"A 1931 street map (courtesy of Gary Alexander) labeled the Downey airfield simply as "Airport". This former industrial facility & airfield is a site which is steeped in American aviation & space history, and yet is largely unknown outside of the immediate local area, in spite of the tremendous milestones in American aviation & space history which were accomplished on its property. In 1929, the Downey property was a ranch owned & operated by James Hughan. E. M. Smith, a local industrialist & founder of the  EMSCO company, purchased a 73-acre parcel from Hughan. Smith's EMSCO company had a division called Albatross, which manufactured small aircraft. In addition to manufacturing aircraft, Smith saw the former farm land in Downey as a perfect landing field. The oldest buildings on the Downey Site were built in 1929 to support the aircraft manufacturing effort. The earliest depiction which has been located of the airfield in Downey was a 1931 street map (courtesy of Gary Alexander), which labeled the Downey airfield simply as "Airport"."
E.M. Smith Photo Copyright Larry Latimer 2010.

More Info by Larry Latimer
Below: College Ave. was named such for the former Los Nietos Collegiate Institute. The "college" was opened on March 19, 1869. Lots in College Settlement were sold that day, total sales were $2,743.50. The original settlement encompassed about four square blocks and soon grew larger. " The north-south main street was called College Ave. (now Paramount Blvd.) and the east-west Alameda St., as it is today. The college was built on Alameda just easy of Paramount Blvd. and was centered on a five acre campus. This school-church centered community had an appeal to the new settlers who had been wandering through the wilderness and now hoped to settle down and raise families in a new land. John Ardis gave up his private school to devote all of his time to the college and the development of the new community. The college would take students from the primary grades on up. The sale of lots was not a spectacular venture. The people who bought them up put up houses and commercial buildings on them.. Soon College Settlement had the economic cornerstones of a thriving community." (Quinn's History of Downey)
Cerritos Ave. is now Lakewood Blvd.
Washburn Crossing used to go through to Cerritos or Lakewood Blvd.
Easy Street is now Florence Ave.                                       

"The Downey plant was begun in 1929 by the E.M. Smith Company, which built airplanes under the Emsco name until it failed in the 1932 Depression.  The next resident was the National Security Aircraft Corporation, headed by Walter Kinner, a noted producer of sport planes. It was a short stay.  In 1936 the Vultee Aircraft Corporation moved in.
Behind the front offices is the saw tooth roofline of the vast factory bay where Vultee assembled over 11,000 military planes during World War II.  The most famous of these was the BT-13, a low-wing trainer that was inspiringly christened "Valiant," but suffered the ignominy of its service nickname, the Vultee "Vibrator."  The present occupant, Rockwell International (see North American Aviation, Inc.), entered in 1947.
Not so really long ago, in 1969, U.S. astronauts Neil Armstrong and Mike Collins, shortly out of quarantine after their world-stirring Apollo 11 lunar landing mission, spoke to an assembly of Downey plant workers.  Said Collins: "the trip to the moon started right here."
In a material sense, that was so.  They laid the keel and constructed the crew ship (command and service modules) of the Apollo space vehicle at Downey, whereupon it was transported to Cape Kennedy and rocketed to lunar orbit.
It took the Apollo astronauts less than two and one-half days to go from earth to moon, but it was a tedious quarter-century of travel along the advanced technology trail before the U.S. could arrive flight-ready for the venture. 
American space capability traces to the German missile projects of World War II, but nowhere was this elementary missile science more significant than at Downey.
In June 1944 Germany unleashed its V-2 ballistic missile against the Allies, and it was indefensible.  Had the V-2 been developed a bit earlier and performed with a mite more reliability, the denouement of the war might have been quite different.  With the fall of the Nazis, the Americans and British were able to beat the Russians to 341 boxcars of missile components, a cache of technical documentation, and 128 German rocketeers, including the estimable Dr. Wehrner von Braun.
The confiscated documentation chillingly revealed progressively advancing missile concepts culminating with an A-9/A-10 two-stage rocket weapon calculated to strike the U.S. mainland.
The war plan of the Allies had been to swamp the enemy with great quantities of aircraft, so the missile prospect was scarcely considered by the U.S.  As a consequence, when the U.S. started to seriously look into the missile opportunity in 1945 the successful German V-2 was a bird in the hand.  The expropriated German missile hardware, technical literature and men were distributed to the U.S. military centers and defense contractors for their interest and application.  The American Space Age commenced with this issuance.
The Downey plant first became associated with missile technology in 1945 when it was functioning as the Vultee Field Division of the Consolidated-Vultee Aircraft Corporation.  With the winding-down of warplane production, it had a small project underway for a short-range Navy
missile called the Lark.  As it was somewhat started in missile endeavor, the Division was given the Corporate role to follow up on German missile evidence.
In 1946 the Vultee Field Division was awarded a $1.2 million contract by the government to study the possibility of the long range missile weapon.  The study was identified as Project MX-774, and it was to explore two types:  a subsonic jet-engined cruise missile- essentially an unmanned airplane; and a rocket-powered supersonic ballistic missile.
Vultee quickly dismissed the cruise missile option as too slow and too vulnerable, and concentrated on the ballistic weapon.  However attractive the V-2 was as a starting point, the translation to a long range missile would be feasible only if the weight could be dramatically reduced.  The V-2, typically of German mien, was structurally robust.
The weight-saving ideas entered by the Vultee Field Division were of radical simplicity.  First, they eliminated the fuel tanks inside the missile body, and, instead, let the shell of the airframe contain the fuel.  Then they did away with much of the longitudinal bracing by the clever expedient of inflating the body to stiffness with the nitrogen gas that was used to pressurize the fuel.
Since a long range ballistic missile would have to arc into near space and then plunge down through the atmosphere, it would have to be coated with heavy heat-resistant material.  Nose cone warhead separation was introduced so only the business end would have to be heat-protected.  A way was found around the weighty problem of fin or thrust-deflector control systems by the technique of swiveling the engine exhaust bell to the direction of push required.
Project MX-774 didn't get much farther at Downey, because in July 1946 it was cancelled by a government defense economy edict.  The Vultee Field Division was immediately withdrawn to the home plant in San Diego (Consolidate-Vultee became the Convair Division of the General Dynamics Corporation).
The three test missiles begun with the MX-774 project were later completed with some extensions of funding, but their flight attempts fizzled.  The ballistic missile effort prevailed, though, and in 1951 was renamed the Atlas project.  Ultimately the Atlas became the first U.S. intercontinental ballistic missile and the workhorse of the early American space launches, including the Project Mercury manned flights.   
While the space history-making Atlas was germinating in Downey, that was only the beginning of the site's remarkable contribution.  For as the Vultee Field Division was taking its first step into missile technology there was another company cross-town in Inglewood that was similarly astir with missile ambition- North American Aviation.  It would next occupy the Downey plant.
North American Aviation, Inc. had been the nation's most prolific plane manufacturer during World War II, with an output of 43,000 aircraft, 10,000 more than any other U.S. producer.  As war-ending was driving its peak employment of 91,000 down to 5,000, North American could spare only five engineers for initial theoretical investigation of the missile.
Behind a door marked Technical Research Laboratory, the handful of North American engineers worked out a scheme for forwarding the basic German missile technology.  First they would add wings to the V-2, increasing its 185-mile range to about 300 miles.  Next they would replace the V-2 rocket engine with a long-running jet engine.  Later, technology willing, they would create a very large launching rocket to boost the missile to extreme altitude for a cruise trajectory of intercontinental span. 
To develop such a missile system would take an extensive study and advancement in four areas - super-sonic aerodynamics, propulsion, guidance and control, and a catch-all category of structures, launching systems and warhead. Proceeding under the same issue of Air Force contracts that started Consolidated-Vultee on the road to the Atlas, this one called Project MX-770…

EMSCO B-3
EMSCO is a subsidiary of the large Emsco industrial chain. First products were Emsco Challenger monoplane, with US-built Curtiss Challenger radial engine, and Emsco Cirrus with American Cirrus (British designed) in-line engine. B-3A of early 1930s was eight-seat low-wing monoplane; B-7 was two-seat sports monoplane.

EMSCO Oil Drilling Equipment, EMSCO Asbestos (Downey).

1929: (E M Smith & Associates) EMSCO Aircraft Corp, Long Beach CA, on acquisition of Zenith Albatross Co; 1929: 890 Cerritos Blvd, Downey CA. 1932: Ended aircraft production. c.1941: Ended operations.

Aviation history here that led to Rockwell

The world famous home of the Space Shuttle and other exotic aerospace explorers, Rockwell International in Downey sits on a historic plot where aviation history has often left its mark.
The saga began in 1929 when an oil field equipment firm, EMSCO, decided to build an airplane. The result was the EMSCO "Cirrus," and lest cynics scoff too hard at a link between oil equipment firms and aviation, let's note that oil rigging and equipment were where Howard Hughes started.
EMSCO followed the "Cirrus" with a second design that was flown from a small airfield adjacent to the plant in 1930. EMSCO built a third model, the B-3, that made quite a name for itself in long distance flights of the time. A number of B-3s were sold to the Mexican Air Force. And the B-3 was eventually refitted into an airplane known as the "Challenger."
The Great Depression affected the air and oil industry as well as everything else, and EMSCO shut down in 1932, but its hangars, plant and small airfield remained.
Then came Jerry Vultee, a young engineer from Lockheed who wanted to build airplanes of his own independent design.
Vultee started in Glendale, but he sought a facility with more space and an airfield. He moved to Downey in 1936.
The first plane he built in Downey was the V-11, an attack bomber which later flew in China. The V1-A which was conceived in Glendale, was later built in Downey as well.
Vultee was killed in an air crash in Arizona in 1938, but his legacy was the Vultee plant in Downey.
Refinement of the V-11 eventually produced the T-6 Texan, which became famous as a trainer in World War II. And the advent of World War II set off a wild effort to upgrade military air production. In 1942 Vultee merged with Consolidated Aircraft of San Diego. The new company designed a combat plane based on the trainer. The new plane was the Model 72 "Vengeance."
The "Vengeance" was eventually developed into the A-31 and A-35 and saw service all over the world. The consolidated branch of the new company, Convair, built the famous "Liberator" bombers of World War II. It was the "Liberator" that smashed the Ploisti Oil fields, a series of raids on which the book "Catch 22" was based.
The Downey production lines turned out thousands of aircraft, and became famous for "Rosie the Riveter," an affectionate name given women who worked beside men to produce defense aircraft here.
After the war the military air contracts temporarily dried up and the big Downey plant closed in 1947. A few engineers from the old company used the production line to build prefabricated housing. But they later moved to a less costly production site in Cudahy.
North American Aviation still had military air contracts, and needed space to produce planes. North American reopened the old Downey plant in December of 1947. Historian Bob Thompson has carefully saved bits of history covering North American's presence here. Among his treasures are old photos showing where original buildings were located, and where they were moved to make way for the huge structures there now.
North American built "Mustangs" in Downey, but the company was also on the cutting edge of the space age, which had kicked off in the U.S. with the Redstone Project.
North American developed into Rockwell. Progressive steps that followed included the Apollo capsules, moon landing and development of the Space Shuttle.

Many of these photos are from ALF archives including these sources: the "Final Historic Buildings And Structures Inventory And Evaluation.  NASA Industrial Plant Parcels I and II, Downey California". The color picture was donated and is property of ALF. Many photos courtesy of the Downey Historical Society.