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Highland Park, Los Angeles, California

Encyclopedia : H : HI : HIG : Highland Park, Los Angeles, California

 

Highland Park is a district in on the East Side of Los Angeles. It includes the Garvanza neigbhborhood.

Contents

Geography and Transportation

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, 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.

The Neighborhood

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.

Notable residents

External links

 

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