location in 1896, lies underneath St. Peter’s Italian Church and Cathedral Chapel High School. In recognition of this history, the school named its football team the Phantoms.
The cemetery is the final resting place for countless Los Angeles pioneer families, including Pico, Boyle, Chapman, Dominguez, Bandini, Downey and Dockweiler, as well as many early Italo Angelinos, such as the Pelanconi and Tononi families.
This is one of the thousands of rare and one-of-a-kind photographs in the Italian American Museum’s collection, the only of its kind in the region.
To learn more about our collection, donate photos or other artifacts, or support the collection’s preservation, visit www.italianhall.org or call 213.485.8432.
The mission of the Italian American Museum of Los Angeles is to foster understanding of Southern California’s diverse heritage through research, historic preservation, exhibitions and educational programs that examine the history and continuing contributions of Italian Americans in multi-ethnic Los Angeles and the United States.
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