Boyle Heights, Los Angeles

Boyle Heights is a district on the East Side of Los Angeles, California. It is almost all made up of the hispanic demographic category.

Geography and Transportation

Boyle Heights lies on the east bank of the Los Angeles River. It comprises the bluffs for which the district is named and the muddy flats ("The Flats") below them. The district's boundaries are roughly Mission Road on the north, the Los Angeles city limits on the east and south, and the river on the west. Downtown Los Angeles lies to the west, Lincoln Heights lies to the north, City Terrace and East Los Angeles are to the east, Commerce is to the southeast, and Vernon is to the south. Major thoroughfares include Whittier Boulevard; Cesar E. Chavez Avenue; and State, Soto, Lorena, 1st, and 4th Streets. The district's ZIP Code is 90033.

The massive East Los Angeles Interchange is located in Boyle Heights on the eastern bank of the Los Angeles River, allowing access to the Golden State (I-5), Hollywood (U.S. Route 101), Pomona (CA-60), San Bernardino (I-10), Santa Ana (I-5), and Santa Monica (I-10) freeways.

Metro Rail Gold Line Eastern Extension

In 2004, the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) began work on the "Eastside Extension" of its Gold Line through Boyle Heights. MTA had planned to run the line at grade level along 1st Street, but community opposition led it to instead route the line through the district as a subway before it emerges as a standard grade-level light rail line in East Los Angeles. (Ironically, this route was planned as part of the Red Line subway before 1998, when county voters passed a proposition banning use of existing sales tax revenues for subway construction.) The Eastside Extension is expected to open in 2009.

History

Originally owned by the early L.A. Boyle-Workman family, the district was subdivided in 1875 and named after Andrew Boyle. Traditionally one of the most heterogenous neighborhoods in the city, it was a center of Jewish and Japanese-American life in the early 20th century, and also hosted large Yugoslav and Russian populations. (Canter's Deli, one of Los Angeles' culinary landmarks and a beloved fixture in the city's Jewish community, was originally located in Boyle Heights before it followed its customer base to the Fairfax District in the 1940s.) However, during and after World War II, most of its non-Latino population left for Mid-Wilshire, the San Gabriel and San Fernando valleys, and the West Side. A large percentage of Boyle Heights' population also was interned in relocation camps such as Manzanar during World War II, and did not return after the war. This evolution is evidenced, among many other ways, by the name of the district's main drag: once Brooklyn Avenue, it was rechristened Cesar E. Chavez Avenue in 1994.

Breed Street Shul

Opened in 1923, the Breed Street Shul, located at 247 North Breed Street, was one of the oldest synagogues on West Coast of the United States. Boyle Heights was a predominantly Jewish community for many years, but slowly the demographic changed to a large Latino community, and the synagogue steadily lost congregation members. Breed Street Shul was finally abandoned in 1996, with the building becoming ramshackle. Shortly afterward, an effort was made to renovate the synagogue, and to preserve the site for posterity. In 1999, the nonprofit Breed Street Shul Project, Inc., a subsidiary of the Jewish Historical Society of Southern California (JHS), officially undertook the restoration project. The project has been completed, and Breed Street Shul is now considered a national historic landmark.

The Flats

Unlike the middle- and lower-middle-class neighborhoods on the bluffs, "The Flats" was one of the most impoverished areas of the city, and by the 1930s was considered one of the last remaining slums in the United States. Reformer Jacob Riis had visited The Flats in the early 1910s and declared them worse than anything in New York; a survey conducted by the city in the 1937 deemed 20% of the city's dwellings "unfit for human habitation," including most of The Flats. During World War II, the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles (HACLA) razed The Flats and built housing projects in their place, resulting in Aliso Village and Pico Gardens. Like most of HACLA's 1940s projects, Aliso Village and Pico Gardens were hailed at the time of their construction as some of the finest examples of the principles espoused by the garden city movement, and were racially integrated to boot.

Soon after the end the war, Aliso Village and Pico Gardens lost most of their non-Latino populations, and were increasingly populated by impoverished Mexican immigrants. With the river on one side and a massive rail yard on another, the construction of the East Los Angeles Interchange further isolated them from the rest of the city, and the closure of the Pacific Electric Railway dramatically reduced the mobility of many of the projects' residents. By the 1970s, overcrowding had eliminated much of Aliso Village's once-vaunted green spaces, physical deterioration had become rampant, and gangs were an increasing problem. By 2000, HACLA wrote off both projects; Pico Gardens was razed and rebuilt, while Aliso Village was demolished and replaced with the New Urbanist, owner-occupied Pueblo del Sol "workforce housing" project.

Demographics

As of the census of 2000, there are 87,426 people in the neighborhood. The racial makeup of the neighborhood is 36.50% White (1.61% not of Hispanic origin), 0.98% African American, 1.11% Native American, 2.06% Asian, 0.08% Pacific Islander, 54.75% from other races, and 4.53% from two or more races. 94.95% of the population are Hispanic or Latino of any race.

Landmarks

• LAC+USC/Los Angeles General County Hospital/University of Southern California Health Sciences Campus
• Estrada Courts Murals

Notable Residents

• Antonio Villaraigosa, mayor of Los Angeles
• Jose Huizar, Democratic politician
• Nick Pacheco, Democratic politician

External links

• Boyle Heights: Neighborhood Sites and Insights
• Boyle Heights: Power of Place
• History of Aliso Village
• Breed Street Shul Project, Inc.