The Avila Adobe was one of the settlement's first houses to share street frontage in the Pueblo de Los Angeles of Spanish colonial Alta California.

The original ceilings were 15 feet (4.6 m) high and supported by beams of cottonwood, which was available along the banks of the Los Angeles River.

The tar was mixed with rocks and horsehair, a common binder in exterior building material, and applied to beams of the roof as a sealant from inclement weather.

The original floor of the Avila adobe was hard-as-concrete compacted earth, which was swept several times a day to keep the surface smooth and free from loose soil.

Sterling influenced the creation of the Mexican marketplace called "Placita Olvera", and today the home is often visited by many tourists and locals.

Olvera Street continues to provide a Mexican cultural environment that is influenced by the history of the Avila Adobe home.

Francisco Avila, a Californio and wealthy cattle rancher, was the grantee of Rancho Las Cienegas west of the pueblo (present day mid-Wilshire district).

On weekends, special feast days, or holidays, he came to the Pueblo where he could conduct trade business, entertain friends, families, or patrons; or prepare for services at the Nuestra Señora Reina de los Angeles Asistencia (church) across the plaza.

Francisco Avila would trade hides and tallow (a main ingredient in candles and soap) to acquire luxury furnishings imported from Mexico and beyond to decorate the house.

These imports were brought to post-independence Mexican Alta California by ship over thousands of miles around the southern Cape Horn of South America.

Smith had led a group of fur trappers overland and across the Mojave Desert to southern California, and stayed at the adobe for a few days during January 1827.

When news of the advancing American troops reached the Pueblo, most of the inhabitants fled, including Maria Encarnacion Avila, whose husband was not around to protect her.

She went to the home of a nearby relative and left the house in charge of a young boy who had orders to leave the doors and shutters closed.

Christine Sterling, a non-Hispanic woman from San Francisco, who had moved to Los Angeles, had an interest in the city's cultural history.

In 1926, she began work[citation needed] on the project of transforming the old plaza area from a skid row ruin into a Latin-American cultural center.

She enlisted the aid of Harry Chandler, the Los Angeles Times owner and publisher, who printed several articles that would generate public interest in the project and raise funds for the restoration.

One of Sterling's benefactors was Florence Dodson de Shoneman, a descendant of the Californio Sepulveda family, who provided furnishings for an entire room in the adobe.

Not only did council fulfill the request, but the chief of police provided assistance from prison inmates to help clean up the plaza area.

The 1971 Sylmar earthquake caused major damage to the adobe, and the house was closed to tours until a $120,000 and five-year restoration could be completed.

A more recent archaeological find has revealed a portion of the Zanja Madre ("Mother Ditch"), which transported water into the pueblo via a brick-laid pipeline from the river.

The Avila Adobe is open for public touring and is located at East 10 Olvera Street within El Pueblo de Los Angeles State Historic Park.

The park office is located at 845 N. Alameda Street, and the Visitors Information Center is at 128 Paseo de la Plaza.

The home is a key factor in understanding the cultural history of Los Angeles because although today the city contains a multiculturalism population, it once only consisted of just Hispanic people.