Victoria Park, Los Angeles

Victoria Park is a mostly residential subdivision in the Mid-City neighborhood of Central Los Angeles, California.

Newspaper advertisement for Victoria Park, 1907[1]
Newly built house in Victoria Park, 1908
House built for Henry P. Hoffman, 1909
The Holmes-Shannon House in Victoria Park was built in 1911.
This Craftsman home was built in 1912.

Geography

Victoria Park is bounded by Pico Boulevard on the north, the rear lot lines of Victoria Avenue on the east, Venice Boulevard on the south and West Boulevard on the west. It is bisected by Victoria Park Drive.[2] It is 2.5 miles south of Hollywood and 3.5 miles west of downtown Los Angeles. Century City is five miles to the west along Pico Boulevard. The West Adams Heritage Association considers Victoria Park to be part of Historic West Adams.[3]

Lafayette Square and Wellington Square are just to the south. Windsor Square and Hancock Park are to the north.

History

Origin

A first mention of Victoria Park was on January 20, 1907, in the Los Angeles Sunday Herald:

A level, elevated block of around 1000x1000 feet, between Pico and Sixteenth streets, on the West Adams Heights hill, has been bought by a syndicate of a dozen prominent business men who will improve the tract as the highest class of residence property obtainable in the city. High class improvements are planned. Surface and subway car lines are close. David Barry & Co., the selling agents, say lots will range from $1720 to $2000 in value, corners higher.[4]

The platted but undeveloped tract was owned and offered for sale by a syndicate composed of Josias J. (Jerry) Andrews, David Barry, S.R. Barry, J.A. Bowden, E.P. Clark, H.P. Hoffman, E.G. Howard, M.P. Gilbert, Isaac Kennedy, Charles Lloyd, E.N. Mathis, J.W. Willcox, M.H. Sherman, M.O. Tremaine, B.S. Tyler, F.M. Tyler and W.E. Tyler.[1][5]

Established "as a "desirable residence tract for desirable people," the subdivision was limited to "high-class homes" that would be built for no less than $4,000. It would be "lighted by handsome stone and wrought-iron electroliers, twelve to fourteen feet high, with five large electric lights on each." Public transportation would include the West 16th Street (today's Venice Boulevard) streetcar line along the south boundary and the West Pico line to the north. There was also a subway promised, for which the Los Angeles Pacific Railway already had a franchise in Pico Street.[1][6]

The Victoria Park neighborhood design is based on the ideas of Frederick Law Olmsted, who felt that circular shapes would break up the usual linear look of urban areas.[7] The area was intended to be upscale, e.g. the streetlights were custom-designed and registered with the city as the "Victoria Park Fixture."[8]

Many of the homes were built between 1910 and 1915 and serve as fine architectural examples of the American Arts and Crafts Movement. The area was intended to be all single-family homes, but it was rezoned in the 1920s, and some duplexes were built.

Brickyards

Victoria Park had a role in a landmark zoning case that reached all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and was decided in 1915 as Hadacheck v. Sebastian. The court effectively ruled that the U.S. Constitution did not prohibit a local zoning ordinance from putting a commercial enterprise out of business.[9][10]

Los Angeles Times caricature of Josias J. Andrews with "Andrews Interest Tract" sign in background, 1910

It began with City Councilman Josias J. (Jerry) Andrews, one of the owners of the Victoria Park tract, moving in the City Council to eliminate all brickyards in an area bounded by Wilshire Boulevard on the north, Western Avenue on the east, Washington Street on the south and the city limits on the west. That ordinance would effectively put two brickyards out of business, one of them just a few blocks west of Victoria Park, between Crenshaw Boulevard and Woolsey Avenue (today's Bronson Avenue) on Pico Street.[11][12]

The Los Angeles Times said that the brickyard "happens to be in a district where Andrews now has large real estate investments. . . . The ordinance was calculated to drive out of business a brickyard facing Victoria Park." [13] The Times opined that the purpose of the law was "to free that ornate neighborhood [Victoria Park] of the unsightly and unesthetic brickyards. Andrews admitted a 'small' interest in the tract but vehemently declared [that] his private interests could have no influence on his duty to the people who are oppressed by the brickyards that were there before real estate agents developed new tracts."[14]

The city law was approved by the council, vetoed by Mayor George Alexander and passed over the mayor's veto.[13][15] The owner of one of the yards, J.C. Hadacheck, sued to nullify the ordinance,[15] but he lost in the trial court and in the California Supreme Court. The U.S. Supreme Court decided to hear the case, and in 1915 it ruled that the Los Angeles city ordinance did not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and that the city's action was a legitimate use of its police powers.[9]

Drainage

Although the builders had promised in 1907 that Victoria Park, being "on a high hill," had "perfect drainage,"[6] property owners found two years later that rainwater was flooding down Pico Street from as far west as Vermont Avenue and turning into Victoria Park "with such volume that the street work has been torn up several times." After a complaint by property owner and police comissoner J.J. Andrews to the Board of Public Works, the city's chief public works inspector said he would look into the matter but he felt not much could be done unless the property owners would pave Pico at their own expense.[16]

Security

In 1996, a pedestrian walkway between Venice Boulevard and Victoria Park Place was closed for security reasons. The $1,000 cost was borne by Victoria Park residents.[17]

Landmark status

In 1998, the Craftsman home at 4318 Victoria Park Place (built in 1912 and pictured on this page) was added to the list of Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monuments. In 2008, the Holmes-Shannon House at 4311 Victoria Park Drive (built in 1911 and also pictured here) was added to both the National Register of Historic Places and the list of Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monuments; it is described as "a residential building designed in the Tudor-Craftsman style by a prominent firm and reflective of the development of Victoria Park."[7]

Sugar Shack

The Sugar Shack is an "intentional community" occupying a two-story, three-bathroom house on the edge of Victoria Park that was brought to public attention through a feature story in the Los Angeles Times in April 2007.[18][19] Reporter Carla Hall wrote:

Sugar Shack is an oddity in this neighborhood, a home caught literally and figuratively between Pico [Boulevard] – with its fast-food joints and auto parts shops – and Victoria Park, a jewel-like hamlet a block south that is dotted with stately Craftsman houses.The homeowners of Victoria Park, which is diverse but mostly black, have a courtly sense of what a neighborhood should be, and it doesn't include a house that is painted blue and has a front door that looks like a piece of psychedelic art from a '70s head shop. The neighbors regard Sugar Shack . . . with some suspicion, unsure what the residents are up to and scornful of the house's exterior decor.[18]

At issue was a mural painted around 2005 by one of the Sugar Shack residents, artist Olga Socolovia, on the Pico Boulevard side of the property, just next to a bus stop,[20] without a city permit. Somebody complained, and residents of the house had to go to neighborhood meetings to explain what the community was all about and plead for support for their artwork. Some of the residents turned the meetings into a critique of the communal house itself, which sits in the commercially zoned Pico Boulevard strip of Victoria Park. In the end, the city granted a permit for the mural, which still exists. The Sugar Shack's front door has been repainted to blend with the neighborhood.[18]

See also

Notes and references

Access to some of the links may require the use of a library card.

  1. 1 2 3 Los Angeles Sunday Herald, May 26, 1907, page III-1
  2. ↑ Location of Victoria Park as noted on Mapping L.A.
  3. ↑ "Where Is West Adams? West Adams Heritage Association
  4. ↑ "Victoria Park," Los Angeles Herald, January 20, 1907, page IV-1
  5. ↑ "Palms and Drives Lend Air of Distinction to Victoria Park," Los Angeles Times, December 20, 1908, page V-24
  6. 1 2 "Victoria Park to Be Exclusive," Los Angeles Times, October 23, 1907, page III-3
  7. 1 2 "Holmes Shannon House" (PDF). Cultural Heritage Commission. Los Angeles Department of City Planning. June 12, 2007. Retrieved 25 May 2013.
  8. ↑ Virginia Comer (2000). Streetlights. Princeton Architectural Press. pp. 34–35. ISBN 978-1-890449-10-0. Retrieved 26 May 2013.
  9. 1 2 Hadacheck v. Sebastian 239 U.S. 394 (1915)
  10. ↑ "Out Must Go His Big Brick-Yard," Los Angeles Times, March 16, 1915, page II=2
  11. ↑ "Test of City's Law 'Way Up: Highest Court to Rule on Industrial District," Los Angeles Times,; May 17, 1913, page II-1
  12. ↑ "'Come On and Put Me Out': Mr. Hadacheck Undismayed by Court Order," Los Angeles Times, March 22, 1915, page II-1
  13. 1 2 "Veto Ax Twice Hits Andrews," Los Angeles Times, April 3, 1910, page II-6
  14. ↑ "'Sitting' on Their Mayor," Los Angeles Times, April 6, 1910, page II-2
  15. 1 2 "Boyle Heights Brickyards: Not In Same League With Those of Victoria Park," Los Angeles Times, December 4, 1910, page II-6
  16. ↑ "Victoria Park Is Often Flooded, Is Charge," Los Angeles Herald, November 18, 1909, page 10
  17. ↑ "Central Los Angeles: Council OKs Request to Close Walkway," Los Angeles Times, February 1, 1996
  18. 1 2 3 Carla Hall, "The Cries of the Beholder," Los Angeles Times, April 12, 2007
  19. ↑ There is also a separate building, which is "a converted storefront with a full performance stage, pool table, as well as The Bus, a front half of a real school-bus that was installed into the wall and repurposed as a cozy hangout."
  20. ↑ View of Sugar Shack mural and bus stop

Additional reading

Coordinates: 34°02′48″N 118°19′50″W / 34.0466°N 118.3305°W / 34.0466; -118.3305

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