Baldwin Hills, Los Angeles

For the Hills this community is in, see Baldwin Hills (mountain range). For the BET TV show, see Baldwin Hills (TV series).

Baldwin Hills
—  Neighborhood of Los Angeles  —
The Baldwin Hills Village Office Building, a National Historic Landmark at Village Green
Baldwin Hills Location within Western Los Angeles
Coordinates: 34.007778°N 118.346944°W / 34.007778; -118.346944
Country	United States
State	California
County	Los Angeles
City	Los Angeles
Time zone	PST (UTC-8)
• Summer (DST)	PDT (UTC-7)
ZIP Code	90008

Baldwin Hills is a community and neighborhood in the South Los Angeles area of Los Angeles, within southwestern Los Angeles County, California. Baldwin Hills is in their namesake Baldwin Hills range overlooking the Los Angeles Basin and the lower plain immediately to the north.

Geography

Baldwin Hills is bordered on the southeast by Los Angeles' Leimert Park neighborhood, on the south by View Park-Windsor Hills, on the west by Culver City, on the north by the Los Angeles Mid-City district, and on the east by the Crenshaw district. The Baldwin Hills ZIP code is 90008, and telephone area code is 323. Baldwin Hills starts at Martin Luther King Blvd. going up to the base of the hills of Baldwin Hills Estates (an area nicknamed "The Dons" for the several streets beginning with the Spanish honorific). Baldwin Hills from Martin Luther King Blvd on the North, Marlton Avenue on the East, La Brea Avenue of the West, and Baldwin Hills Estates on the South.

The landform Baldwin Hills have long been drilled for petroleum, with active oil wells in the mid-hills along La Cienega Boulevard. As the oil fields close some of the otherwise undeveloped open space land is being acquired by agencies for the public's benefit. The Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area is a major jewel enhancing the community with park activities and recreation. The headwaters of Ballona Creek are in the hills and park, which then flows west into the Santa Monica Bay.

History

• "Lucky" Baldwin:
  Baldwin Hills and other surrounding geography are named for the famous 19th century horse racing and land development pioneer, Elias J. "Lucky" Baldwin.
• Rancho La Cienega o Paso de la Tijera - historic early 19th century eastern hills Rancho land grant.
  • Sanchez Adobe de Rancho La Cienega o Paso de la Tijera. The adobe was once the center of the rancho. In the 1920s, an addition was built linking the structures and the building was converted into a larger clubhouse for the Sunset Golf Course.
• Rancho Rincon de los Bueyes - original early 19th century western section Rancho land grant.
• Olympic Village:
  The Baldwin Hills were the site of the very first Olympic Village ever built, for the 1932 Los Angeles Summer Olympic Games. Built for male athletes only, the village consisted of several hundred buildings, including post and telegraph offices, an amphitheater, a hospital, a fire department, and a bank. Female athletes were housed at the Chapman Park Hotel on Wilshire Boulevard. The Olympic Village was demolished after the Summer Olympic Games.

Communities

View from Baldwin Hills of Downtown Los Angeles and the San Gabriel Mountains, 2010.

Communities and sub-divisions in Baldwin Hills include:

• Baldwin Hills Estates (east of La Brea, southwest of Santo Tomas Drive, south of the Jim Gilliam Recreation Center and north of Stocker Street), one of the wealthiest majority-African American areas in the United States, and is sometimes called "the Black Beverly Hills". It includes the so-called Dons, winding streets with "modernistic" homes, panoramic views of the city, and such names as "Don Luis", "Don Felipe", etc. The area is characterized by hillside houses with swimming pools, and some condominiums (the latter often jut out from steep hillsides, perched on stilts).
• Baldwin Vista is north of Coliseum Street and west of the major thoroughfare, La Brea Boulevard, with slightly smaller homes and a more secluded ambience.

Baldwin Hills Village National Historic Landmark Plaque, at Village Green.

• Village Green, originally named Baldwin Hills Village and within Baldwin Vista, is a historic Mid-Century modern "garden city"developed by Walter H. Leimert (1877-1970) Multi-family residential , which was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 2001. The units are now condominiums on very spacious grounds, attracting seniors, young families, and design professionals as residents.
• "The Jungle" - named so because of its lush landscaping, since the mid-1980s the city has promoted use of the name "Baldwin Village". Located in Baldwin Hills' northeastern, flat section, between King Drive and La Brea, it consists largely of two-story apartment buildings of ten or more units, often originally surrounding a swimming pool and gardens, built in the late 1950s. Originally occupied mostly by adults, young families not yet able to afford home purchase began to move in around the same time that de-segregation evoked white flight in the early 1960s. In the 1970s, black gangs took up illicit drug trade in the vicinity.
• "Sherm Alley", near Coliseum Street and Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard (formerly Santa Barbara Avenue), became a notorious drive-through drug market (a "Sherm" is a PCP-laced cigar in U.S. slang). By the 1990s the area had become a low-income, predominantly African-American and Latino neighborhood, its glass portals gated and swimming pools filled in.
• The southern-most portion of Baldwin Hills is actually outside the Los Angeles City limits; it resides in the unincorporated Los Angeles County area that also shares its space with View Park-Windsor Hills and Ladera Heights. Stocker Street divides Baldwin Hills from View Park. The northeast face of the former overlooks the Baldwin Hills-Crenshaw Mall.

Parks and recreation

View of Hollywood Hills (lower eastern Santa Monica Mountains) and tall San Gabriel Mountains from Baldwin Hills from the Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook Park.

• Baldwin Hills Recreation Center - The 8.5-acre (3.4 ha) park is open daily from 8 am to sunset. The Visitor Center is open Thursday–Sunday from 10 am to 5 pm. The park includes an amphitheatre, drinking water, the Evan Frankel Discovery Center, gardening boxes, picnic tables, a permeable parking lot ($6), toilets, and walking paths. The Visitor Center has a comprehensive guide to the native plants of the area and history of Culver City and offers fantastic views of downtown Los Angeles on a clear day.
• Kenneth Hahn State Regional Park - recreation and sports areas, and preservation of the open-space lands and native habitats: entrance on South La Cienega Boulevard.
• Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook Park website - entrance on Jefferson Boulevard - trail map
• Norman O Houston Park website
• Jim Gilliam Recreation Center website

Government

Services

• The majority of Baldwin Hills receives services from the city of Los Angeles. Most of Baldwin Hills is served by the Los Angeles Fire Department and the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD).
• A small southern portion of Baldwin Hills lies in unincorporated Los Angeles County and receives police services from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and fire protection from the Los Angeles County Fire Department.

Susan Miller Dorsey High School, serving Baldwin Hills.

Library

The Los Angeles Public Library operates the Baldwin Hills Branch Library.

Education

Baldwin Hills is zoned to Los Angeles USD, and the schools include:

• Baldwin Hills Elementary School
• Audubon Middle School
• Susan Miller Dorsey High School

and

• Windsor Math/Science/Aerospace Magnet (K-5, zoned only for Kindergarten)
• Hillcrest Drive Elementary School.
• Marlton School
• New Designs Charter School

Demographics

The Baldwin Hills population is 78.5% African American within ZIP code 90008. Baldwin Hills is among the wealthiest majority-black communities in the United States. Prior to 1965 and restrictive covenants being eliminated, it was known as "Pill Hill" because a large number of doctors seemed to live there. After African Americans began moving into the area, Baldwin Hills was given nicknames such as the "Golden Ghetto" and the "Black Beverly Hills."

Baldwin Hills has been home to such celebrities as Ray Charles, Tina Turner, "Bubba" Smith, Nancy Wilson, Cal Worthington, Oscar-nominated film director John Singleton, comedian Jimmy Pardo, renowned architect Paul Williams, and the late Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley.

Disasters

On December 14, 1963, the Baldwin Hills Reservoir situated up in the Baldwin Hills began to crack. Within a few hours, the leak from the small crack had expanded to a gaping hole, releasing a sudden torrent of water that rushed down the Cloverdale Avenue canyon. Many expensive homes were destroyed and washed away. Most of Baldwin Vista below the canyon, including the historic Village Green community, was flooded as well. The crack in the dam was ultimately attributed to subsidence caused by overexploitation of the Inglewood Oil field. The disaster caused the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to phase out small local reservoirs, such as this one and the Silver Lake Reservoir. The dam was not repaired, and the basin was later filled in as part of Kenneth Hahn Regional Park.

During the summer of 1985, an arsonist started a brush fire along La Brea Avenue. The fire spread up the canyon towards the expensive homes along Don Carlos Drive in the Baldwin Hills Estates tract. Many homes were destroyed despite the efforts of the Los Angeles Fire Department to suppress the flames. The fire killed three people and destroyed 69 homes; the arsonist was never caught.

Media

Further information: Baldwin Hills (TV series)

In 2007, Black Entertainment Television - BET began airing Baldwin Hills, a program featuring several African-American teenagers and their lives in the upper-middle class Los Angeles community.

The show is very similar in nature to such MTV program as Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County,The Hills, and the online series The Suburbs - as it features African-Americans of upper-middle class families who divide their time between attending school, playing sports, shopping at high-end stores, and driving expensive cars. The series is in a third season.

Orson Scott Card's urban fantasy novel Magic Street is set in Baldwin Hills.

See also

• South Central Los Angeles

Notable residents

• David S. Cunningham, Jr., Los Angeles City Council member, 1973–87

External links

• Friends of the Baldwin Hills website
• The Baldwin Hills Conservancy website
• official Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area website
• lacounty.info: Kenneth Hahn Recreation Area
• Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook Park website
• Village Green website
• Village Green: historic architecture article
• 1932 Los Angeles Olympic Athlete's Village in the Baldwin Hills: history
• Baldwin Hills Dam history
• University Park Family - a collaborative online community: focused on University Park, Expo Park and the surrounding areas.
• Leimert Park Beat - a collaborative online community focused on Leimert Park: "The Soul of Los Angeles and the African American cultural center of the city."