HIGHLAND PARK, LOS ANGELES
“Mañana Flor de Sus Ayeres” or “Tomorrow is the Flower of its yesterdays.” This, the motto inscribed on the Southwest Museum on Mt. Washington, aptly holds true today for the historic communities of greater Highland Park. It was chosen by the museum’s founder Charles Fletcher Lummis, a nationally-significant figure who helped shape the growth of not only this community but also Southern California and the entire Southwest at the turn of the last century.
The present-day community of Highland Park has not forgotten its heritage. It has embraced its historic resources in a way that no other community of Los Angeles can claim. The greater Highland Park community, which also includes Mt. Washington and Garvanza, now has the largest historic district in Los Angeles. It also contains the highest concentration of registered Los Angeles City Historic-Cultural Monuments. This work has been accomplished in less than 15 years with the leadership of a dedicated grassroots preservation organization, the Highland Park Heritage Trust.
Resources Defined and Protected
In 1897, Charles Lummis founded one of the nation’s first preservation organizations, The Landmarks Club, to save the old California Missions. Years later while living at “El Alisal” along the banks of the Arroyo Seco in Highland Park, he founded the Arroyo Seco Association “to protect, improve and beautify the Valley of the Arroyo Seco.” In the early 1980s, building on this legacy, many Highland Park residents, seeing the community that Lummis had help shape in decline, learned all over again the value of the history in both the natural and built resources in creating a livable community.
The decade of the 1980s saw its fourth real estate boom and historic Highland Park was besieged by inappropriate development. Starting as a neighborhood improvement effort in 1980, residents discovered that what made this community special and unique were its historic resources: the natural landscape of the Arroyo Seco; the built environment of both residential and commercial buildings; and, the blending of the two to create a unique presence not seen elsewhere. But not all of these resources were being truly protected or maintained – the community was in transition. The creation of a community-based preservation organization, Highland Park Heritage Trust (HPHT), was an outgrowth from this initial effort of identifying and planning for these important resources.
Proactive Planning & Protection
HPHT took a proactive role to find and implement the tools of preservation that would lead the broader community to the same understanding. Education and advocacy are vital components to the activities undertaken. Two key strategies resulted in today’s accomplishments. First, HPHT identified and worked to place significant local resources under protection of the City of Los Angeles’ Historic-Cultural Monument Listing. Over the past 15 years, members of this organization have been responsible for assisting and nominating an overwhelming majority of places now recognized as a Los Angeles Monument. Greater Highland Park now bursts at the seams with over 70 of the over 600 throughout the entire City of Los Angeles – that’s over a 10% concentration in just one community. That speaks to the historical significance of the community as well as the dedication by HPHT to recognize and plan for these valuable resources.
Second, and equally important to a vibrant overall community, was the recognition that the true resource was the collection of all the houses sitting modestly and comfortably back from the street. On this landscape predominately sets small, craftsman bungalows built during the initial rapid growth of the community at the turn of the last century. The streetscape enhanced by the natural beauty of the Arroyo Seco, along which the community developed.
Working with a coalition of homeowners associations, elected officials and others, HPHT crusaded for almost 10 years in the effort to establish a historic district called the Highland Park Historic Preservation Overlay Zone (HPOZ) in Los Angeles. Adopted by the City Council of Los Angeles in 1994, the Highland Park HPOZ is the largest such district in Los Angeles and was the first to also include both residential and commercial structures. The Highland Park HPOZ contains over 2,500 Contributing Structures. The district has a citizen design/review board that advises and approves any building alterations that require a permit, as well as any new construction and demolition. The first major success in new commercial construction was in 1997. A Craftsman-styled Jack in the Box fast food restaurant, recently featured in the Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine, was built in the Highland Park HPOZ.
Today, the work of maintaining and improving historic Highland Park falls on the Highland Park HPOZ Board with continued education and advocacy support of HPHT. Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument applications are still an important part of the activities of the Highland Park Heritage Trust.
Highland Park On the Map
The greater Highland Park area is a truly unique community within Los Angeles. It is the only community that has recognized and protected its historic resources in such a large manner. The dedication and track record of accomplishments by the Highland Park Heritage Trust have been recognized by both the state and national preservation organizations. HPHT received a 1998 President’s Award from the California Preservation Foundation. In addition, the community is receiving national attention from the National Trust for Historic Preservation who asked Highland Park to participate in a national urban demonstration program, being one of six communities and the only one west of the Mississippi.
Other organizations and individuals in Highland Park are working toward the development and sustainability of a vibrant and creative historic community of greater Highland Park. It appears that the lessons learned by valuing all community resources were the catalyst and now the fuel to further the movement to preserve its unique heritage and place in the larger contribution this community has made to the development and evolution of the great City of Los Angeles.
Greater Highland Park is a special part of the City of Los Angeles – nestled along the banks of the beautiful Arroyo Seco. With an unsurpassed location, it sits in between, and almost equi-distant, from the retail and employment centers of downtown Los Angeles, Pasadena and Glendale. A multi-ethnic and diverse community respecting different lifestyles, economic levels, heritage and cultures, Highland Park is now largely Latino which is reminiscent of its early beginnings as part of the Rancho San Rafael.
The construction of the Los Angeles to San Gabriel Railroad in 1885, linking the two prosperous communities of Los Angeles and Pasadena, contributed greatly to the first major real estate boom in the hilly area then known as the Highlands. Out of this growth, along the Arroyo Seco, sprouted the communities of Highland Park, Garvanza and Mt. Washington, which were soon annexed into Los Angeles.
The layered and multi-dimensional history of the area we now know as greater Highland Park begins with the natural beauty of the Arroyo Seco. Contrary to its name, meaning dry wash in English, the Arroyo was a gushing serpentine of water which provided for animals and humans alike, and its banks were graced with towering sycamores. This attracted early settlers from the Native Americans to the Spanish.
It was this natural beauty combined with available transportation that drew people from all over the United States to settle in this area during the late 1800s. Concurrently, there was an emerging activity transpiring in the United States known as the Arts & Crafts Movement. In Southern California, many of the prominent leaders and promoters of this movement located their homes and businesses throughout the Arroyo Seco region. These three communities in the Highlands together became the heart and center of the Arts & Crafts Movement in this region.
Garvanza became known as the “bohemian arts colony” largely due to the location of the first art school in Southern California, the Los Angeles School of Fine Arts for USC. William Lees Judson, world-renowned plein air painter, was the founder and dean. Today, it is home to The Judson Studios, a fifth generation stained glass business. In addition, the Abbey San Encino was built by printmaker Clyde Browne and many noted artists, architects and craftspeople settled here.
In Highland Park, Charles Fletcher Lummis built his home, El Alisal, on the banks of the Arroyo. The Southwest Museum was sited and built on the hill above his home. Occidental College located its college campus in Highland Park for many years adding to the cultural and intellectual attractions of the area.
Mt. Washington had the former Mt. Washington Hotel as well as a number of large homes built by noted architects of the era. The noted plein air painters Elmer and Marion Wachtel had their home and studio on Mt. Washington. A little further south, Ernest Batchelder produced his tiles in a factory situated along the Arroyo Seco where it meets with the Los Angeles River.
This area was the artistic and cultural center of the entire region during the rapid growth of Los Angeles from 1880s to 1920s, leading and shaping not only the growth of Los Angeles but the Southern California Arts & Crafts Movement.
The tradition of this movement continues to shape these communities today. Artists of all mediums, craftspersons and architects live and work here, continuing to be pulled by the magnet of the Arroyo Seco. Architecturally, these communities have work produced by almost every noted Southern California architect from Sumner and Hunt to John Lautner to Richard Neutra, among others.
Now is time that the rich and vast cultural resources of Los Angeles’ Arroyo Seco legacy are brought to light. These treasures need the nurturing and attention of the fine City in which they are located, by its citizens and leaders.
