Baldwin Hills, Los Angeles
This article is about the district in California. For the BET reality TV show, see Baldwin Hills (TV series).
Baldwin Hills is a district in southwestern Los Angeles, California, in South Los Angeles. It is located on the central hills overlooking the Los Angeles Basin, and in the flats immediately to their north. Baldwin Hills and other surrounding geography are named for the famous 19th century horse racing pioneer, Elias J. "Lucky" Baldwin. Baldwin Hills Estates is one of the wealthiest majority-African American areas in the United States, and is sometimes called "the Black Beverly Hills".[1]
Sub-divisions of 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). 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). The southern 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.
West of the major thoroughfare, La Brea, is Baldwin Vista, with slightly smaller homes, but a more secluded ambience.[2] North of Coliseum Street, Baldwin Vista consists largely of the Village Green, a "garden city" housing development, which was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 2001. The units seldom have more than two bedrooms, and tend to attract seniors and younger professionals as residents.
Baldwin Hills' northeastern, flat section, between King Drive and La Brea, consists largely of two-story apartment buildings of ten or more units, often originally surrounding a swimming pool, built in the late 1950s. Called "The Jungle" because of its lush landscaping, since the mid-1980s the city has promoted use of the name "Baldwin Village".[3] 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 Santa Barbara Avenue (now Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard), 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 entryways gated, and its swimming pools filled in.
The Baldwin Hills were the site of the very first Olympic Village, built for the 1932 Summer Olympic Games, held in Los Angeles. 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 village was torn down after the games.[4]
Geography
Baldwin Hills is bordered on the southeast by Inglewood, on the south by View Park-Windsor Hills, on the west by Culver City, on the north by Mid-City, and on the east by the Crenshaw district of Los Angeles. The district's ZIP code is 90008.
The Baldwin Hills that are the namesake of the neighborhood have long been drilled for petroleum. As the oil companies leave, some of their properties are being taken over by public agencies. One section has been designated the Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area.
Demographics
African Americans make up approximately 78.5% of Baldwin Hills' population in zip code 90008,[5]. It is one of the wealthiest majority-black areas in the United States. Prior to 1965, it was known as "Pill Hill" because a large number of doctors were believed to live there. After African Americans began moving into the area, it was given nicknames such as the Golden Ghetto and the Black Beverly Hills. It has been home to such celebrities as Ray Charles, Tina Turner, Nancy Wilson, Oscar-nominated film director John Singleton, and the late Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley. Like nearby Ladera Heights and View Park -Windsor Hills, it has seen a recent influx of white, Asian, and Latino families drawn to its convenient location, large homes and historic architecture.
Disasters
Baldwin Hills has experienced several natural and human-caused disasters. On December 14, 1963, the Baldwin Hills Reservoir (in what is now Kenneth Hahn State Park), situated in the hills above many expensive homes, began to crack. Within a few hours, the leak from the small crack had expanded to a torrent of water that cascaded through a growing gaping hole down the canyon along Cloverdale Avenue. Many homes were washed away and destroyed. Most of Baldwin Vista, 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 Baldwin Hills and Silverlake. The dam was not repaired, and it was eventually filled in to form part of Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area.
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[2]; the arsonist was never caught.
Education
The neighborhood is zoned to Los Angeles USD schools [1].
The schools include:
- Baldwin Hills Elementary School
- Audubon Middle School
- Susan Miller Dorsey High School
The area is served by several other schools, including Windsor Math/Science/Aerospace Magnet (K-5, zoned only for Kindergarten) and Hillcrest Drive Elementary School.
The Marlton School and the New Designs Charter School are also in the area.
Los Angeles Public Library operates the Baldwin Hills Branch.
Media
In 2007, BET began airing Baldwin Hills, a program featuring several African-American teenagers and their lives in the upper-middle class Los Angeles community.[6] [7]
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 (web series) as it features African-Americans of upper-middle class families who divide their time between attending school, playing sports, shopping at high-end outlets, and driving expensive cars. The third season of BET's Baldwin Hills is currently airing.
Orson Scott Card's Magic Street is set in Baldwin Hills.
See also
References
- ^
Hale, Mike (2007-08-07). "Posh Princes and Princesses of the Hills". New York Times. Retrieved 2008-08-13.
{{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=(help); Italic or bold markup not allowed in:|publisher=(help) - ^ a b Pollard-Terry, Gayle, "Neighborly Advice: [Baldwin Hills Estates:] Years Later, The Pitch Still Delivers," Los Angeles Times, 29 Oct 2006, p. K2.
- ^ Hayasaki, Erika (2006-09-30). "Gang Violence Fuels Racial Tensions". Los Angeles Times.
- ^ 1932 Los Angeles Olympic Athlete's Village in the Baldwin Hills, Accessed November 12, 2007.
- ^ U.S. Census Bureau data on zip code 90008
- ^ About The Show
- ^ Can "Baldwin Hills" become the black "Laguna Beach"?
External links
- Friends of the Baldwin Hills
- The Baldwin Hills Conservancy
- Article on Village Green
- Village Green Web site
- Kenneth Hahn State Park
- Baldwin Hills dam
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