East Hollywood History

History

East Hollywood History

Early Days

The first inhabitants of East Hollywood were the Cahug-Na Indians, who lived in the area spanning from modern-day Hollywood to Atwater Village. The Spanish settlers named them and their area "Cahuenga."

In 1887, just 37 years after California gained statehood, a town named Prospect Park was established to the east of the then-newly named rancho called Hollywood, located some four miles northwest of Los Angeles.

The Turn of the 20th Century

Prospect Park (East Hollywood) in the early 1900s. The two men are standing on what is now Barnsdall Park.

By 1900, Hollywood was a farming village of 500 people. Crops also grew in nearby Prospect Park: oranges, avocados, bananas, and wheat grew on the site of what is now Los Angeles City College, and north toward the present Los Feliz area. Prospect Park was renamed “East Hollywood” to more closely associate itself with the booming town to the west which even then was on its way to legendary status.

The 'Teens

In 1910, the people of the towns of Hollywood and East Hollywood voted to be annexed to the City of Los Angeles. Many other towns and communities at the time chose to join the growing city in order to have access to its water system, which had just opened the Los Angeles Aqueduct, piping in water from Owens Valley to the north.

In the ‘Teens, East Hollywood, now a part of the growing city, started to develop. In 1914, Childrens Hospital relocated to Vermont Avenue and Sunset Boulevard from downtown Los Angeles. In 1916, a branch of the Los Angeles Public Library – the Cahuenga Branch - was built with money donated by steel magnate Andrew Carnegie on Santa Monica Boulevard.

The Childrens Hospital Los Angeles facilty under construction in its new home on Sunset and Vermont, 1913.

In 1917, the community was predominantly white/Anglo-Saxon. Less than four percent of its residents were nonwhite (mostly African-American or Japanese).

The nascent motion picture industry grew up in East Hollywood as well - the Fine Art Studios was located here. In fact, the set of its most famous film, Intolerance, was located at the present-day site of Vons Market at Virgil and Sunset. The William Fox Studio (predecessor to 20^th Century Fox) stood on Sunset and Western Avenue (now the Ralphs supermarket).

Looking north at the intersection of Western and Fernwood avenues (just south of Sunset Boulevard), The William Fox Studios operated out of East Hollywood from 1917-1924 before moving west to what is now Century City. Fox's studios merged with Darryl F. Zanuck's 20th Century Pictures to become the 20th Century Fox Corporation. Today, the old Fox studio lot is now a Ralphs supermarket and the BRO (formerly Color By DeLuxe) postproduction studio.

The Los Angeles Normal School, an institution which trained teachers, was established along Vermont Avenue in the ‘Teens. In 1919, the school was acquired by the University of California Regents and was designated the “University of California, Southern Branch.”

The 1920s & 1930s

In the early 1920s, Barnsdall Park was built. The Roaring ‘20s also became a time when the world came to East Hollywood. Halfway around the world, as the Bolsheviks established the Soviet Union, Russian immigrants who fled their motherland during the communist revolution came to East Hollywood. Survivors of the 1915 Armenian Genocide by the Turkish Ottoman Empire found their new home here, establishing our Armenian community.

At the end of the ‘20s, the University of California Southern Branch, seeing the need for a much larger campus, relocated twelve miles west in a ranch named Westwood, and became UCLA. The old campus then became Los Angeles Junior College, later renamed Los Angeles City College.

In 1930, East L.A.'s Kaspare Cohn Hospital moved to a new building on Fountain Avenue and renamed itself the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital.

Despite the Great Depression in the early 1930s, a single-family home building boom was going on here in East Hollywood – most of our homes were built during this period.

The 1940s & 1950s

East Hollywood was home to a Japanese-American community dating back to the 'Teens. Centered around the Melrose/Virgil area, businesses such as markets, florists/nurseries and restaurants were present here. But suddenly, as Americans of Japanese descent were relocated to internment camps during World War II, the community vanished. Following the war, after being released from the camps, most of them never returned here.

The Hollywood Freeway was built from 1947-1949 and affected the area considerably. Houses were razed, and residents were forced to relocate.

The 1950’s saw modern-day East Hollywood take shape. Kaiser Hospital was built along Sunset Boulevard in 1953. L.A. City College's campus expanded. A few new apartments were built, but hardly any new single homes.

The 1960s & 1970s

With the 1960’s, the neighborhood continued to change. The area's white residents gradually moved to suburbs such as the San Fernando Valley and Orange County. Blacks and new immigrants from Asia and Latin America moved in.

In the early 1970’s, East Hollywood became the place where many newly arrived immigrants found their first home and began the difficult task of adapting to life in America.

In 1970, 53.3 per cent of area residents were either foreign-born or had foreign-born parents. More than 25 per cent spoke Spanish as their native language; more than 20 per cent were Asians: Japanese Chinese, Filipinos, Koreans and Thai. There was a stable Arab population and natives of Russia, France, Greece, Hungary, and Poland. The black population comprised about 5 percent and centered around the area directly adjacent to the Cahuenga library.

In 1976, The Cedars of Lebanon Hospital, after having merged with the Westside's Mt. Sinai Hospital, moved out of its building on Fountain Avenue into a new hospital complex near Beverly Hills, becoming Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Today the old Cedars of Lebanon building is now the Church of Scientology.

Since then, there have been a large increase in Asians, especially Koreans and Filipinos. New immigrants from Russia, mainly Armenian and Jewish, also arrived. The Arab population has increased, while Armenians from Arabic-speaking countries were on the rise.

The 1980s & 1990s

There was relative prosperity in East Hollywood during the 1980s -- more immigrant businesses sprang up, but at the same time the consequences of economy also shifted things around. The closure of the Ralphs supermarket on Santa Monica and Vermont was a great loss to residents in the area, who had to go a few blocks farther for their grocery needs. Banks also moved out of the area, due to mergers and demographic shifts. And many negative signs of urbanization -- namely gang violence, homelessness and increased traffic and pollution -- were more evident in the '80s.

In 1984, East Hollywood shared the Olympic glory as thousands of residents witnessed the torch relay pass through Vermont Avenue on its way to the Coliseum.

Two runners have just passed the Olympic flame as the torch relay passes through East Hollywood in July 1984. Here, the relay is running northbound on Vermont Avenue at Santa Monica Boulevard, zig-zaging its way around Los Angeles en route to the Coliseum. The LaunderLand Coin-Op Laundry (background) was burned down in the 1992 Los Angeles Riots and was eventually razed to make way for a Metro Red Line subway station.

In April 1992, the Los Angeles Riots changed East Hollywood forever, as many of its businesses were looted and burned, namely around the Santa Monica/Vermont intersection and in other parts of the area. The 1994 Northridge earthquake also caused further damage, severely damaging several buildings along Hollywood Boulevard. But despite the destruction, East Hollywood sprang back.

The late '90s saw a period of recovery and growth. Businesses destroyed by the Riots and the earthquake were soon rebuilt or repaired. In 1996 Cahuenga Library reopened after several years of renovation. That same year, the East Hollywood Community Association was established by concerned residents who wanted to make a difference in improving the neighborhood. In the summer of 1999, the Metro Red Line subway stations at Santa Monica/Vermont, Sunset/Vermont and Hollywood/Western gave East Hollywood increased transportation options and a link to the rest of the region via the new Metro Rail system.

The 21st Century

East Hollywood continues to grow. Its institutions such as Kaiser Hospital, Childrens Hospital, Los Angeles City College and Barnsdall Park are either expanding or being renovated, and new elementary schools are being built along Santa Monica Boulevard, while more businesses are finding East Hollywood to be a great area to locate to. But now with 51,000 residents, the challenge for the future is not only to improve the quality of life for its residents, but to accomodate for an even larger population expected in the decades to come.

Do you have any pictures or memories of East Hollywood prior to the 1970s? Please share them with us via e-mail.