Curating the City: Eastside L.A.
Eastside Los Angeles
Overview
Los Angeles has always offered a unique landscape for preservation. Over time, its relatively young age and rich history have contributed to the conservation of both architecturally and culturally significant sites.
Emblematic of the city’s diversity, the Eastside has a dynamic heritage that weaves together stories from the Latinx, Japanese American, Jewish American, African American, Russian Molokan, Armenian, and Chinese American communities, among others.
For generations, Eastside neighborhoods such as Boyle Heights and unincorporated East Los Angeles have been the backdrop to changing settlement patterns and numerous significant historical events, creating a vibrant and layered cultural presence that remains today, even as area demographics shift.
Housing discrimination was commonplace in early twentieth-century Los Angeles, and local housing covenants often prohibited “non-Caucasians” (anyone of Jewish, Japanese, Mexican, Chinese, or African American descent) from living in certain neighborhoods. These restrictions contributed to the multiculturalism of the Eastside, outside the center of the city, where different communities intermingled and, in many cases, worked together to create social change.
This microsite offers a glimpse of three interconnected communities in the area’s history – Latinx, Japanese American, and Jewish American – with additional layers, locations, and stories to be added over time.
Use these pages to explore historic places in Boyle Heights and East Los Angeles, and share your stories about these and other important Eastside sites!
Special thanks to Marisela Ramirez, one of the Conservancy’s 2014 Getty Multicultural Undergraduate Interns, for her contributions to this project.
Jewish American Heritage
Throughout the 1920s and ’30s, about forty percent of the population in Boyle Heights was Jewish. The core of the community was Brooklyn Avenue, since renamed Cesar E. Chavez Avenue, which hosted a string of Jewish-owned businesses, including the original Canter’s Deli.
Distinct from the upwardly mobile Jewish community that emerged in Hollywood and the Westside before World War II, Jews in Boyle Heights were primarily working-class families of Eastern European descent, largely secular, and politically engaged. A number of influential labor unions opened offices on Brooklyn Avenue, in close proximity to their members. Yiddish was widely spoken throughout the neighborhood.
Following the 1948 Supreme Court decision that declared restrictive covenants unconstitutional, more and more Jewish families began moving to the expanding suburbs in the western region of the city. Similarly, the newfound ease of obtaining home loans further propelled the Jewish out-migration, contributing to a major demographic shift in the Eastside. Those who remained in Boyle Heights deepened their connections with the rapidly growing Latinx community.
During this period, the tradition of multiculturalism and leftist political activism that had come to characterize Boyle Heights continued to flourish, and the local Jewish community continued to grow more secular. By the late 1950s, however, most families had relocated to other neighborhoods, although a number of Jewish businesses along the Brooklyn Avenue corridor kept their doors open over the next few decades.
Today, a handful of places associated with Jewish history in the Eastside remain.
One of the most recognizable Jewish monuments in Boyle Heights is the Breed Street Shul, known as the “Queen of the Shuls.” With 75,000 members at its peak, it was the largest congregation west of Chicago. Canter’s Deli, now a Fairfax District institution, originally opened its doors on Brooklyn Avenue in 1931.
During the 1920s, cosmetics pioneer Max Factor made his home in Boyle Heights, drawn by the thriving Jewish community and easy access to downtown.
The Jewish Home for the Aged, which first opened in 1916, took on new life in the 1970s as the Keiro Retirement Home, which today serves Los Angeles’ Japanese American community.
East Los Angeles is home to two Jewish cemeteries – Home of Peace and Mount Zion – that serve as the final resting places of many influential Angelenos. Among the notable burials at Home of Peace are Curly and Shemp Howard (two members of The Three Stooges), Fanny Brice, Louis B. Mayer, and Harry, Jack, and Sam Warner (co-founders of the Warner Brothers film studios).
In nearby City Terrace, located in the hills above East Los Angeles, the Menorah Center on Wabash Avenue hosted community ceremonies and offered social services from the 1920s through the 1950s. In 1966, the building was purchased by the Salesian Boys and Girls Club, which continues to operate the building today.
Japanese American History
Japanese immigration to the United States first began to boom in the 1880s, following the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. The absence of Chinese laborers created tremendous opportunities for other low-wage workers, although Japanese immigration would be curtailed in the early twentieth century due to an agreement between the U.S. and Japan.
After the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco, many Japanese Americans migrated to Los Angeles and settled in the area that would eventually be known as Little Tokyo. During the 1910s and ’20s, the community expanded along the First Street corridor into Boyle Heights, contributing to the multicultural identity of the Eastside.
The entry of the U.S. into World War II had a dramatic impact on the local community. In 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order No. 9066, which allowed for the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese and Japanese Americans, primarily those living on the West Coast.
Homes and businesses throughout the Eastside were vacated as local residents were uprooted. The population of the Eastside ballooned after the war ended, as both servicemen and the Japanese community returned to their homes.
Like other minority groups, Japanese Americans faced widespread discrimination, even before World War II.
Prejudices among medical professionals prompted Mary Akita, Los Angeles’ first Japanese American nurse, to open her home as a maternity hospital for Issei (first-generation immigrant) women. The maternity hospital became known as Turner Hospital, the precursor to the 1929 Japanese Hospital. The Japanese Hospital was established as a result of a seminal case before the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that the State of California could not deny the application of five Issei doctors to incorporate a proposed medical facility in Boyle Heights.
A short distance from the Japanese Hospital is Tenrikyo Church, established in 1934. This location serves as the national administrative headquarters for all Tenrikyo Churches. It also has an adjacent Japanese library and a dojo that has been instrumental in making Judo an Olympic sport.
The Maravilla Handball Court and El Centro Grocery (1920s, 1946) exemplify the multiculturalism of the Eastside, including the ongoing presence of the Japanese American community. Although the handball court primarily served the local Mexican American community, the neighborhood of Maravilla was also home to Irish, German, Japanese, and Armenian immigrants in the early twentieth century.
In the 1950s, Shigeru “Tommy” and Michiyo “Michi” Nishiyama began renting El Centro Grocery and lived in a residence that had been constructed on the property. The couple moved to Maravilla after Michi was released from an Idaho internment camp, and they quickly became fixtures of the community.
In 1971, they purchased the handball court and grocery store, turning the site into the primary social and cultural center in Maravilla. Tommy himself was a member of the still-active Maravilla Handball Club. The couple passed away in the mid-2000s, and their son leases the property today to the Maravilla Historical Society. The handball court and grocery store were listed on the California Register of Historical Resources in 2012.
Latinx Heritage
Twentieth-century Mexican settlement in the Eastside can be traced to the 1910s and 1920s, during a period of rapid industrial development in the area known as Sonoratown within the City of Los Angeles.
Workers living in Sonoratown, the traditional barrio located near El Pueblo downtown, moved just east of the city limits to the newly established community of Belvedere, drawn by the availability of inexpensive housing and new job opportunities.
The 1910 Mexican Revolution also propelled the development of the area, as thousands of Mexicans immigrated to Los Angeles in the wake of the conflict. In the decades following World War II, the Eastside became predominantly Latinx as other communities moved to the city’s expanding suburbs.
Places such as the Boyle Hotel, Our Lady of Solitude, Wyvernwood Garden Apartments, and the Maravilla Handball Court demonstrate the unique character that this longstanding community has brought to the Eastside. Within unincorporated East Los Angeles, several distinct neighborhoods, including Maravilla, Belvedere, and City Terrace, have emerged over time, each with a unique cultural identity.
In addition to significant population shifts, the Eastside was the backdrop for the rise of an important resistance movement in the postwar era.
In the 1960s, activists organized to protest widespread social discrimination against Mexican Americans in what would be called the Chicano Movement. In 1968, students and teachers from East Los Angeles high schools carried out a series of protests known as the East Los Angeles Walkouts or the Chicano Blowouts, which focused largely on educational inequality in local schools, but also aimed to draw attention to other restrictions on residents’ civil rights.
A definitive moment in the Latinx history of the Eastside was the 1970 Chicano Moratorium.
After decades of discrimination, an increase in police brutality, and frustration over the disproportionate number of Mexican American soldiers dying in the Vietnam War, Chicanxs throughout Los Angeles organized the Chicano Moratorium as part of a national movement to protest the war and advocate for social justice at home.
Between 20,000 and 30,000 people participated in the peaceful demonstration that occurred on August 29, 1970 in East Los Angeles. The Chicano Moratorium began at Belvedere Park and followed a route along Atlantic and Whittier Boulevards, ending with a rally at Laguna Park.
Following reports of an incident unrelated to the Moratorium at a nearby liquor store, violence erupted between law enforcement and protestors, ultimately resulting in the death of three people, among them Ruben Salazar. Salazar, a noted Chicano journalist for the Los Angeles Times, was killed in the Silver Dollar Bar and Café by a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy.
One month after the Moratorium, Laguna Park was renamed “Ruben F. Salazar Park” in honor of the reporter, who was the first in the mainstream American media to write about the social unrest in the Chicanx community. A new plaque with information on Salazar’s life was unveiled on August 29, 2014 at Salazar Park, an effort spearheaded by County Supervisor Gloria Molina’s office in collaboration with community activists.
The Eastside has long fostered a vibrant Latinx cultural scene that continues to enliven its historic places today.
Sites such as the Self Help Graphics and Art building, Estrada Courts, and El Mercado embody the artistic movements and rituals that define East Los Angeles and Boyle Heights to this day. For decades, the area has been the epicenter of Chicanx muralism in Los Angeles, with thousands of murals paying tribute to the community’s heritage and empowering locals through stories of both struggle and triumph.
The Chicanx rock scene brought the experiences of barrio life to broad audiences with the rise of Eastside bands such as Cannibal and the Headhunters and Los Lobos. Countless cultural traditions, including the annual procession in honor of Our Lady of Guadalupe at Soledad Church, continue today.
