Echo Park

Echo Park
Neighborhood of Los Angeles
Echo Park, with the Downtown Los Angeles skyline in the background
Country	United States
State	California
County	County of Los Angeles
City	City of Los Angeles
Government
• City Council	Eric Garcetti, Ed Reyes
• State Assembly	Vacant
• State Senate	Carol Liu (D), Gil Cedillo (D)
• U.S. House	Xavier Becerra (D)
Area
• Total	2.4 sq mi (6 km2)
Population  (2000)
• Total	40,455
• Density	16,867/sq mi (6,512/km2)
	Population changes significantly depending on areas included.
ZIP Code	90026
Area code	213
Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument
Designated	March 1, 2006
Reference no.	836

Echo Park is a hilly neighborhood in Los Angeles, California, northwest of Downtown Los Angeles and southeast of Hollywood.

History

At the end of the 19th century, when the hills were still covered with native vegetation, a horse-drawn streetcar line served the dirt road that is now Echo Park Avenue. The community of Echo Park was founded by Thomas Kelly, a carriage maker turned real estate developer. In the late 1880s Kelly teamed up with a group of local investors, selling off pieces of what they called "the Montana Tract." Legend says that the lake got its name after workers building the reservoir remarked that their voices echoed off the canyon walls.

Echo Park was named Edendale before the construction of the park itself. The original name survives through the U.S. Post Office Edendale branch and the Edendale branch of the Los Angeles Public Library.

The Los Angeles film industry was centered in Echo Park (then called Edendale) before the studios moved to Hollywood, just before World War I. Mack Sennett's studio was in Echo Park until the end of the silent era, and a large number of silent comedies were shot in the neighborhood, as were several Laurel and Hardy, Charlie Chaplin, Our Gang, Ben Turpin, Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, Charley Chase, Chester Conklin, Three Stooges shorts, and perhaps most notably: the first pie-in-the-face short. Tom Mix also built his studio just over the hill in the Silverlake area, and many Westerns were shot in hills of Echo Park, East Silverlake and the Elysian Hills. Some of the earliest screen performers, including Gloria Swanson and Tom Mix, bought homes in the Angelino Heights and surrounding neighborhoods before moving to Hollywood and other areas.

The area has continued to be used as a location for films such as Chinatown, Echo Park, Kentucky Fried Movie, Mi Vida Loca, Tending Echo Park, Quinceanera and Columbus Day. The 1960s television series Gilligan's Island was shot in the area as well as scenes in Michael Jackson's 1983 music video Thriller, as were parts of the original 1953 film version of The War of the Worlds. The Manor, a house in the television series Charmed, is also located here. The area is popular with modern filmmakers for the pre-World War II look of some districts. Several references in the NBC TV series Chuck place Chuck Bartowski's fictional apartment in Echo Park.

Before World War I, Echo Park was a middle-class neighborhood, nicknamed "Red Hill" for a concentration of political radicals living there. (Itinerant folksinger Woody Guthrie lived on Preston Avenue at Ewing St. in the 1930s.) Since its earliest days, the neighborhood has been known to attract the creative, underground, independent, and iconoclastic elements of society. Postwar "white flight" to the suburbs resulted in the area becoming largely Latino, although there have been Latinos living there since the founding of the city in the late 18th century. Many working-class Chinese immigrants also settled in Echo Park due to its proximity to Chinatown, and the area overlaps the Little Manila district of Los Angeles, home to thousands of Filipinos; a small enclave of African-Americans has existed there, east of Alvarado St. and west of Bonnie Brae Street, since the 1920s. Renowned 1970s beauty queen, actress and model Veronica Porsche, third wife of boxer Muhammed Ali, came from this neighborhood. The Echo Park/Silverlake Food Conspiracy, an impromptu food coop run by former college and professional radicals, offered weekly political discussion groups as well as cheap groceries from 1969 through about 1980. Since the early 2000s, artists, actors, musicians and gay couples of all races have flocked the neighborhood for its relatively affordable housing and alternative feel, making it one of the most diversified communities in the United States.

Famous artist residents have included such luminaries as writers Leo Politi, Carey McWilliams, John Fante and Ayn Rand; painters Carlos Almaraz and Philip Dike, famed muralist Kent Twitchell, and film art director Albert Nozaki; actors Shia LaBeouf, Luis Cuevas, Anthony Quinn, Steve McQueen, Leonardo DiCaprio, Alessandro Nivola, Jack Webb, Ann Robinson, star of The War of the Worlds, and Charles Gemora, king of the Hollywood "gorilla men"; architect Richard Neutra and disciple Harwell Hamilton Harris; book seller and art dealer Jake Zeitlin; famed wood engraver Paul Landacre; opera singer Marilyn Horne and her husband, conductor Henry Lewis; jazz great Art Pepper; film director John Huston; filmmaker Monica Gazzo; African-American playwright, poet and screenwriter Lemar Randle Fooks; Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Lance Allan Ito, of O. J. Simpson trial fame (his mother was a kindergarten teacher for many years at Elysian Heights elementary school in Echo Park); as well as Edward Middleton Manigault, who organized the nation's first exhibition of modern art. The painter Jackson Pollock also made his home near here as a child. The singer Elliott Smith lived in this neighborhood in the final years of his life. Some residents during the 1960s and 70s era include J.D. Souther & Glenn Frey of the Eagles, Tom Waits, Jackson Browne, and Frank Zappa. The writer and poet Charles Bukowski was known to frequent the local dives, as did actor and Reservoir Dogs real-life tough-guy Lawrence Tierney.

Mystery writer Roger L. Simon lived in Echo Park and set many of his Moses Wine detective stories there.

Elysian Heights Elementary school was home to "Room 8 the Cat" [1] and Echo Park lake was home to "Pete" the Pelican, a wild pelican who made the lake his home for many years during the 1920s and enjoyed a great degree of fame at the time.

Echo Park was also home to famed hot-rod and race car builder Art Ingels, who in 1956, along with neighbor Lou Borelli, built the first Go-Kart in history using a surplus McCulloch West-Bend 750 lawnmower engine. Professional baseball player Luis (Lou) Gomez, who had been an outstanding prep star at Belmont High School, and played for the Minnesota Twins, the Toronto Blue Jays, and the Atlanta Braves during the 70s and 80s, resided here as well. Baseball immortal Babe Ruth himself maintained a bachelor's pad at the Crown Hill apartments in South Echo Park for much of the 1920s and 30s.

Jerry Rubin, American social activist and member of the Chicago Seven, lived here and ran a legal and civil rights office on the southwest corner of Echo Park Avenue and Sunset Blvd. for much of the 70s and 80s. In 1993, the movie Mi Vida Loca, written and directed by Echo Park resident Allison Anders, was filmed in Echo Park; detailing the Latino girl gang culture in the neighborhood at the time. In 1999, the diary film Tending Echo Park by experimental filmmaker Monica Gazzo was completed and presented at the Egyptian Theatre and the Director's Guild, Hollywood. The film has also screened at the Pacific Film Archives, Berkeley, numerous venues in California, including Echo Park Film Center, and at film festivals nationwide.

The commercial district along Sunset Boulevard suffered greatly in the 1950s from the condemnation of the residences in nearby Chavez Ravine. The buildings were condemned for the purpose of building low-income public housing, but after the bond funding for the project failed to be approved, the ravine property was sold for one dollar by the city of Los Angeles to Walter O'Malley as the location for Dodger Stadium.

In 1969, Keith Barbour recorded a song titled "Echo Park". In 1997, The Blue Stingrays recorded the album Surf-N-Burn, with a cut titled "Echo Park". In 1977, Linda Ronstadt recorded the Warren Zevon song "Carmelita" on the album Simple Dreams, wherein she mentions the Pioneer Chicken stand on Echo Park Avenue. In 1980 Gary Numan mentions Echo Park in his single "I die: you die" and The Eels mention Echo Park in their 1996 album Beautiful Freak. British band Echo Park Orchestra produced their first album in 1995. Ryan Cabrera wrote a song titled "Echo Park" that is part of his mainstream debut album, Take It All Away. The song "Who Would've Thought" by punk rock band Rancid off the album Life Won't Wait is about Echo Park, and the obscure Heavy Metal ballad "Echo Park, After Dark" was recorded by Alfred Corpuz and the Alleyheads in 1980. British band Feeder also named their third album Echo Park released in 2001.

Poetry and literature readings have been a tradition with Echo Park and its residents since the early 1920s. Beginning in the late 1970s, the Temple Street Poets brought many diverse groups together for spoken-word gatherings at the Travellers Cafe on Temple Street. Unfortunately, faced with repeated attempts by Hollywood glitterati and their entourages to infiltrate the group, the Temple Street Poets disbanded by the middle 1980s rather than be co-opted. Spoken word readings, however, still continue in and around the neighborhood to this day; most specifically at the Little Joy Bar where the Echo Poets could be found reading and playing on Sunday nights until 2010, when they started meeting at nearby Silverlake Lounge. During the 1970s, the Travellers Cafe was frequented by Lawrence Tierney, Glen Frey, Tom Waits, Kent Twitchell, Carlos Almaraz, Doy Mercado, Linda Ronstadt and Charles Bukowski.

Attractions

Local attractions include Echo Park and its small lake, which at one time was said to contain the largest planting of lotuses outside Asia. The lotus plantings suffered significant die-back between 2005 and 2008, and have been completely gone since then; plans for re-planting (including solicitation of contributions) have apparently been put on hold, as of 2010-2011, pending some clearer understanding of the cause.

There is also a Cuban festival held annually on the Sunday closest to May 20,to commemorate Cuba's Independence from Spain and also to honor Cuban poet and patriot José Martí, who has a statue in the park.

Bordering the park are the cathedral of the Episcopal diocese of Los Angeles and the famous Angelus Temple, a large Foursquare Gospel church built by Canadian-born Pentecostal evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson in 1923.

The first totally enclosed film stage and studio in history , Keystone Studios, built by Mack Sennett in 1912 at 1712 Glendale Blvd in the Edendale quarter of Echo Park, still exists in all its structural entirety, though now passes time as a public storage facility. Some of the studio's original auxiliary buildings are also still standing ( with modified facades) on both sides of Glendale Blvd. An obelisk monument and bronze plaque commemorating Sennett's studio was located for many years in the patio area behind one of the Bert-Co Paper Company's buildings on 1855 Glendale Boulevard (which was actually the site of the Selig Polyscope studio), but was demolished, along with the Bert-Co plant, in September 2007 and the plaque stolen by vandals.

Lotus Festival

Lotus Festival at Echo Park, 2004

Given the large number of lotus plants that used to thrive and bloom in one end of the lake up until 2007, Echo Park has been the site of the annual Lotus Festival (originally called the "Day of the Lotus Festival"), a pan-Asian celebration complete with Chinese dragon boat races. The event has been held since 1972 and it showcases a different Asian ethnicity (such as Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Filipino, Bangladeshi, etc.) every year. It attracts Asian Americans as well as other local residents.

The program was "designed to create in the Southern California community an increased awareness of the contributions to our culture by Asian Americans," stated in the 1973 second annual program. Some of the masters of ceremonies during the early years included George Takei, Tritia Toyota, Sam Chu Lin, Victor Sen Yung and Mario Machado.

The festival itself came under criticism by locals in 1979, when festival directors refused to let the local garage band, The Alleyheads, which consisted of Asians, Latinos, and whites, play at the festival, yet allowed several tame white and Asian "pop" groups approved by the city, perform. The community was outraged that the festival directors did not let the Alleyheads play in favor of out-of-town performers. The Alleyheads persisted for three more years, but each time were refused by the festival committee and city managers. Complaints mounted until the city and festival committee dropped their ban on rock bands in the middle 1980s, but ironically hired only all-white rock bands at first, none of which were indigenous to Echo Park itself. This situation has since changed, however, and the festival now showcases a wide range of diverse musical acts and performers that better mirror the demographics of the City of Los Angeles and Pacific region to which it belongs.

Local organizations

Echo Park was home to the Metropolitan Street Hockey League (MSHL) from 1971 until 1977, one of the first organized street and roller hockey associations in the Los Angeles area, and which produced the Preston Avenue Sharks, winners of the Los Angeles street hockey City Championship in 1974, 1975 and 1976, the Atwater Open in 1974, the Melrose Open in 1975 and Echo Park Opens in 1973, 1975 and 1976, the Echo Park Jets, which won the City Championship in 1977 and Echo Park Open in 1974, and the Stadium Way Rangers, winners of the Atwater Open in 1975, the Melrose Open in 1976, and the City Championship in 1973. Another team from the league, the Coronado Terrace Mustangs, won the Echo Park, Melrose and Atwater Opens in 1977, becoming the only "Triple Crown" winner in history, and in 1978, won the Echo Park Open as an independent/at-large entry.

Echo Park is and continues to be home of the world famous, Echo Park Ducks, originally formed in 1967 as a loosely organized social, sports & community activist club, and which attracted many of the hippies and free spirits of the area at the time. They were immortalized when Billy Shire began selling the now famous Echo Park Ducks T-Shirt out of his Sunset Blvd store, The Soap Plant, in 1972.

Currently, Echo Park is home to many unique businesses, such as the Barragan's Restaurant, Echo Park Film Center, The Echo & The Echoplex, Machine Project, The Echo Park Time Travel Mart (see 826LA), Vlaze Media Networks, Inc. (vlaze.com), Epitaph Records, Taix French restaurant, Origami Vinyl, live music venues and art galleries including the Echo Curio Curiosity Shop & Art Gallery. Many small independent boutiques and coffee shops have blossomed along Sunset Blvd and the northern most part of Echo Park Boulevard going up into the hills. Echo Park Avenue is featured in the 2009 Train music video, "Hey Soul Sister."

Echo Park is also home to community-service organizations including El Centro del Pueblo, and religious institutions including Angelus Temple, and the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles' Cathedral Center of St. Paul.

Milestones

Echo Park was named one of the Top 10 Great Neighborhoods for 2008 by The American Planning Association (APA). Echo Park was chosen due to "its historic architecture, breathtaking hillside topography, walkable and pedestrian-friendly streets, and engaged residents who have worked hard to protect and preserve their community," according to an APA release. Echo Park is a diverse community home to working class families and blossoming artists, and has had to work twice as hard as other communities to create, maintain and advocate for their great community. The community is remarkably dynamic with countless ethnic groups at all income levels. Today, Echo Park is home not only to the annual Lotus Festival, the Cuban Festival, and Historic Filipinotown but also 4-star dining alongside spectacular burrito stands. The area features perfectly preserved craftsman-style homes, as well as modern architecture, great schools, parks and libraries. APA Executive Director Paul Farmer said "the neighborhood has a long history of citizen activism that has inspired not only spirited public debate, but also committed and motivated residents who are helping to keep Echo Park a great place to live."

Boundaries

According to the Echo Park Historical Society (EPHS), there are no official boundaries for LA's Echo Park neighborhood. It is documented that the southern part of Echo Park was separated from its northern section by the construction of the 101 freeway in the 1950s. Also, the 2 Freeway cut off a large western section of the neighborhood on its most northern part. History proves, however, that there are some general boundaries:

Western Boundary (starting from Beverly Blvd going North): Benton Way to Waterloo Street then continue moving north where it hits Glendale Blvd. and up Allesandro St.

Northern Boundary: Riverside Drive, Fargo Street, California State Route 2(Glendale Blvd North exit)

Eastern Boundary: Beaudry (north of Sunset Blvd), Harbor Freeway (the area south of Sunset Blvd.)

Southern Boundary: Beverly Blvd.

Echo Park itself consists, in whole or in part, of the neighborhoods of Echo Park (the area immediately surrounding the lake and extending approximately a mile north on Echo Park Avenue), Angelino Heights, Colton Hill/Belmont Heights, Victor Heights, Edendale, Elysian Heights, Temple-Beaudry, Historic Filipinotown, and Sunset Heights.

Government and infrastructure

The New Rampart Police Station

Local government

Los Angeles Fire Department Station 20 is in the area.

Los Angeles Police Department operates the Rampart Community Police Station at 1401 West 6th St., 90017.

County, state, and federal representation

The Los Angeles County Department of Health Services operates the Central Health Center in Downtown Los Angeles, serving Echo Park.

The United States Postal Service Edendale Post Office is located at 1525 North Alvarado Street.

Education

Primary and secondary schools

Public schools

Thomas Starr King Middle School

Echo Park is zoned into the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Residents are zoned to Logan Street Elementary School, Clifford Street School, Mayberry Street Elementary School, Elysian Heights Elementary School, Betty Plasencia Elementary School, Rosemont Avenue School and Union Avenue School.

Most residents are zoned to Thomas Starr King Middle School and Belmont High School.

Others get accepted to Downtown Magnets High School which consists of 3 magnets: Business, Electronics, and Fashion.

In 2007, LAUSD used eminent domain to remove 50 homes in order to build a new school.

Private schools

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles operates Our Lady of Loretto Elementary School, located at 258 North Union Avenue since 1921, and St. Teresa of Avila.

Public libraries

Los Angeles Public Library operates two branches in Echo Park: Echo Park Branch and Edendale Branch.

Notable residents

• Darwin William Tate, Los Angeles City Council member, 1933–39
• Los Angeles Derby Dolls
• Roy Hampton (ca. 1901–1953), Los Angeles City Council member, 1939–41
• Elliott Smith

See also

• List of Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monuments in Silver Lake, Angelino Heights, and Echo Park
• Mi Vida Loca
• Quinceañera (film)

External links

• Echo Park Chamber of Commerce
• Echo Park Historical Society
• The Eastsider LA A primary news source for Echo Park and surrounding neighborhoods
• Echo Park Now News and Information about Echo Park happenings and history
• Echo Park Online - The social networking site and blogging platform for residents, businesses, non-profits, causes and activists in L.A.'s oldest neighborhood
• Short history of Echo Park
• Edendale Farm CSA and Learning Center