West Adams
West Adams is a district of the American city of Los Angeles .
location
West Adams is located in South Los Angeles , just south of the Santa Monica Freeway and borders Arlington Heights , Baldwin Hills / Crenshaw , Culver City , Jefferson Park , Leimert Park, and Mid-City .
population
West Adams is mostly inhabited by Latinos (56.2%) and African Americans (37.6%). According to the 2000 census, a total of 21,764 people lived in the district.
history
In 1902 an agricultural area was developed under the name West Adams Heights . The West Adams Heights area was bounded by Adams Boulevard, La Salle Avenue, Washington Boulevard, and Western Avenue. A wide boulevard had been built to provide access, granite monuments marked the driveways, and the area had its own gas lanterns for lighting. It was the first neighborhood planned for the Los Angeles upper class. Buyers of the large lots had to commit themselves in covenents (a form of easement under American law) to build at least two-story houses a certain distance from the street. At the same time, buyers and future owners were prohibited in these covenants from selling the land to non-whites . Mostly along South Harvard Boulevard there were villas in the Victorian style of the time. But over the next two decades, West Adams Heights gradually lost its reputation as the very first address in the Los Angeles area in favor of Beverly Hills, for example . This was accelerated in the aftermath of the Great Depression when some owners who stayed were forced to sell their homes. The now growing African American middle and upper classes saw this development as an opportunity to shop in better areas like West Adams Heights . The first African American to settle here with his family was Norman Houston, the co-founder and president of Golden State Mutual Life Insurance , in 1938 . It was followed by celebrities like Francis Williams , Sidney P. Dones , Wonderful Smith , Zutty Singleton , and the first black winner of the Oscar, Hattie McDaniel . During this time the residential area became known as Sugar Hill , named after Sugar Hill in Harlem . In particular, parties celebrated by McDaniel drew Hollywood stars like Agnes Moorehead , Esther Williams and Clark Gable .
1945 began what would go down in civil rights history as the Sugar Hill Case . Eight remaining white neighbors filed suits in Los Angeles Superior Court to enforce the covenants and force their black neighbors to give up their properties. The defendants were represented by Loren Miller , an attorney for the NAACP . He argued that the covenents were unenforceable for violating the California Constitution and the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution . For the first time in US legal history, Judge Thurmond Clarke applied the constitutional amendment and found the black neighbors right.
During the 1950s, wealthy African Americans began moving to other areas, such as Baldwin Hills . What was left was a run-down residential area. In 1963 the Santa Monica Freeway was passed through Sugar Hill and divided the neighborhood.
architecture
In the North University Park area, there is the Menlo Avenue-West Twenty-ninth Street Historic District monument with historic rows of houses.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Mapping LA: West Adams
- ↑ a b Michael Smith, Greg Stegall: West Adams Heights: A Historic Neighborhood Faces Challenges. West Adams Heritage Association
- ↑ a b c d e f Hadley Meares: The thrill of Sugar Hill. Curbed Los Angeles, February 22, 2018.
- ↑ CALIFORNIA: Victory on Sugar Hill. In: Time Magazine . December 17, 1945.
