During the housing boom of the last few years, homeowners liked to brag about how much their property increased in value. Matt Roth, the historian for the Automobile Club of Southern California, says you should have heard the property owners on Wilshire Boulevard back in the Roaring Twenties.

"The lots on Wilshire were appreciating in value by a thousand percent a year through the late 1920s. In the worst years of depression, 1931, the property owners association on Wilshire Boulevard gets together to sell bonds in the bond market in order to raise capital, to improve the street, and the bonds sell overnight with no discounting in a very, very difficult environment."

Roth says in many ways, that sums up what makes L.A. distinctive in the 20th century: Its ability to attract money and investments from elsewhere, even places where the economy has hit the skids.

(Airdate for this story: 12/23/07)