Arts District, Los Angeles

Arts District
Neighborhood of Los Angeles

The Arts District
Arts District

Location within Downtown Los Angeles

Coordinates: 34°02′28″N 118°13′59″W / 34.04117°N 118.23298°W / 34.04117; -118.23298
Country  United States
State  California
County County of Los Angeles
City  Los Angeles
Government
 • City Council José Huizar
 • U.S. House Xavier Becerra
Area code(s) 213

The Arts District lies on the eastern edge of Downtown Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, United States. The gritty area has given new life to old industrial buildings whose history often dates to the early 20th century.[1] While much of the early creative art was done behind closed doors, the street scene has slowly been activated in the early years of the 21st century as more and more factories are creatively reused with some new construction interspersed. Art galleries have opened and given recognition to the area amidst the entire downtown where Art museums and additional galleries can be found.[2] The city community planning boundaries are Alameda Street on the west which blends into Little Tokyo, First Street on the north, the Los Angeles River to the east, and Violet Street on the south.

Early history

Vignes Street winds through the northeastern edge of the Arts District, parallel to and a couple of blocks west of the broad cement trench that memorializes the L.A. River. It is named for Jean-Louis Vignes, an aging adventurer and vintner who arrived in Los Angeles in 1831 by way of the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) and Bordeaux. He planted grapes on 104 acres moistened by the seasonal river, ocean mists and sparse rains. The hardy Cabernet and Sauvignon Blanc vines imported from the south of France thrived there and by 1849 El Aliso, as the Vignes vineyard was called, was the largest producer of wine in California The grapes are gone, but the San Antonio Winery just north of the community is a reminder of the area’s past.

By the late 19th century, oranges and grapefruit had replaced grapes as the principal agricultural products of the area and the property west of the riverbank was thick with citrus groves. The groves provided a location for filmmaker DW Griffith who filmed parts of Hollywood’s first feature film (In Old California) there in 1909. A single grapefruit tree remains, towering over the Japanese American Plaza off San Pedro Street and Azusa.

Somewhere near Third Street and Alameda, the area’s first commercial arts enterprise opened as a print shop that employed artists from around the region who vied to create the most intriguing labels for the boxes of citrus fruit shipped across the country.

The growing Santa Fe Freight Depot and warehouses created to serve the citrus industry’s shipping needs determined the area’s economic character for most of the next century and is responsible for the architectural flavor of the Arts District structures that have survived earthquakes, flood and fire. The single room hotels for rail workers to the northwest and the growth of Little Tokyo to the west and Chinatown to the north created a mix that was working class, cosmopolitan and a bit exotic in a manner similar to other West Coast urban centers.

By World War II, the citrus groves had been replaced by factories and the rail freight business was giving way to the trucking industry. The area had taken on an industrial character that was growing seedy around the edges.[3] Over the next twenty years, many of the independent small manufacturers had either been absorbed by larger competitors, grown too big for their quarters – or simply failed—and an increasing number of vacant warehouse and former factory spaces contributed to a dingy, decaying urban environment typical of many aging big American cities of the era.

Art scene

In 1969, Allen Ruppersberg presented Al's Cafe at 1913 West Sixth Street.[4]

In the mid-'70s, a handful of artists, including Joel Bass, Dan Citron, Woods Davy, Marc Kreisel, Jon Peterson, Stephen Seemayer, Maura Sheehan, Coleen Sterritt, Sydney Littenberg, Peter Zecher, and others saw opportunity in the empty buildings and began colonizing the area, converting former industrial and commercial spaces into working studios, sometimes renting space for as little as a three cents a square foot and carving out living quarters. This resulted in a surge of artistic activity, culminating in the highly controversial "Downtown L.A. in Santa Barbara" exhibition, organized by Betty Klausner for the Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, which is now known as the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara. By the mid eighties, the following artists were also living downtown: Linda Frye Burman, James Croak, Merion Estes, Joe Fay, George Herms, Mary Jones, Constance Mallinson, Paul McCarthy, Margaret Nielson, Richard Newton, Margit Omar, Lari Pittman, John Schroeder, Judy Simonian,Andy Wilf, and Takako Yamaguchi. Stephen Seemayer's film The Young Turks(2012) documents the 1979–1981 years.

In 1979, Marc Kreisel opened Al's Bar (no relation to Al's Cafe) in the American Hotel on Hewitt just off Traction. This legendary punk rock venue was the training ground for Sonic Youth, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Beck, the Fall, the Residents, introducing generations of Angelenos to dozens of emerging groups.[5] The popular sound band "Party Boys" played the bars and art events.Also known as the downtown artists' central meeting place, Al's Bar occasionally hosted art exhibitions. Al's Bar, the west coast's oldest punk club, finally closed in 2001, and the American Hotel received a facelift in 2012 and was renamed the American Apartments.[6]

LA Artcore, founded in 1976 by Lydia Takeshita with the purpose of exhibiting local artists, exists today in locations at the Brewery Art Colony and in Little Tokyo. The Atomic Cafe on 1st Street at Alameda was an artists and musicians haunt in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) created exhibitions at its gallery space, located in the late 70s on Broadway St before moving to Industrial Street in the 1980s. Several commercial art galleries, including Oranges and Sardines, Kirk DeGoyer Gallery, the Downtown Gallery, Vanguard Gallery, Exile, and Galleria by the Water opened in the late seventies, only to close in the early eighties. Cirrus Editions, the first gallery to open downtown, remains open.

Around 1980, Jon Peterson and Stephen Seemayer opened “DTLA," a club that had exactly one show before it closed, adjacent the Atomic Cafe. High Performance Magazine used DTLA as its performance space until its one-year lease was up. During that year, Paul McCarthy performed Monkey Man during the Public Spirit Performance Festival, Part 1.[7] The name DTLA was later adopted by the neighboring coffee house where Beck got his start.

In 1981, the City of Los Angeles passed its "Artist in Residence" or "AIR" ordinance, which allowed residential use of formerly industrial and commercially zoned buildings; artists had long used such spaces as living quarters illegally, and the AIR law sought to bring this practice into legality and regulation.[8] Art galleries, cafes and performance venues opened as the live/work population grew. During the '80s, Bedlam, created by artist Jim Fittipaldi, on 6th Street (and later, briefly, in the former premises of Al’s bar) was a salon with drawing workshops, art installations, theater, live music and a speakeasy. Dangerous Curve, on a dangerous curve of 4th Place between Mateo and Molino, put on exhibitions of artists whose work was often difficult to categorize. The Spanish Kitchen, a warehouse space on Third near Traction, was home to series of happenings, events, raves, installations and blowout parties. It now houses the 3rd Steakhouse and Lounge, an eatery that hosts community events and exhibitions of works by local artists. Cocola (later known as the 410 Boyd St. Bar and Grill), the legendary artists’ bar just west of the Arts District, lives on as Escondite.

In 1985, Fritz Frauchiger curated "Off the Street," a "one-time art exhibition" sponsored by the Cultural Affairs Department in the Old City Print Shop, which featured paintings, sculptures, photographs and installations by 48 Los Angeles artists, most of whom lived downtown.[9]

In 1994, the nonprofit group Downtown Arts Development Association (DADA) was formed as a spinoff of LARABA by several artist members of the LARABA board of directors in order to provide a platform for the burgeoning downtown art scene; DADA hosted exhibits of more than 400 downtown artists in 1994–1998.

DADA 1994 Artists

After 1994, the heart of the Arts District was Bloom’s General Store, presided over by Joel Bloom, a veteran of Chicago’s Second City, who became an advocate for the community and who is remembered as The Arts District’s once and only unofficial mayor. Bloom died in 2007, but his memory is honored with a plaque from the city declaring the triangle around Third, Traction and Rose to be Joel Bloom Square.[10] Cornerstone Theater, an enterprise that brings community theater to locations all around the country, still resides on Traction Avenue. Around the corner, on Hewitt at 4th Pl., the non-profit ArtShare offers lessons in art, dance, theater and music to urban youth and features a small theater often used by Padua Playwrights. Padua stages plays around the city, often in non-traditional environments, and hosts play-writing workshops.[11]

Gentrification

The real estate history of the Arts District in Los Angeles doesn't fit the usual definition of "gentrification." In the 1970s there were millions of square feet of empty commercial and industrial space in downtown LA. Around 1970, artists began to colonize these spaces illegally and use them for live in studios. In 1980, in order to legalize these ad-hoc and unsafe residences, the City of Los Angeles created the "Artist in Residence" zoning variation ordinance. The ordinance necessarily included mandated upgrades to the artists spaces, many of which had fire/safety/health issues endangering the (artist) occupants. It also enabled developers who wished to rehab or create new or old studios that were now legal. These developments, with their increased building and safety requirements, raised the retail rental rates from 10-30 cents a sq ft to about 65 cents a sq ft in the early-mid 1980's.

In the late 1980s and through the 90's several (about 20) large artist loft projects were developed from empty industrial buildings, including The Brewery, 900 East 1st St, Citizens Warehouse, 2101 E. 7th St., and Long Beach Ave Lofts, with rents ranging from 65 to 75 cents/ sq ft.

After 2000, developers started converting large office buildings in the area west of the arts district under a new "Live/Work" ordinance. These apartments were marketed as lofts, although they bore little resemblance to the much larger lofts in the industrial district east of Alameda St. Rents in these live/work spaces started in the early 2000s at about $1.10 / sq ft, and over the next 15 years climbed to about $2.50/sq ft, due mainly to the high demand for the apartments and the increasing purchase price for the undeveloped buildings.

The rapid "loft" development west of Alameda, in which hundreds of thousands of sq ft of heretofore unused commercial space has been converted to live/work apartments, has led to a renaissance in downtown Los Angeles, an area long considered uninhabitable by middle class Angelenos. The increased popularity for downtown residences has continued to put upward pressure on loft rent in the Arts District, pushing rents in some of the older, more authentic artists loft buildings upwards towards $1.50- $2.00/ sq ft., pushing many longtime artist/tenants out of their lofts.

Current status

The city community planning boundaries today are Alameda Street on the west, First Street on the north, the Los Angeles River to the east, and Violet Street on the south.[12] Challenges facing the Arts District today include the loss of affordable live/work lofts, loss of artists, and loss of historically significant buildings.[13] Community leaders are struggling to create balance amidst the economic issues brought about by gentrification and the need to preserve the character of the Arts District as a creative community that has made contributions to the cultural and economic well-being of Los Angeles for decades.[14] In 2014, the average annual income for neighborhood residents was $120,000.[15] While the initial decades saw the conversion to residential and commercial uses of low-slung warehouses and industrial spaces, downtown zoning laws could be rewritten to permit the heights of buildings to double, allowing up to 1,500 new residential units to be built in 8-story, one hundred feet (30 m) edifices.[12]

The Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), resides in a quarter-mile-long (0.40 km) former Santa Fe Freight Depot built in 1907 that has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Across the street is a 438-unit apartment complex, "One Santa Fe," that opened in 2014 and was designed by Michael Maltzan Architecture (MMA).[16]

The century-old Coca-Cola manufacturing plant at 4th and Merrick streets, just around the corner from the enormous Santa Fe railroad dock that houses SCI-Arc, is the latest in adaptive reuse into creative spaces. The three-story brick-clad building was described as the "headquarters for the company's Pacific Coast business and for its export trade in the Hawaiian Islands and Old Mexico" when it was built in 1915.[1] The complex has been renamed Fourth & Traction after Traction Avenue.[15] The Hauser Wirth & Schimmel complex opened in 2016 in buildings that date from the 1890s to the 1940s that occupy an entire city block on East 3rd Street.[17]

The Arts District remains the home of artists, arts enterprises and many employed in the L.A. film and television industry. The Arts District has as many as 800 filming days a year. Filming activity has created challenges, as location productions make donations to community non-profits which are used to support local arts activities; a practice that has done much to preserve the peace between residents and production companies.

The artists George Herms, Paul McCarthy and Shepard Fairey, writer and filmmaker Frank Miller, singer Meshell Ndegeocello, actors Forrest Whittaker, Tim Robbins, and Jenna Fischer are among the many whose talents were nurtured in the district early in their careers. McCarthy's daughter Mara opened a gallery, The Box, in the community. Early in the new century the Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein took up residence in the Arts District. When he was asked why he chose to live and work here he said, "because this is the image capital of the world".

References

  1. 1 2 Chang, Andrea (March 7, 2015). "Tech scene takes hold in revitalized downtown L.A.". Los Angeles Times.
  2. ↑ Regardie, Jon (February 18, 2011). "The Downtowners of Distinction". Los Angeles Downtown News. Retrieved 26 March 2016.
  3. ↑ Vincent, Roger (January 20, 2013) "Gaining Traction: Trendy shops, eateries and offices transform downtown L.A.'s arts district" Los Angeles Times
  4. ↑ http://blog.christinewongyap.com/tag/als-cafe/
  5. ↑ http://articles.latimes.com/2001/aug/16/news/cl-34651
  6. ↑ http://www.ladowntownnews.com/news/upgrades-for-arts-district-projects/article_6d01e57a-6fb6-11e1-888b-001871e3ce6c.html
  7. ↑ http://charlesrivacollection.com/images/artistsProfile/resume/PaulMcCarthy-2.pdf
  8. ↑ Gerber, Marisa (July 29, 2014) "Arts District's changing landscape is worrisome to longtime residents" Los Angeles Times
  9. ↑ Fritz Frauchiger. Off the Street. City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department. 1985
  10. ↑ Nelson, Valerie J. (July 14, 2007) "Joel Bloom, 59; activist helped shape the arts district in L.A." Los Angeles Times
  11. ↑ LOS ANGELES RIVER ARTISTS’ & BUSINESS ASSOCIATION
  12. 1 2 Saillant, Catherine (December 1, 2014) "Some fear Arts District development plan would ruin the neighborhood" Los Angeles Times
  13. ↑ Khouri, Andrew (June 12, 2014) "Downtown condo shortage shuts out buyers" Los Angeles Times
  14. ↑ Khouri, Andrew (September 25, 2014) "Upscale new residential complex opens in L.A. arts district" Los Angeles Times
  15. 1 2 Vincent, Roger (November 13, 2014) "Old Coca-Cola building in L.A. to be refreshed as plush office complex" Los Angeles Times
  16. ↑ Hawthorne, Christopher (October 10, 2014). "Maltzan's One Santa Fe apartment complex plays with notion of density". Los Angeles Times.
  17. ↑ Miranda, Carolina A. (February 5, 2016). "Hauser Wirth & Schimmel in downtown Los Angeles has big ideas". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 8 February 2016.

External links

Coordinates: 34°02′28″N 118°13′59″W / 34.04117°N 118.23298°W / 34.04117; -118.23298

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