Westlake, Los Angeles, California

Westlake is a district in Los Angeles, California. It should not be confused with Westlake Village, an independent municipality in Los Angeles County near Thousand Oaks and close to the Ventura County line.

Westlake derives its name from the lake in what is now MacArthur Park.

Geography and transportation

Westlake, which includes Pico-Union, is bordered by Downtown Los Angeles on the southeast, Santa Monica Freeway on the south, Koreatown on the west, Virgil Village on the north, and Echo Park on the northeast. Its boundaries are roughly the Hollywood Freeway on the northeast, the Harbor Freeway on the southeast, Olympic Boulevard on the south, and Hoover Street on the west. One major subdistrict includes Lafayette Park Square.

Principal thoroughfares include Beverly, Wilshire, Olympic and Rampart Boulevards and Alvarado, Temple, Hoover, and Third Streets. The district is served by the Hollywood and Harbor Freeways. The Metro Red Line subway runs through the district on its way to Hollywood and Koreatown, with a stop at Alvarado Street.

History

One of the first areas of Los Angeles west of Figueroa Street to see residential development, by the 1920s Westlake resembled the Upper East Side of Manhattan (complete with a large Jewish population). Wealthy businessmen commuted to downtown, Wilshire Center (now Koreatown), Hollywood, and the Miracle Mile from the district's Spanish Revival and Art Deco mansions. The district's less affluent northeastern blocks also became the home of Los Angeles' Filipino population, much of which remains in Westlake and nearby neighborhoods to this day.

Westlake suffered greatly from the closure of the Pacific Electric streetcar line and the construction of Los Angeles' network of freeways in the 1950s. By the 1960s, virtually all of its white population had decamped to the West Side or the suburbs, replaced with transients who had been pushed out of Bunker Hill by "urban renewal" in the 1950s, and Mexican-Americans in the 50s and 60s, who themselves moved out for suburbs by the middle 1970s. Most of Westlake's elegant mansions were subdivided into apartments at this time, and many of its Beaux-Arts apartment buildings became residential hotels. Meanwhile, MacArthur Park became notorious for its narcotics dealers, heroin addicts, and prostitutes.

In the 1980s Westlake became the home of Los Angeles' vibrant but severely impoverished Salvadoran and Guatemalan community, exiles from the civil and CIA wars in Central America at the time, and which was drawn to the area's cheap housing. The concurrent development of adjacent Bunker Hill as a major commercial district provided many of the newcomers with employment as custodians and restaurant kitchen staff.

The neighborhood as of 2006

Westlake is now the most densely populated neighborhood in Los Angeles, with a population density of 36,095 persons/mile² [http://cityplanning.lacity.org/DRU/Locl/LocPfl.cfm?geo=cp&loc=Wlk] . (Given that the Westlake Community Plan Area also includes Pico-Union, which is considerably less dense, it is likely that Westlake's population density exceeds 45,000 persons/mile².) As a surprisingly large number of these residents own cars, the district has severe traffic congestion that was only partially relieved by the late-1990s addition of the Red Line. MacArthur Park, while somewhat less dangerous than at its nadir in the 1980s, is still somewhat unsafe. It has become a popular destination for illegal immigrants, playing host to numerous vendors of phony driver's licenses, work permits, and Social Security cards. Westlake gained greater notoriety in the late 1990s from the Rampart scandal scandal that rocked the Los Angeles Police Department.

The California real estate boom that began in the early 2000s has brought some gentrification to Westlake. Korean immigrants, priced out of increasingly expensive Koreatown, have begun to establish themselves in the district. Several major residential developments, most notably The Medici (an apartment complex notably popular among students at the University of Southern California), have been built in the district, and a large office tower at 1100 Wilshire has undergone conversion into a high-end condominium in late 2006. The district's economic revitalization remains slow and fitful with crime remaining a major concern.

Economy

Korean Air's United States Passenger Operations headquarters are located in the Westlake community. [" [http://www.koreanair.com/local/na/ld/eng/au/ci/Contact_Info.htm Contact Info] ." "Korean Air". Accessed September 20, 2008.]

Emergency services

Fire service

Los Angeles Fire Department [http://www.lafd.org/fs11.htm Station 11] is in the area.

Police service

Los Angeles Police Department operates the Rampart Community Police Station at 2710 West Temple Street, 90026, serving the neighborhood [http://www.lapdonline.org/rampart_community_police_station] .

Education

Westlake is served by the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Belmont High School and Miguel Contreras Learning Complex serve Westlake.

Much of its school-age population must be bussed to schools in the San Fernando Valley and Glendale, owing to delays in the construction of the Belmont Learning Center (west of the Harbor Freeway at 1st and Beaudry) and overcrowding at the area's other schools.

Attractions

In addition to MacArthur Park, Westlake plays host to a number of Los Angeles landmarks. In the 1980s, a former Pacific Electric tunnel near 1st Street, the Belmont Tunnel / Toluca Substation and Yard, became a famous canvas for graffiti artists, drawing visitors from around the world. Numerous Los Angeles culinary landmarks also lie within the neighborhood. One of the few reminders of the area's Jewish history is Langer's Deli at Wilshire Boulevard and Alvarado Street, a delicatessen whose hot pastrami sandwiches have been declared the finest in the United States by "The New Yorker" (a publication not especially known for its love of Los Angeles). The first American location of Mexican restaurant chain El Pollo Loco opened on Alvarado in 1980, just north of 6th Street. Finally, the first Tommy's hamburger stand still operates at the corner of Beverly and Rampart Boulevards.

Westlake School for Girls (later Harvard-Westlake) was founded in the Westlake neighborhood in 1904. The school moved from the Westlake location to Holmby Hills in 1927 but retained its original name taken from the neighborhood.

References