Highland Park, Los Angeles, California
Highland Park is a district in on the
East Side of
Los Angeles. It includes the
Garvanza neigbhborhood.
Highland Park is located along the
Arroyo Seco. It is within the Rancho San Rafael of the Spanish / Mexican era. Its boundaries are roughly the
Pasadena Freeway (
CA-110) and the city limits of
South Pasadena on the southeast, the city limits of
Pasadena on the east, Oak Grove Drive on the north, and Avenue 50/51 on the west. The district's neighbors include
Mt. Washington on the southwest,
Montecito Heights on the south,
Hermon and
Monterey Hills on the southeast, South Pasadena on the east, Pasadena on the northeast,
Eagle Rock on the north, and
Glassell Park on the west. Primary thoroughfares include York Boulevard, Avenues 50, 54, and 64, Monte Vista Street, and
Figueroa Street. Highland Park is served by the
Gold Line, a
light rail system that largely runs at street grade parallel to
Figueroa Street until turning east into South Pasadena at Avenue 61. The district's
ZIP code is 90042.
One of the oldest settled areas of Los Angeles, Highland Park is also one of the most scenic due to its architecture and geographic location between the Mt. Washington hills, the San Rafael hills and the
Monterey Hills. There are large sprawling parks in the area, including the
Arroyo Seco Park and the Ernest E. Debs Regional Park. The
Southwest Museum (a collection of Native American artifacts) is located in adjacent Mt. Washington. The light rail Metro Gold Line from Union Station to Pasadena (traversing all of Highland Park) is one of the most enjoyable and dynamic public transportation journeys in the city, because of views offered by the parks, hills and valleys along the meandering route.
Despite these advantages, Highland Park has been unfashionable among white people since the development of
Mid-Wilshire in the 1920s. By the mid 1960s, it was becoming a largely
Latino enclave as the phenomenon of
White Flight, coupled with relentless over-development, continued to create new housing opportunites. By the mid 1970s, it had emerged as a predominantly Latino area. But in keeping with its tradition of being a haven for immigrants, the shift in demographics never fully homogenized as it did in
East L.A., leaving room for many races and ethnicities to find a place in Highland Park. Indeed, some residents find the mix of people to be one of the most appealing aspects of the community.
The upwardly mobile, including a burgeoning class of professional
Chicanos tended to leave the district for the
San Gabriel Valley, the
Inland Empire and
Orange County, and thus created a
social capital vacuum that was for a while, largely perceived to be filled by
gangs, particularly the notoriously violent "The Avenues", (of which Jackson Browne wrote a song). Recently, however, that perceived vacuum has begun to be filled by new immigrants, entrepreneurs and young professionals searching for affordable homes. The result is that Highland Park is a community of pockets and pinpoints of both poverty and crime, and petit-bourgeois upper middle-class wealth and style. But this has not quite dispelled the myth that Highland Park is an overly dangerous place, which is perpetuated by an uncurious, uninspired press ( the
L.A. Weekly and
L.A. Times ). Because of bad press, Highland Park is still considered to be one of the rougher parts of Los Angeles, although it has never been as volatile as
Pacoima,
Watts,
Downtown, or even
Hollywood, and
Echo Park.
During a decade and a half of unrestricted overdevelopment (a problem that continues today because of the City of Los Angeles' developer-friendly zoning laws), many of Highland Park's grandest and oldest homes were razed. Witness, for example, Heritage Square: a Highland Park museum started by local activists hoping to save some of the Victorian homes which were scheduled for demolition to make room for gas stations and parking lots. But the first hints of what some would call
gentrification sprouted in Highland Park in 1984 when large tracts of the district were set aside for
historic preservation under Los Angeles' pioneering Historic Preservation Overlay Zone ordinance.
Before the skyrocketing of Southern California housing prices from 2002 - 2005, the intrepid had begun to seek out, buy, and revitalize antique and
Craftsman homes that had suffered neglect over the decades. Although this quiet movement continues, Highland Park has largely been spared the dramatic changes that
Silver Lake, and
Eagle Rock have experienced. The district's proximity to those fashionable neighborhoods, however, has made it increasingly popular among
hipsters, which some in the community regret. Local bars have become fashionable nightclubs, including Mr. T's, a Highland Park
bowling alley partially renovated as a performance venue and tavern. It remains to be seen whether gentrification in the area will continue, as it lacks the high-quality schools that have made Mt. Washington and Eagle Rock attractive destinations for upper middle-class to lower upper-class Angelenos seeking alternatives to
suburbia.
One of the little known areas of Highland Park is the Monterey Hills area. Across the eastern edge of the
Arroyo Seco, it is a condominium/townhome complex of 1,900 homes. Arguably, it is this development that started the "gentrification" of Highland Park, starting with the opening of Chapman Townhomes in 1974. Although a serious issue with differential settlement caused values to drop in the late 80's and 90's, they have since rebounded to the point where the lowest price for a one bedroom condo in the area is roughly $300,000.
*
Ricardo Cruz, attorney, activist
*
Daryl Gates, former
LAPD chief
*
Steve Sax, former
Dodger baseball player
*
Sharon Tay, newscaster
*
Alan Arkin, Academy Award-nominated
actor*
Gene Roddenberry, writer and creator of
Star Trek*
Bobby Riggs, athlete,
tennis*
Rocky Delgadillo,
Los Angeles City attorney and
Harvard graduate
*
Porntip Nakhirunkanok, 1988
Miss Universe (representing Thailand)
*
Diane Keaton's family lives in the area.
*
Mike Kelley, artist
*
Jackson Browne, singer and songwriter
*
Clyde Browne, father of
Jackson Browne and
Arts and Crafts movement era printer who built the "Abbey San Encino," a smaller-scaled replica of a California Mission building, which still stands, serving as one of the Browne family homes.
*
Edward Furlong, actor (was growing up in the San Pascual neighborhood of Highland Park when he was "discovered" by a casting agent searching for a boy to play "Connor" in
Terminator 2: Judgment Day).
*
Los Angeles Times, Real Estate section, Neighborly Advice column: "History hopes to repeat itself in Highland Park" (12 Oct 2003)*
History of Highland Park*
Audubon Center*
Judson Studios-
*
The Arroyo Culture*
The Highland Park Rocking Chair*
The Abbey San Encino*
Development History of Highland Park*
Southwest Museum*
Heritage Square Museum*
Lummis Home (El Alisal)*
Community News and Events in Historic Highland Park*
Northeast LA Arts Organization*
LA Weekly story on the Avenues gang*
Los Angeles Police Museum*
L.A. City Council District 1*
L.A. City Council District 14
