Got money? Get Rocket Money: RocketMoney.com/anyaustin I just want you all to know that with the knowledge I acquired over the course of researching and writing this video, I’ve been able to accurately date lots and lots of buildings here in New Orleans, and it’s made be out and about in the world so much richer and more fulfilling. So it’s not total crank bullshit this time around. I also learned some additional fun information: 1. The oldest building in real Los Angeles is right near the area we looked at with the two Mexican restaurants, and it’s a dusty old house that was built in 1818 called the Avila Adobo. 2. If you trace the real history of Los Angeles and compare it to the implied history of Los Santos as told by the architecture, it shows a very similar development flow. 3. Apparently, earthquakes were canon in Los Santos in GTA: San Andreas, but GTA5 doesn’t make explicit mention of them. 4. I can’t actually tell you the fourth thing I learned because it’ll give away a really good idea for a video that one of you will steal from me because I’m too popular now to be given empathy.
I'm curious if you could share some of the sources you used in researching this video! I'm currently working on a creative project that has led me to pay closer attention to architecture than I normally do, and I've been looking for some good, central resources that cover architectural styles over the 20th century and maybe a little bit before. And I relate to what you mean about it making going out more fulfilling, it's been fun recognizing some of the stuff I've read about so far even in my own neighborhood!
You can be sure that Austin will be mapping out Leonida's electrical network and rivers and hunting for the oldest building right after the game comes out.
Yes, this video is really interesting and well made but it is quite funny that the absolute oldest thing he could find in a big city after 20 minutes of careful analysis is only about 200 years old. I walk past an 800 year old church on my way to work every day and don't really think much of it- easy to take history for granted when it's everywhere.
Looks like the oldest surviving building we have over here on the east coast/in new england is from the mid 1600s. The oldest in the entirety of the US are, ofc from pre-colonization, adobe structures in New Mexico. This has me wanting to learn about buildings in my city now, history is neat :)
I would have expected at least one Spanish mission church from before Alta California was annexed to still be standing in real LA, but I guess LS mirrors everything else fairly on point, so why not what's actually there now, too.
I feel like this channel is at its core a celebration of all the effort that goes unappreciated in games. The above and beyond work that nobody notices while engaging in the core gameplay and story. The importance of the unimportant.
Los Santos is pretty much based on LA. These details are coming from the reality. That church is 1-1 replica of Piru United Methodist Church. So I'm sure most artists who worked on these models, scenes didn't know the history or did not care any "lore" or "consistency" intentions. This is different than real intentional detail like NPC physically cutting the steak in RDR2. But still pretty cool to see tho.
Nah, it's an allegory for life, finding meaning in the meaningless. Nobody who made the game thought about how old the buildings were, but we can still pretend
Heritage Consultant here. So this is what it feels like when Austin makes a video on your niche. This video is basically what I would do on a daily basis, use the buildings fabric, materials, maps, photographs and historical research to date old buildings. You nailed it mate, well done!
It's nice to hear Austin being praised by subject experts. Too often I don't actually know enough to fact check videos like this and just have to hope it's legit.
Heritage is cool and all but the heritage restrictions for my university building are a pain. It has incredibly ugly linoleum flooring that can't be removed despite there being beautiful hardwood underneath. We had a fire that caused a lot of damage especially to the roof, and the materials required to properly restore it include some obscure tiles that only one company in Italy makes and they're insanely expensive. As a result that roof section has just been covered in tarp for several years while the department tries to raise funds. I like the idea of preserving heritage but the rigidity of it is very frustrating.
Believe it or not, but the oldest buildings in game are in grapeseed, those would be the train depot it's NE outside of town written above the door is 1878. The second one is the bank in the midst of town if you're coming up north on Main Street is the building on the left side you'll know it by the old metal safety deposit box behind the bank the door reads fleece depository 1889
i was thinking while watching the video that the oldest buildings would have to be something that is a necessity for starting a town and building around it, like a town hall, bank, mine, port, or train station. towns dont just start from nothing, there needs to be a reason for people to gather in that spot and the first things they build are always going to be the most important necessities for staying there before they start building luxury houses, factories and restaurants and stuff
I would argue that this video actually has the older building because the last two buildings he looked at in the actual city are actually real and the one he crowned the oldest is actually the oldest in LA in real life
I went and looked because of this comment. I didn't find the other ones because I forgot what you said, lol. But the bank says 'Est. 1899' on a metal plaque in the front and painted on the back.
@_jorueThe oldest building in LA is an adobe house from 1818, it's not represented in game. Overwhelmingly the oldest non-indigenous buildings in California tend to be housing, barracks, or Spanish missions. Spanish colonial architectural features should've been what Austin hunted for rather than turn of the century American ones.
Architectural designer here with a tiny correction. Those wall anchor plates you mentioned are all over the country, even in non earthquake-prone areas! They are specifically for securing the brick cladding/veneer back to the main structure of the building. Without them, the brick facade can bulge out and eventually fail. Love your videos man, keep it up
Yeah actually worked on renovating a building with wall anchors here in Iowa. I think the building dates back to the 1840’s or 1860’s(can’t remember which) as one of the original radiators had a manufacturer date on it. Those anchors are literal metal poles that run through the whole building and hook together in the center to prevent taller brick buildings (3 stories in this case) from peeling like a banana. And we don’t really get earthquakes in Iowa
Now I'm envisioning a small group of 1800s people gathered on a patch of dirt deciding whether or not they should build a church or a mexican restaurant lmao.
Easy fix: everyone in favour of a church moves up north, everyone who wants the restaurant moves down south. The origin story of Los Santos & Paleto Bay 😂
@FemtoKitten By the 1890s the southwestern Unites States was owned by the United States (due to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo), and California as a state was formed in 1850. So the restaurant would be classified as a Mexican Restaurant due to the land being settled by Americans by the time of the 1890s.
You missed out on the El Gordo Lighthouse and the house next to it. According to the GTA wiki, the house itself bears a strong resemblance to the Point Fermin Lighthouse found in San Pedro, Los Angeles, which was constructed in 1874.
There's a mission building in LA that dates to the end of the 1700s but I don't know if they recreated it in GTA V. I believe it's over by the tar pits. I have no desire to boot up the game and go looking for it though.
@MannyBrum I've played a lot of the game and don't recall any mission churches. Plus, the Tar Pits aren't a thing in GTAV. I think the area they're in isn't really present on the scaled down map of GTA.
You probably right on the mexican restaurant. What i think is that they made a rendition of Olvera street, which is the oldest street in LA, dating back to 1820.
Fun fact: after the devastating 1933 Long Beach earthquake, California passed the Field Act. This state law banned construction of unreinforced masonry buildings. As a result, it's very rare to see any brick buildings in Los Angeles. If you do spot a brick building, it was most likely built before 1933
Like the Corridor Crew's building, they found out it was built in the '20s when they were researching an earthquake simulation video! It's also riddled with anchor plates and bracing from the '80s, when the landlord had to get it earthquake-proofed in the Division 88 building code retrofits.
Nah, you gotta find out which building is loaded into memory first when you start the game. Which is probably the bank in North Yankton now that I think about it.
@16:20 another indicator that this building has no internal framework are the protruding, column-like, wall pieces seen left and right of the window. Those are called butresses and are literally meant to hold the walls up and give additional stability to tall stone walls.
Omg please do Liberty City. NYC has buildings dating back before the Revolution and at least one of those is modeled in GTA4, but I won’t tell you which one 😉
@malibumike5966 no. Roman’s apartment was on Mohawk Ave, which is based on real life Brighton Beach Ave in NYC. BB Ave was created after the Civil War in 1868. But we do go the building I’m talking about with Roman during a mission
The church you looked at at 15:52 appears to be a GTA V recreation of the real La Plaza church, which was built in the 1820s and is one of the oldest continually used buildings in LA today. The area around it irl is a historic monument on the U.S. National Registry of Historic Places.
I checked and the first building that appears after typing "Plaza church" is catholic La Iglesia de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles from 1814. But the church in the game is based on The Plaza Methodist Church which was completed in 1926.
Yep, I would hazard the guess that what was probably the Spanish mission in Los Santos is the first settlement in the state of San Andreas. Paleto Bay is probably the oldest remnant of the area being joined into the US, but the old Los Santos probably predates that. Of course, there is also a native totem pole in a location I can't recall now (somewhhere in the hills south-west ish side?) but I think that is also supposed to maybe be a more modern reproduction for tourists.
@tharoog GTA San Andreas uses the older of the two churches as the inspiration for the "Little Mexico Church", so the oldest building in GTA: SA Los Santos is probably significantly older than the oldest building in GTA: V
13:45 - That cathedral might've been a "fake", but its real-world equivalent was built in 1878, which would _still_ make it the oldest building in Liberty City.
the little mexican area you found with the church and the restaurant is actually olivera street. an original part of los angeles dating back to 1781. the oldest building on the street dates back to 1818 and the church was completed in 1822
Not an American, but the church tower has quite visible baroque decoration. I could be wrong, but I believe Spanish revival did not really utilize traditional baroque motiffs that much, because, you know, catholicism isnt really popular much there. Yes, the windows are obviously not nearly as old, but parts of the church would have surely been reconstructed during that time. The tower stands out as old though.
@donutreactions yeah but if you watched Any Austin, and seen comments like under the RDR2 Powerlines comment section, they get experts to come in for things like rivers. It's not a stretch to say GTA 5 had the same formular as the buildings are coherent.
@tomasstanek2982 catholicism is popular in Italian, Irish, and Hispanic areas. The LA area had a lot of Hispanic populations due to the Mexican occupation of the West until the 1860s.
hearing "really old" on buildings that are like 130 years old is really funny as a european when theres literally a castle from 1212 in the next town xD
Californians are weird like that IRL, one of my friends from out there was wowed by a building in the next town over from his hometown that was about 110/120 something years old, meanwhile in my corner of New England there are 300 year old houses people still live in.
@tominieminen66 It wouldn't be unusual in a rockstar game for every building to be procedural in one way or another, so it actually could be literal, even if its just what decals are on the building.
2:50 From what I can gather, the Beyond Meat HQ location actually has a long and interesting history going back to the 1930s. The building itself was built in 2021 but the location was originally home a bus manufacturing plant for Pickwick Stage Lines, which is one of the early companies that merged together to create the modern Greyhound bus company. The Douglas Aircraft Co. picked it up during the Great Depression after Pickwick couldn't pay back loans, and it was used as part of their aircraft manufacturing plant throughout WW2. They produced A-20 Havocs for lend lease programs until Pearl Harbor, where they switched over to building the SBD Dauntless. Post WW2, that plant produced many notable planes like the D-558-2 Skyrocket (first plane to reach Mach 2), and several planes used in the Vietnam War such as the A-1 Skyraider and A-4 Skyhawk. In 1962, the Air Force acquired the Douglas plant from the Navy and turned that area into the modern day Los Angeles AFB. Around 2004 they traded some land with a real estate developer in exchange for some new buildings, and that lot directly north of the Los Angeles AFB is where the Beyond Meat and L'oréal HQ buildings are currently located :)
To answer the final question, the oldest building is the one in Los Santos, not the church. The Paleto Bay church is a slightly altered version of the Piru United Methodist Church in Piru, CA, which was constructed between 1887 and 1890. Meanwhile, the oldest Los Santos building from the game's version of Los Angeles Plaza/Olvera Street is based on the Pelanconi House, which was built from 1855 to 1857. Thank you to the great minds of the GTA mapping community at gtadb for the info! Awesome video, Austin, I love the comparison of architectural styles and details! Very informative!
It’s not pelancoli house. It’s sepulveda house. They iust took the decorations from in front of pelancoli house. They both are on Olvera street so there’s that 😂
i assumed a lot of the old buildings would be based on something, sad that Austin didn't try to find out what they were inspired from, it could have given a better answer, but i also understand that it would make the video research way longer
@fregaeffenot really. lol. Honestly I do have a bit of an edge because I’m from LA but……. It’s kind of hard to not know that the oldest buildings in the general LA area would be in the historic plaza. I mean that’s what that neighborhood is known for. (The birthplace of Los Angeles) those three buildings in the retake of the plaza in real life are all in the game. Also. They are three of the 4 oldest buildings in the area. If he’d even bothered to just google even that he would have found out all the oldest buildings are downtown, and that would have given him a clue that none of the other areas in gta would have anything that could even come close 😅. So I don’t know how much weight you extra research comment would have carried.
5:20 Stucco is not a building material itself, it is a coating applied often to brick walls to protect the brick from weathering and for aesthetic purposes. It is also often applied to older buildings to make them look more appealing to modern buyers and homeowners.
At the end you imply the church wasn't constructed until the exact year the town was founded, but there's no real logical reason to limit the timeline like that. That church could have easily been built three decades **before** the town was founded, for example. In order for there to **be** a town, there had to be a multiple of people (and the need to gather) well before a legal founding year.
I think you're onto something. I am currently a member of a church in the Western US that is built in the exact same Carpenter Gothic style. It was built 125 years ago, before the town it exists in was chartered.
Genuinely asking, why would a church be set up before a town? Is it for the express intention of creating one and if so, how did we end up with separation of church and state if the churches predated the governing bodies that built around them? Obviously it’s a thing that happened, I’m just curious if you or anyone can explain that phenomenon to me!
@BradsGonnaPlayit was exceedingly common to have a church in a community before it was even granted township. The vast majority of settlers that settled the Midwest and the West were Christian, and setting up a house of worship was one of the very first things they did.
@BM-si2ei thank you. I get that, but why and more importantly how? How does a church form without a community first? Why would people build one church before multiple houses?
11:27 my neighbor house has these, but we live in the middle of a tectonic plate and these just prevented shitty bricks from falling apart after renovation. Sometimes these used just to pull a building back to square
2:19 as a window cleaner, Windows are one of those things. You dont need to "ignore" them but critizizing them can help see the "core" of that building. Ive cleaned homes built in the 1930s that have 60s metal 'storm glass' (still single pane) glass and SUUUPER new builds with recycled glass from the 50s, that one was so friggin cool man, that house had recycled brickwork too and still holds up veery well
@heromedleyONE letter wrong. There are people that write like toddlers but let's be pedantic about someone who is perfectly capable of writing in English
13:33 That building is older than 1920s. It looks to be American Beaux Arts which is 1885-1910s. A similar and much larger tower called the Singer Tower in NYC was done in that style in 1908. And that neighboring building just cut off I’d say is also late 1800s to very early 1900s.
It's probably the church since a lot of towns in the west were populated long before they got to be officially considered towns and I'd suspect the church/school house would be one of the first buildings constructed alongside the general store and the saloon
Yeah, that would be my guess as well, for the reasons you suggested. Then again, it may have been some sort of company town before a church came and was built once workers moved out.
Also, a church just seems more likely to stick around for that long than, say, a factory or a storefront, because the services it provides will continue to be relevant for the community regardless of economic change. And if it was one of the first buildings in the entire town, it gains even more value as a place of historical significance. I'm guessing whatever general store the early town had was probably out-competed by other businesses long ago, and the saloon might have faced the same fate, or just been closed during Prohibition like many other saloons of the time
You’re assuming they knew the city would be a big hit so they spent a TON of time, resources and money to build it. Realistically the original church would have been small and shitty until they built a proper stone cathedral. It wouldn’t make sense to start with a stone cathedral before you have a large population
Learned something from this video! My old high school had a hallway with sawtooth walls. I found it so odd. It makes sense now cause there was very few windows in that hallway and it still managed to look bright! So neat.
Can't remember my own mother's face, but I'll remember the teeth looking things on the top of a building in a fictional game based 15000 miles from me, and anything up to 130 years ago.
A small anecdote that the discussion of the exposed beams in the mission-style church reminded me of: i used to work for a historical society in a small city in california, particularly in an adobe home that belonged to the first European settlers of the city. The home had been originally built in the 1850s and was abandoned by the 1890s; in the 1930s, the ruins were rediscovered and rebuilt for use as a museum, but the rebuilding of it was funded almost entirely by a descendent of the family who was a movie star in Mexico. He didn't hire historians or architects but, rather, movie set designers who he knew and trusted. They rebuilt the adobe with a very 1930s sense of Spanish revival romanticism, which led to things like the exposed beams on the ceiling and a red tile roof. In reality, the family that lived there used to purchase excess sail cloth from the docks of Los Angeles to stretch across the ceiling instead of leaving it exposed. My point, though-- it was almost impossible to guess the true age of the place due to its reconstruction. Kind of turns into a ship of theseus dilemma, but I thought it was interesting.
The town was established in 1898 but that doesn't mean it didn't exist in and unofficial capacity or that a church built there was built in 1898. Often churches would be built in a somewhat central location between a handful of spread out mines and ranches and homes before a town center was built. It is very possible that the church could have been built a decade or even earlier before the town was established
So stucco is just plaster. It's more of a finishing material, rather than something "being built out of". The stucco buildings are likely brick with the plaster over it, or wood frame buildings with plaster and lath facings for the walls.
Just to add to the algo, given that the design of the restaurants is meant to invoke Olivera St in Los Angeles and the one with the dentils seems to be based on the Pelanconi Building which was built sometime between 1855-57 I think it's probably older, but this was a very fun exercise and I learned a bit about 1900s-1910s architecture!
This inspired me to look up the oldest building in my city - it isn't so obvious because it was basically leveled during World War 2. It turns out we miraculously still have a little gothic church from the 1400s! I will give it a visit for sure
europeans are so cool because. what do you mean there’s a 600 YEAR OLD BUILDING NEAR YOU?!?! the oldest thing in chicago proper is from 1854. twenty years later was the great chicago fire so most of it is gone
@wintergray3523that's true! I mostly see that when visiting other cities though, because as I said Warsaw was almost annihilated, most of the "old" stuff we have was rebuilt in the last 70 years. We have a ton of exceptionally ugly stuff too (google "Ursynów" for a display of commie blocks and Temple of Divine Providence for just a marvel of architecture if you're curious). We have older buildings all over the country though!
4:27 another reason to think the bricks are not load bearing is that it uses stretcher bond, where all bricks are long equally, which is traditionally not a load bearing bond (except rare instances with square bricks) because there are no headers (shorter bricks i.e. turned inwards) to connect another layer of brick.
A few more Candidates I can think of: The exact same church model in another town, the mineshafts, the lighthouse, some of the bridges, the ports themselves.
@1:02 One thing to note is that the reason neighborhoods that had freeways built through them are past their prime is because they had freeways built through them. All across the US, highways were built through prosperous communities of color (often black neighborhoods).
yuuup. and some overpasses were purposefully built low so busses from predominantly black neighborhoods wouldn't be able to easily cross that way. iirc it was in NYC and it was intended to cut off access to beaches? been a second.
@polerin segregation by design. If you look at red line districts in pretty much every US major city, you will see that these are where highways cut through
15:31 this corner store is a reference to Dom Torettos store in fast and furious 1. It’s the same building that can be found irl that was used in the movie
The church was probably there even before the town was founded. Often you'd have like a church and store and a saloon servicing farmers and ranchers that lived all over the area and suddenly everybody would look around and be like "well shoot, it appears we went a built a town, I guess somebody should do the paper work and make it official"
So funnily enough, you were quite close with hitting the oldest building. The plaza where the church and those Mexican restaurants are is proooooobably the oldest place in game. It is modeled after Plaza de Los Angeles, which was constructed in the late 1700s
Italian architect here: that church at 0:33 is a romanic renaissance style. I'd say from northern Italy, since the facade is very similar to the church of Pisa.
@999goat yeah, was coming here to say this, even more technically it would be Romanesque revival which was around the same period as gothic revival from the mid 19th century to the early 20th century if I’m not mistaken and probably shares some similarities to gothic revival due to that and that there’s probably other ideas incorporated from elsewhere that wouldn’t appear in either original architectural styles due to differences in design philosophies and greater spread of ideas, it’s very cool, I love church architecture
The Bradbury building in DTLA was built in 1893. It's on Strawberry Ave in GTAV, downtown. Only know it exists cause it was a filming location in Blade Runner (and a bunch of other movies).
Something to consider about the church in it's favor for oldest. Small towns often had churches long before they were incorporated. I'm not sure if that's the same thing as a city founding, but I found it interesting to think about.
Yeah I was gonna say that in those days the church and the bar where the two things the pioneers built and usually they are the oldest buildings out west
A bit late to the battle but I feel like the O'Neil family ranch all the way up in Grapeseed could be the map's oldest building. This or the house next to Mount Gordo's lighthouse, as it shares a similar style.
8:22 probably reminds you of Disneyland since it was built in 1954 so it still has some design elements. Unless you meant California adventure since the first land you see upon walking through its gate is supposed to be 1930s Los Angeles
8:50 - The power plant building - the bricked up openings in that building were stables and wagon storage. You can tell by the style and dimensions of them, and the fact they were bricked up once wagons were no longer used
There are churches all across Canada and the US that date back to mid 1600s. The gothic style churches however are all from roughly the 1830s or newer. That church in particular obviously based off the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles which only finished construction in 1932
The art gallery where I work at actually uses those saw-tooth roofs for their Artist in Residence studios. They still have electrical lighting, but it creates a really nice and bright environment. The only downside is that they can't open any windows.
I never noticed just how detailed the building architecture is in this game until now. R* going as far as to model handcut bricks, load-bearing window arches and even wall anchors is super interesting. Also, fun fact: The church in Paleto Bay also has a reused model with green roofing in the main city of Los Santos in the cemetery north-northeast of the Vespucci Beach area. It even has the same label over the front door but it's written backwards on account of the model being mirrored.
Rockstar would have taken lots of photographs of real buildings in LA to use as reference (there's plenty of pictures of LA I look at and say "I recognize that from GTA5" which was their intention) and likely used many to directly create textures from. So it's likely less that they intentionally modelled hand cut bricks and more so they found a building they wanted in the game, took a ton of pictures of it, and reconstructed it as accurately as possible using those references. Still very cool attention to detail.
uh oh. Assuming Los Santos is in California, or at least following California building code, buildings cannot be fully supported by brick walls. Unreinforced masonry is required to be installed on all buildings. Some of these buildings only LOOK like they have no bracing, but in reality they are also not brick buildings and just a video game virtual reality.
That Mexican square you found in the corner of Vinewood looks like it is probably modeled after Olvera Street, the historic square of original Los Angeles with architecture that dates back to at least the 1820's, potentially earlier. Definitely the oldest architecture in the game! LA itself was established in 1781
Got money? Get Rocket Money: RocketMoney.com/anyaustin
I just want you all to know that with the knowledge I acquired over the course of researching and writing this video, I’ve been able to accurately date lots and lots of buildings here in New Orleans, and it’s made be out and about in the world so much richer and more fulfilling. So it’s not total crank bullshit this time around. I also learned some additional fun information:
1. The oldest building in real Los Angeles is right near the area we looked at with the two Mexican restaurants, and it’s a dusty old house that was built in 1818 called the Avila Adobo.
2. If you trace the real history of Los Angeles and compare it to the implied history of Los Santos as told by the architecture, it shows a very similar development flow.
3. Apparently, earthquakes were canon in Los Santos in GTA: San Andreas, but GTA5 doesn’t make explicit mention of them.
4. I can’t actually tell you the fourth thing I learned because it’ll give away a really good idea for a video that one of you will steal from me because I’m too popular now to be given empathy.
Money is a social construct
id like to say the soviet T34-85 tank in the scrapyard is a bigger indicator of ww2 happening then the 40s style houses
@ANDGE1944 no one asked you tho
🙏please bro release the new songs
I'm curious if you could share some of the sources you used in researching this video! I'm currently working on a creative project that has led me to pay closer attention to architecture than I normally do, and I've been looking for some good, central resources that cover architectural styles over the 20th century and maybe a little bit before. And I relate to what you mean about it making going out more fulfilling, it's been fun recognizing some of the stuff I've read about so far even in my own neighborhood!
"now, I don't know if you remember high school physics"
buddy, I don't even remember the beginning of this video. why are you in my home
🤣
😂
funny
funny
This is what 13 years without a GTA game does to people.
[insert laugh comment]
You can be sure that Austin will be mapping out Leonida's electrical network and rivers and hunting for the oldest building right after the game comes out.
Can't wait for "What's The Oldest Building In GTA 6?" a couple years from now.
This channel is about austin and his viewers being touched by the 'tism.
I wonder where we'll all be in life in the future when there are retrospective GTA 6 video essays on RUclips
Not gonna lie I was constantly just waiting him to find like a church from 1500s or something and then I realized just how different US is to Europe.
Yes, this video is really interesting and well made but it is quite funny that the absolute oldest thing he could find in a big city after 20 minutes of careful analysis is only about 200 years old. I walk past an 800 year old church on my way to work every day and don't really think much of it- easy to take history for granted when it's everywhere.
That wouldn’t be totally impossible since the Spanish were exploring what is the Western US as early as the 1540s
Looks like the oldest surviving building we have over here on the east coast/in new england is from the mid 1600s. The oldest in the entirety of the US are, ofc from pre-colonization, adobe structures in New Mexico.
This has me wanting to learn about buildings in my city now, history is neat :)
I would have expected at least one Spanish mission church from before Alta California was annexed to still be standing in real LA, but I guess LS mirrors everything else fairly on point, so why not what's actually there now, too.
@salemfae There are some old buildings in St. Augustine, and that is one of the oldest cities in the US that's still around.
I feel like this channel is at its core a celebration of all the effort that goes unappreciated in games. The above and beyond work that nobody notices while engaging in the core gameplay and story. The importance of the unimportant.
Video about the oldest building in Los Angeles? I sleep.
Video about the oldest building in Los Santos? By Any Austin?? R E A L S H I T
Los Santos is pretty much based on LA. These details are coming from the reality. That church is 1-1 replica of Piru United Methodist Church. So I'm sure most artists who worked on these models, scenes didn't know the history or did not care any "lore" or "consistency" intentions. This is different than real intentional detail like NPC physically cutting the steak in RDR2.
But still pretty cool to see tho.
@TPM4594 Bro you just used a meme that has been dead and buried since the Obama administration lmao
Nah, it's an allegory for life, finding meaning in the meaningless. Nobody who made the game thought about how old the buildings were, but we can still pretend
@Jadevit-x Your point being...?
Heritage Consultant here. So this is what it feels like when Austin makes a video on your niche. This video is basically what I would do on a daily basis, use the buildings fabric, materials, maps, photographs and historical research to date old buildings. You nailed it mate, well done!
high key sounds like an awesome job
yeah now you know how I felt when he made the airport videos🤣
It's nice to hear Austin being praised by subject experts. Too often I don't actually know enough to fact check videos like this and just have to hope it's legit.
Heritage is cool and all but the heritage restrictions for my university building are a pain. It has incredibly ugly linoleum flooring that can't be removed despite there being beautiful hardwood underneath. We had a fire that caused a lot of damage especially to the roof, and the materials required to properly restore it include some obscure tiles that only one company in Italy makes and they're insanely expensive. As a result that roof section has just been covered in tarp for several years while the department tries to raise funds. I like the idea of preserving heritage but the rigidity of it is very frustrating.
I can't wait until he does a video about gene therapy so I'm represented as well. Maybe in Bioshock next?
Believe it or not, but the oldest buildings in game are in grapeseed, those would be the train depot it's NE outside of town written above the door is 1878. The second one is the bank in the midst of town if you're coming up north on Main Street is the building on the left side you'll know it by the old metal safety deposit box behind the bank the door reads fleece depository 1889
Ohhhh interesting. I'm gonna have to go look for those now
i was thinking while watching the video that the oldest buildings would have to be something that is a necessity for starting a town and building around it, like a town hall, bank, mine, port, or train station. towns dont just start from nothing, there needs to be a reason for people to gather in that spot and the first things they build are always going to be the most important necessities for staying there before they start building luxury houses, factories and restaurants and stuff
I would argue that this video actually has the older building because the last two buildings he looked at in the actual city are actually real and the one he crowned the oldest is actually the oldest in LA in real life
I went and looked because of this comment. I didn't find the other ones because I forgot what you said, lol. But the bank says 'Est. 1899' on a metal plaque in the front and painted on the back.
@_jorueThe oldest building in LA is an adobe house from 1818, it's not represented in game. Overwhelmingly the oldest non-indigenous buildings in California tend to be housing, barracks, or Spanish missions. Spanish colonial architectural features should've been what Austin hunted for rather than turn of the century American ones.
Architectural designer here with a tiny correction. Those wall anchor plates you mentioned are all over the country, even in non earthquake-prone areas! They are specifically for securing the brick cladding/veneer back to the main structure of the building. Without them, the brick facade can bulge out and eventually fail. Love your videos man, keep it up
yeah, lots of wall anchors here in the Netherlands, far from any earthquake region.
AH, it's one of the comments telling him how wrong he is! (No hate, just funny how fast I found one)
Yeah actually worked on renovating a building with wall anchors here in Iowa. I think the building dates back to the 1840’s or 1860’s(can’t remember which) as one of the original radiators had a manufacturer date on it. Those anchors are literal metal poles that run through the whole building and hook together in the center to prevent taller brick buildings (3 stories in this case) from peeling like a banana. And we don’t really get earthquakes in Iowa
I literally filmed the B-roll here in New Orleans idk why I misled you guys so hard
Yup. I live in upstate NY and all old brick buildings have those wall anchor studs on the outside of the building.
next video; how many GTA residents are fork lift certified? (I'm still watching it all)
I need to know fr
Sounds like we need a direct survey
Please Austin don't disappoint
Thats actually a great idea
I would watch the hell out of it
Art Deco is indeed the coolest architectural style.
Now I'm envisioning a small group of 1800s people gathered on a patch of dirt deciding whether or not they should build a church or a mexican restaurant lmao.
Well, in a californian based location it was in mexico at the time, so it was just a restaurant
You're not gonna believe who the people in present day LA in 1800 were lol
Easy fix: everyone in favour of a church moves up north, everyone who wants the restaurant moves down south.
The origin story of Los Santos & Paleto Bay 😂
@FemtoKitten By the 1890s the southwestern Unites States was owned by the United States (due to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo), and California as a state was formed in 1850. So the restaurant would be classified as a Mexican Restaurant due to the land being settled by Americans by the time of the 1890s.
Mexican Restaurant Church
You missed out on the El Gordo Lighthouse and the house next to it. According to the GTA wiki, the house itself bears a strong resemblance to the Point Fermin Lighthouse found in San Pedro, Los Angeles, which was constructed in 1874.
This was the comment I was looking for. Was sure it was gonna be the surprise at the end.
i was really expecting a few mentions of the buildings with direct real life counter parts, as we would know the exact date of those
There's a mission building in LA that dates to the end of the 1700s but I don't know if they recreated it in GTA V. I believe it's over by the tar pits. I have no desire to boot up the game and go looking for it though.
@MannyBrum I've played a lot of the game and don't recall any mission churches. Plus, the Tar Pits aren't a thing in GTAV. I think the area they're in isn't really present on the scaled down map of GTA.
@MannyBrum none of the missions take place at a church, unless you mean GTA online, or GTA IV
You probably right on the mexican restaurant. What i think is that they made a rendition of Olvera street, which is the oldest street in LA, dating back to 1820.
That’s crazy, if true. I would have expected the oldest street in LA to be a lot closer to the ocean, or at least far more south
Fun fact: after the devastating 1933 Long Beach earthquake, California passed the Field Act. This state law banned construction of unreinforced masonry buildings. As a result, it's very rare to see any brick buildings in Los Angeles. If you do spot a brick building, it was most likely built before 1933
That’s actually quite interesting
Thank you
Like the Corridor Crew's building, they found out it was built in the '20s when they were researching an earthquake simulation video! It's also riddled with anchor plates and bracing from the '80s, when the landlord had to get it earthquake-proofed in the Division 88 building code retrofits.
@TaurususThis is exactly how I know that anchors could be added after the building is completed, because of modernization resources and laws.
The brick building I used to live in in Echo Park was built in 1929! I knew I was living somewhere special.
I love rooting around the comments box for wayward bits of knowledge like this. Thank ya kindly!
Austin, you have to email rockstar and ask them what building they coded in first, that’s the technical answer we’re looking for.
Nah, you gotta find out which building is loaded into memory first when you start the game.
Which is probably the bank in North Yankton now that I think about it.
Rockstar probably has Austin on a list somewhere 😂
Austin was so focused on discovering Arceus that he missed Rhydon.
That was my immediate first comparison reading your comment.
Yeah and tell them to stop union busting while you're at it!
It would be the north Yankton bank In that case. The prolouge was made a few months before the rest of the game
@16:20 another indicator that this building has no internal framework are the protruding, column-like, wall pieces seen left and right of the window. Those are called butresses and are literally meant to hold the walls up and give additional stability to tall stone walls.
Omg please do Liberty City. NYC has buildings dating back before the Revolution and at least one of those is modeled in GTA4, but I won’t tell you which one 😉
it's the building of roman's apartment in broker
Yes please!
This is a great idea 😂
@malibumike5966 no. Roman’s apartment was on Mohawk Ave, which is based on real life Brighton Beach Ave in NYC. BB Ave was created after the Civil War in 1868. But we do go the building I’m talking about with Roman during a mission
@Lawrence_Talbot You know who else was created after the civil war in 1868
The church you looked at at 15:52 appears to be a GTA V recreation of the real La Plaza church, which was built in the 1820s and is one of the oldest continually used buildings in LA today. The area around it irl is a historic monument on the U.S. National Registry of Historic Places.
Olvera street
I checked and the first building that appears after typing "Plaza church" is catholic La Iglesia de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles from 1814. But the church in the game is based on The Plaza Methodist Church which was completed in 1926.
Yep, I would hazard the guess that what was probably the Spanish mission in Los Santos is the first settlement in the state of San Andreas. Paleto Bay is probably the oldest remnant of the area being joined into the US, but the old Los Santos probably predates that.
Of course, there is also a native totem pole in a location I can't recall now (somewhhere in the hills south-west ish side?) but I think that is also supposed to maybe be a more modern reproduction for tourists.
@tharoog GTA San Andreas uses the older of the two churches as the inspiration for the "Little Mexico Church", so the oldest building in GTA: SA Los Santos is probably significantly older than the oldest building in GTA: V
@umusuuk You're talking about the one with the Owl on it?
13:45 - That cathedral might've been a "fake", but its real-world equivalent was built in 1878, which would _still_ make it the oldest building in Liberty City.
the little mexican area you found with the church and the restaurant is actually olivera street. an original part of los angeles dating back to 1781. the oldest building on the street dates back to 1818 and the church was completed in 1822
Not an American, but the church tower has quite visible baroque decoration. I could be wrong, but I believe Spanish revival did not really utilize traditional baroque motiffs that much, because, you know, catholicism isnt really popular much there. Yes, the windows are obviously not nearly as old, but parts of the church would have surely been reconstructed during that time. The tower stands out as old though.
That's real life, not the game.
@donutreactions yeah but if you watched Any Austin, and seen comments like under the RDR2 Powerlines comment section, they get experts to come in for things like rivers. It's not a stretch to say GTA 5 had the same formular as the buildings are coherent.
@tomasstanek2982 catholicism is popular in Italian, Irish, and Hispanic areas. The LA area had a lot of Hispanic populations due to the Mexican occupation of the West until the 1860s.
@TheOGSB817 Sure, but Spanish colonial revival wasnt really a thing until early 1900s
hearing "really old" on buildings that are like 130 years old is really funny as a european when theres literally a castle from 1212 in the next town xD
yeah america is a relatively new country
In America, 100 years is a long time. In Europe, 100 miles is a long way.
Same lol. Always found it funny. There's a church from like the 12th century just down the road from where I live lol
@mdogg094it's in vogue to shit on anything and everything
Californians are weird like that IRL, one of my friends from out there was wowed by a building in the next town over from his hometown that was about 110/120 something years old, meanwhile in my corner of New England there are 300 year old houses people still live in.
I'll be honest, i love the idea of saw tooth roofs. natural light even in a big floorspace is a great thing.
what surprised me is how no two buildings are the same, literally every building in the game is unique
some even so unique that they have no door or window!
Literally? Woah buddy, pump the brakes 🤓
Some buildings are based on the same model but have a different color or minor changes
@tominieminen66 It wouldn't be unusual in a rockstar game for every building to be procedural in one way or another, so it actually could be literal, even if its just what decals are on the building.
Los santos has earthquakes gasp
I would love for any_austin to release more music. But if not that's ok too 20:40
2:50 From what I can gather, the Beyond Meat HQ location actually has a long and interesting history going back to the 1930s. The building itself was built in 2021 but the location was originally home a bus manufacturing plant for Pickwick Stage Lines, which is one of the early companies that merged together to create the modern Greyhound bus company.
The Douglas Aircraft Co. picked it up during the Great Depression after Pickwick couldn't pay back loans, and it was used as part of their aircraft manufacturing plant throughout WW2. They produced A-20 Havocs for lend lease programs until Pearl Harbor, where they switched over to building the SBD Dauntless.
Post WW2, that plant produced many notable planes like the D-558-2 Skyrocket (first plane to reach Mach 2), and several planes used in the Vietnam War such as the A-1 Skyraider and A-4 Skyhawk.
In 1962, the Air Force acquired the Douglas plant from the Navy and turned that area into the modern day Los Angeles AFB. Around 2004 they traded some land with a real estate developer in exchange for some new buildings, and that lot directly north of the Los Angeles AFB is where the Beyond Meat and L'oréal HQ buildings are currently located :)
To answer the final question, the oldest building is the one in Los Santos, not the church. The Paleto Bay church is a slightly altered version of the Piru United Methodist Church in Piru, CA, which was constructed between 1887 and 1890. Meanwhile, the oldest Los Santos building from the game's version of Los Angeles Plaza/Olvera Street is based on the Pelanconi House, which was built from 1855 to 1857. Thank you to the great minds of the GTA mapping community at gtadb for the info!
Awesome video, Austin, I love the comparison of architectural styles and details! Very informative!
It’s not pelancoli house. It’s sepulveda house. They iust took the decorations from in front of pelancoli house. They both are on Olvera street so there’s that 😂
The O'Niel ranch was built in 1827
i assumed a lot of the old buildings would be based on something, sad that Austin didn't try to find out what they were inspired from, it could have given a better answer, but i also understand that it would make the video research way longer
@fregaeffenot really. lol. Honestly I do have a bit of an edge because I’m from LA but……. It’s kind of hard to not know that the oldest buildings in the general LA area would be in the historic plaza. I mean that’s what that neighborhood is known for. (The birthplace of Los Angeles) those three buildings in the retake of the plaza in real life are all in the game. Also. They are three of the 4 oldest buildings in the area. If he’d even bothered to just google even that he would have found out all the oldest buildings are downtown, and that would have given him a clue that none of the other areas in gta would have anything that could even come close 😅. So I don’t know how much weight you extra research comment would have carried.
Pin this.
Just when I'm looking to procrastinate. Austin delivers
I read that as autism so ig i agree twice
prostatetinate
1:52 they have these roofes at my school lol
Based on your spelling of roofs, you don't have a school lol
@ThatDude-r8khey I can be stupid and have still gone to school
5:20 Stucco is not a building material itself, it is a coating applied often to brick walls to protect the brick from weathering and for aesthetic purposes.
It is also often applied to older buildings to make them look more appealing to modern buyers and homeowners.
Haha was literally typing this out. I build in New Zealand, salutations brother
How is it not a building a material? Its definitely not a structural material, sure, but building material is a pretty broad term.
At the end you imply the church wasn't constructed until the exact year the town was founded, but there's no real logical reason to limit the timeline like that.
That church could have easily been built three decades **before** the town was founded, for example.
In order for there to **be** a town, there had to be a multiple of people (and the need to gather) well before a legal founding year.
Going even further, the church could have been from an even earlier town that got incorporated into Paleto Bay
I think you're onto something. I am currently a member of a church in the Western US that is built in the exact same Carpenter Gothic style. It was built 125 years ago, before the town it exists in was chartered.
Genuinely asking, why would a church be set up before a town? Is it for the express intention of creating one and if so, how did we end up with separation of church and state if the churches predated the governing bodies that built around them? Obviously it’s a thing that happened, I’m just curious if you or anyone can explain that phenomenon to me!
@BradsGonnaPlayit was exceedingly common to have a church in a community before it was even granted township. The vast majority of settlers that settled the Midwest and the West were Christian, and setting up a house of worship was one of the very first things they did.
@BM-si2ei thank you. I get that, but why and more importantly how? How does a church form without a community first? Why would people build one church before multiple houses?
11:27 my neighbor house has these, but we live in the middle of a tectonic plate and these just prevented shitty bricks from falling apart after renovation. Sometimes these used just to pull a building back to square
2:19 as a window cleaner, Windows are one of those things. You dont need to "ignore" them but critizizing them can help see the "core" of that building. Ive cleaned homes built in the 1930s that have 60s metal 'storm glass' (still single pane) glass and SUUUPER new builds with recycled glass from the 50s, that one was so friggin cool man, that house had recycled brickwork too and still holds up veery well
"critizizing" can you type like a normal person
@heromedley MINOR SPELLING MISTAKE DETECTED, OPINION REJECTED 🤓👆
I'm a windowlicker. Bus windows taste the best.
@heromedley they were off by one letter
@heromedleyONE letter wrong. There are people that write like toddlers but let's be pedantic about someone who is perfectly capable of writing in English
1:06 feel ya Glasgow
i immediately thought of trongate when i saw that shot
13:33 That building is older than 1920s. It looks to be American Beaux Arts which is 1885-1910s. A similar and much larger tower called the Singer Tower in NYC was done in that style in 1908. And that neighboring building just cut off I’d say is also late 1800s to very early 1900s.
As an architect, this video pairs greatly with my soup
fuck soup
There's a hot take!
@any_austin I read that in your voice.
@any_austinD:
@any_austin New Any Austin lore just dropped! Any Austin either hates soup, or REALLY LIKES soup, depending on how you read it.
9:40 i mean that building also clearly has bricked up carriage ports and loading and unloading ports so it has to be from the 1900s
Dude I'm bricked up
@aceman0000099who isn't?
how do you know they aren't, like, carports?
@sadnessofwildgoats the number and the assumed age of the structure and how it was built
The only way this could possibly be better is if u included the part where you talk about the interesting building with all the layers
20:05 arthur morgan could've been to this church
It's probably the church since a lot of towns in the west were populated long before they got to be officially considered towns and I'd suspect the church/school house would be one of the first buildings constructed alongside the general store and the saloon
Yeah, that would be my guess as well, for the reasons you suggested. Then again, it may have been some sort of company town before a church came and was built once workers moved out.
Also, a church just seems more likely to stick around for that long than, say, a factory or a storefront, because the services it provides will continue to be relevant for the community regardless of economic change. And if it was one of the first buildings in the entire town, it gains even more value as a place of historical significance.
I'm guessing whatever general store the early town had was probably out-competed by other businesses long ago, and the saloon might have faced the same fate, or just been closed during Prohibition like many other saloons of the time
I have to agree. The church would probably be built and used for years and years before the town is officially established.
You’re assuming they knew the city would be a big hit so they spent a TON of time, resources and money to build it. Realistically the original church would have been small and shitty until they built a proper stone cathedral.
It wouldn’t make sense to start with a stone cathedral before you have a large population
@anthonyphillips7642 He means the wooden church at the end of the video, not the stone cathedral or the Hispanic church.
Learned something from this video! My old high school had a hallway with sawtooth walls. I found it so odd. It makes sense now cause there was very few windows in that hallway and it still managed to look bright! So neat.
Oh ffs.
You know what I will never forget now? Why factory symbols look like that.
You know what I will forget now? Someone's birthday.
I'm just now understanding the factory pieces from Axis & Allies.
your comment literally reminded me of an old buddies birthday TODAY, if you didn't comment I'd look like an asshole
Can't remember my own mother's face, but I'll remember the teeth looking things on the top of a building in a fictional game based 15000 miles from me, and anything up to 130 years ago.
You forget a thousand things every day, pal.
@aceman0000099
Not that though
as a SoCal resident we learned about the Chumash in school and i never realized rockstar went as far as referencing them that’s actually really cool
It's the game's equivalent to Malibu, which got its name from adapting the Chumash word for the place, Humaliwo.
1:40 My FIRST thought was the scarefloor windows from Monsters Inc
A small anecdote that the discussion of the exposed beams in the mission-style church reminded me of: i used to work for a historical society in a small city in california, particularly in an adobe home that belonged to the first European settlers of the city. The home had been originally built in the 1850s and was abandoned by the 1890s; in the 1930s, the ruins were rediscovered and rebuilt for use as a museum, but the rebuilding of it was funded almost entirely by a descendent of the family who was a movie star in Mexico. He didn't hire historians or architects but, rather, movie set designers who he knew and trusted. They rebuilt the adobe with a very 1930s sense of Spanish revival romanticism, which led to things like the exposed beams on the ceiling and a red tile roof. In reality, the family that lived there used to purchase excess sail cloth from the docks of Los Angeles to stretch across the ceiling instead of leaving it exposed. My point, though-- it was almost impossible to guess the true age of the place due to its reconstruction. Kind of turns into a ship of theseus dilemma, but I thought it was interesting.
1:32 I work in an office, which is located inside a renovated 19th-century furniture factory. It has exactly this style of sawtooth roof.
The town was established in 1898 but that doesn't mean it didn't exist in and unofficial capacity or that a church built there was built in 1898. Often churches would be built in a somewhat central location between a handful of spread out mines and ranches and homes before a town center was built. It is very possible that the church could have been built a decade or even earlier before the town was established
So stucco is just plaster. It's more of a finishing material, rather than something "being built out of". The stucco buildings are likely brick with the plaster over it, or wood frame buildings with plaster and lath facings for the walls.
Yeah, my little Spanish in Pasadena is plaster and lath, built in 1927
Just to add to the algo, given that the design of the restaurants is meant to invoke Olivera St in Los Angeles and the one with the dentils seems to be based on the Pelanconi Building which was built sometime between 1855-57 I think it's probably older, but this was a very fun exercise and I learned a bit about 1900s-1910s architecture!
Next Video is gona be whats the oldest npc in gta 5
0:10 yea, i came first cause any_austin just posted
Facts brother
You disgust me
I came first to you coming first
@alvinnieli came first to you coming first
c@cristianosabian i came first to you coming first to @allviniel coming first to @cytesnda coming first to any_austin
Dear diary, today a videogame boy taught me the name of an architectural style I didn't know got its own name; Carpenter Gothic.
Hell yeah
tfw no carpenter goth gf
Technically, not the videogame, but a guy sharing his passion about videogames :)
15:23 That's Bobs Market in Echo Park AKA The "Tuna Sandwich" market in Fast and Furious!
This inspired me to look up the oldest building in my city - it isn't so obvious because it was basically leveled during World War 2. It turns out we miraculously still have a little gothic church from the 1400s! I will give it a visit for sure
Awesome! Which city?
@przemysawzanko6700Warsaw! I was legitimately very surprised
europeans are so cool because. what do you mean there’s a 600 YEAR OLD BUILDING NEAR YOU?!?! the oldest thing in chicago proper is from 1854. twenty years later was the great chicago fire so most of it is gone
@wintergray3523that's true! I mostly see that when visiting other cities though, because as I said Warsaw was almost annihilated, most of the "old" stuff we have was rebuilt in the last 70 years. We have a ton of exceptionally ugly stuff too (google "Ursynów" for a display of commie blocks and Temple of Divine Providence for just a marvel of architecture if you're curious). We have older buildings all over the country though!
4:27 another reason to think the bricks are not load bearing is that it uses stretcher bond, where all bricks are long equally, which is traditionally not a load bearing bond (except rare instances with square bricks) because there are no headers (shorter bricks i.e. turned inwards) to connect another layer of brick.
6:04 the T-34 in the junkyard by maze bank arena is another hint of WW2
Man made a 20 minute video about old architecture got my ass learning for what feels like 6 minutes. Time flies when presented with quality.
I'm so glad your ass has now been educated
yeh bro fr that must be the oldest building
Not really. It's obviously the old church is older
Facts its old af
@FishOfTheSeaold? That's like 140 years
Oh no, AnyAustin has reached the point of popularity where you get shitty joke comments 2 minutes after upload
@redrobin5671 for the U.S. that would be considered old
A few more Candidates I can think of: The exact same church model in another town, the mineshafts, the lighthouse, some of the bridges, the ports themselves.
17:52 Also existed at the time of RDR2
@1:02
One thing to note is that the reason neighborhoods that had freeways built through them are past their prime is because they had freeways built through them.
All across the US, highways were built through prosperous communities of color (often black neighborhoods).
yuuup. and some overpasses were purposefully built low so busses from predominantly black neighborhoods wouldn't be able to easily cross that way. iirc it was in NYC and it was intended to cut off access to beaches? been a second.
@polerinRobert Moses 🙄
@polerin segregation by design. If you look at red line districts in pretty much every US major city, you will see that these are where highways cut through
@ThePladiatoryup. neighborhood after neighborhood ripped apart, communities shattered. straight up evil shit.
@alexheschong2717 are you a fellow long islander? theres so much shit named after him around here its not even funny
15:31 this corner store is a reference to Dom Torettos store in fast and furious 1. It’s the same building that can be found irl that was used in the movie
The church was probably there even before the town was founded. Often you'd have like a church and store and a saloon servicing farmers and ranchers that lived all over the area and suddenly everybody would look around and be like "well shoot, it appears we went a built a town, I guess somebody should do the paper work and make it official"
"Dammit, we accidentally built a town again! Now we gotta do paperwork..."
You would think Austin would have rdr2 in the back of his head and thought about that 😆
@jbiehlableopposite, this was made an hour earlier, top comment is a bot
@MCTogs Thanks.
Counterpoint: It biiiig.
So funnily enough, you were quite close with hitting the oldest building. The plaza where the church and those Mexican restaurants are is proooooobably the oldest place in game. It is modeled after Plaza de Los Angeles, which was constructed in the late 1700s
13:53 the cathedral to the top left is the cathedral i go past almost everyday, its the bristol cathedral!
Italian architect here: that church at 0:33 is a romanic renaissance style. I'd say from northern Italy, since the facade is very similar to the church of Pisa.
good catch, that style was popular in LA in the very early 1900s
The style called ‘romanico’ in Italian is called ‘Romanesque’ in English.
Man, this is one of the reasons why I love these videos. It brings forth the pros in these fields that can nerd out about their occupation
grande fra
@999goat yeah, was coming here to say this, even more technically it would be Romanesque revival which was around the same period as gothic revival from the mid 19th century to the early 20th century if I’m not mistaken and probably shares some similarities to gothic revival due to that and that there’s probably other ideas incorporated from elsewhere that wouldn’t appear in either original architectural styles due to differences in design philosophies and greater spread of ideas, it’s very cool, I love church architecture
The Bradbury building in DTLA was built in 1893. It's on Strawberry Ave in GTAV, downtown. Only know it exists cause it was a filming location in Blade Runner (and a bunch of other movies).
So, Arthur Morgan was running around when some of those buildings were built.
That wide shot of the church on Paleto Bay genuinely looks real.
Something to consider about the church in it's favor for oldest. Small towns often had churches long before they were incorporated. I'm not sure if that's the same thing as a city founding, but I found it interesting to think about.
Yeah I was gonna say that in those days the church and the bar where the two things the pioneers built and usually they are the oldest buildings out west
A bit late to the battle but I feel like the O'Neil family ranch all the way up in Grapeseed could be the map's oldest building. This or the house next to Mount Gordo's lighthouse, as it shares a similar style.
even the devs didn't know that
I learned more about Los Angeles architecture from this video than I did from 13 years of living in LA.
You should do an architectural tour, they're only like 90 minutes and they're quite fun
That is so sad! Sounds like you didn't take efforts to educate yourself.
LA has awesome architecture, take an architectural tour!
8:22 probably reminds you of Disneyland since it was built in 1954 so it still has some design elements. Unless you meant California adventure since the first land you see upon walking through its gate is supposed to be 1930s Los Angeles
8:50 - The power plant building - the bricked up openings in that building were stables and wagon storage. You can tell by the style and dimensions of them, and the fact they were bricked up once wagons were no longer used
GTA V was made between 2008-2013, so all buildings were made in the 2010s
4:51 Not decoration over the window. It's a header to keep the weight from breaking the windows over the years as it sags from stress.
If the town is founded in 1898 then people live there before there...and the church is an early building in a community...
Also, a church is required for a hamlet to be considered a village, before it eventually upgrades to town.
You might be underestimating Mexican restaurants! The perfect first building! How else are people going to eat?
There are churches all across Canada and the US that date back to mid 1600s. The gothic style churches however are all from roughly the 1830s or newer. That church in particular obviously based off the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles which only finished construction in 1932
I’m going to need this for GTA6 as well
19:37 VALENTINE CHURCH
That's it. We've past the point of no return. One more delay will break austin for good.
Lmao
11:55 Everywhere I look, something reminds me of her.
bruh.
Idiot
I understood this reference 😅
Historically it's usually the church...
World-historical refresh pull
REAL
^World historical lack of personality
As opposed to the other kind of history
NPC.
Big if true.
03:49 that's my other garage in online. Has been since basically launch.
Dude same I have that garage too
2:50 i dont think beyond meat *plant* was intended as a joke...but it did make me giggle
11:25 you’re telling me that Los Santos, located in San Andreas, sharing a name with the San Andreas fault, might have experienced earthquakes?
Also in GTA San Andreas the reason the bridges between Los Santos and the other cities are closed early in the game is due to earthquake damage
Everywhere feels earthquakes. Most earthquakes are so small that they’re unnoticeable.
Yep It’s Experienced Earthquakes just the Town Called San Andreas California
The dumbest most pointless line of deductive reasoning I've ever seen
It’s literally canon in GTA: San Andreas that an earthquake had recently hit and resulted in a collapsed bridge.
Structural engineer here. This is amazing, I hope this becomes a recurring series!
The art gallery where I work at actually uses those saw-tooth roofs for their Artist in Residence studios. They still have electrical lighting, but it creates a really nice and bright environment. The only downside is that they can't open any windows.
1:33 There's a factory in GTA III with that style of roof. The saw mill in the industrial area in Portland island.
13:08 first time realizing that the rollercoaster on the pier has a really funny shape.
I don't understand how this channel is what I am most excited to see in my notifications every time it comes up, but I love it so much.
the power of neurodivergence
it def one of the channels in my sub box I click on most immediate whenever a new video comes up
@ai-spacedestructor ah, this makes a lot of sense actually
kinda wack that i know what the buildings he looks at look like just from the black spot on the map before he shows it
El Gordo Lighthouse looks pretty old. Same with the farmhouse next to it.
I love how you can find things that i dont even think the Devs really even thought of.
Yeah, like they probably just copied an actual rural church and some industrial buildings, but those design aspects crept through.
I never noticed just how detailed the building architecture is in this game until now. R* going as far as to model handcut bricks, load-bearing window arches and even wall anchors is super interesting.
Also, fun fact: The church in Paleto Bay also has a reused model with green roofing in the main city of Los Santos in the cemetery north-northeast of the Vespucci Beach area. It even has the same label over the front door but it's written backwards on account of the model being mirrored.
Rockstar would have taken lots of photographs of real buildings in LA to use as reference (there's plenty of pictures of LA I look at and say "I recognize that from GTA5" which was their intention) and likely used many to directly create textures from. So it's likely less that they intentionally modelled hand cut bricks and more so they found a building they wanted in the game, took a ton of pictures of it, and reconstructed it as accurately as possible using those references.
Still very cool attention to detail.
Turns out it was built in 8981.
uh oh.
Assuming Los Santos is in California, or at least following California building code, buildings cannot be fully supported by brick walls. Unreinforced masonry is required to be installed on all buildings. Some of these buildings only LOOK like they have no bracing, but in reality they are also not brick buildings and just a video game virtual reality.
couldnt have made a more perfect title
I can't wait to get invested in GTA5 buildings for twenty minutes and fifty five seconds. Just need to grab my meundies first.
That Mexican square you found in the corner of Vinewood looks like it is probably modeled after Olvera Street, the historic square of original Los Angeles with architecture that dates back to at least the 1820's, potentially earlier. Definitely the oldest architecture in the game! LA itself was established in 1781
I'm just waiting for the rocket money scandal to drop.