Is Leimert Park L.A.’s Most Significant Neighborhood?
Trudi Sandmeier 00:00
Today on Save As:
Kira Williams 00:02
I would find a picture of somewhere or an article about something, and the next time I drove past that place, I was like wait, I know the history of this place.
Trudi Sandmeier 00:17
Welcome to Save As, a podcast that glimpses the future of heritage conservation through the work of graduate students at the University of Southern California. I’m Trudi Sandmeier.
Cindy Olnick 00:27
And I’m Cindy Olnick. So, Trudi.
Trudi Sandmeier 00:29
Yes, Cindy?
Cindy Olnick 00:30
So, it’s the end of the semester. Congratulations to all the students at USC and everywhere else who have made it through another year, perhaps a program. You graduated, you’re gonna go out into the world, shake stuff up. We are 100 percent, well, actually, we’re 150 million percent behind you. Another thing about the end of the semester is that groovy class projects have ended and we can bring them to you, our Save As listeners. So for this episode, Trudi, you spoke with Katie Horak, who is an alumna, a Save As guest previously, and an adjunct professor, about her documentation class, which focused this year on the neighborhood of Leimert Park.
Trudi Sandmeier 01:16
I had a conversation with Katie, but also three students from the class: Kira Williams, Emily Varley, and Zongqi Li. Leimert Park is this really amazing neighborhood that’s kind of close to downtown Los Angeles, it’s about midway between downtown LA and the beach. So Leimert Park is named for Walter Leimert, the developer. And it is a really special place, developed in the mid-1920s and took, you know, probably 20 years to really fully build out, but it’s got a real sense of place. And one of the really interesting things about Leimert Park is that it started as this racially restrictive neighborhood in the 1920s, that only white people could live there. And in the late 1940s, that all started to change. And now this neighborhood is incredibly diverse, but really known as a hub of the African American community in Los Angeles. And there’s some really great galleries and bookstores and restaurants and community events that happen in the neighborhood. And so it’s got a very active community. It’s got a very engaged group of residents, and it’s kind of an amazing place. All right, so let’s get to it.
Welcome back to Save As, Katie. It’s lovely to have you back and in a slightly different capacity this time.
Katie Horak 02:52
Thank you. It’s great to be back.
Trudi Sandmeier 02:54
You are the instructor for this course, which was an advanced documentation practicum course. What does that mean? What are the students doing?
Katie Horak 03:02
So for this advanced documentation course, the students document the significance of a neighborhood, using the National Register criteria for evaluation, as a way for the students to get experience doing a historic resources survey of a neighborhood and using the National Register forms and the guidelines for filling out the forms.
Trudi Sandmeier 03:24
This is a very practical hands-on class where students are out in the field doing this work and interacting with the community and interacting with resources, as opposed to just being in the classroom. So how does that go for you as an instructor?
Katie Horak 03:40
So when I teach this class, I feel like I’m working with colleagues on a project in the field. By the time they take this class, they almost always have taken my introduction to historic site documentation class. So they’ve already had a pretty good introduction to what the National Register criteria are and how to apply them and how to do a survey. I provide them with the tools that they need, and I give them the direction that they need, but then I just kind of send them off on their way and they just do the work. My students have looked at Leimert Park before, but when we did the class before there wasn’t, at that time, an active community effort to pursue historic designation, you know. In the past year or so there’s been a real mobilization in the community to consider whether or not they’d like to pursue historic designation. So it seemed like the right time to revisit Leimert Park, because there could be some real community engagement with my students.
Trudi Sandmeier 04:32
Well, that’s always a great goal.
Katie Horak 04:34
I assigned each of the students 50 buildings, and I kind of scattered them throughout the large districts so that when they were done, we would have a good cross section. It certainly wouldn’t be comprehensive, but a good cross section. So I think ultimately, they documented somewhere around 450 buildings, and we did it we did it in 16 weeks. They did just a terrific job.
Trudi Sandmeier 04:56
Well, clearly, because the presentation was great.
Katie Horak 04:58
This year was exciting too because we used a new survey documentation tool called Fulcrum, which is a mobile app documentation tool that we use in our practice at ARG for these types of surveys. And it makes documentation so much quicker and more streamlined because you’re just doing it on your smartphone.
Trudi Sandmeier 05:17
They had another piece of the project that they were also working on. What was that?
Katie Horak 05:21
The documentation of individual buildings in the district is just a really small piece of the process of doing the research and the documentation for a National Register Historic District. So the biggest piece, I would say, of the project really is to explore the history of the neighborhood and document why it meets National Register criteria. We developed an outline of historic context and themes, and then I divided them up and dispersed them amongst the nine students. So those themes included landscape architecture and architecture, residential development and suburbanization, the developer and the developer process, so looking at Walter Leimert’s process, and of course, the area of ethnic cultural significance of looking at it under the theme of Black ethnic heritage and Japanese American ethnic heritage as well. So Leimert Park is such a endlessly interesting place, there were potential areas of significance for the students to explore. So they each wrote a particular theme study that would then inform the significance evaluation against the form’s National Register criteria. It’s sort of like there are nine chapters of the book. And they each wrote one chapter. And ultimately, they could use each other’s research and each other’s work to do the comprehensive analysis of the district under the National Register criteria.
Trudi Sandmeier 06:49
So it was both an individual project and a group project at the same time.
Katie Horak 06:53
At the beginning of class, I always like to have members of the community come and speak to my students, because it’s sort of like a client kickoff meeting, like we would have in practice, where community members come and they talk to us. And they, they tell us why they would like to do this and what their goals and objectives are and what their concerns might be. And so we had about five community members meet with my class at the beginning, just to talk through what the process would be. And then let them get to know the students, tell the students what they love about Leimert Park and what they think is significant about the neighborhood. And it was a great way to introduce the neighborhood to the students, because many, I would say most of them had never been there before. Concurrently with my class, there’s been this community effort, there’s been a lot of neighborhood meetings and community meetings, really trying to gauge whether or not someday the community would like to move forward with [the nomination], so at the end of class, the final presentation was attended by I think there are about 40 community members on the Zoom.
Trudi Sandmeier 07:51
Yeah, we’re gonna have a link to that community presentation, which we recorded, on the episode page. So if you’re interested in seeing the whole story, you can go watch the entire presentation. Today, we are happy to have several of the students from the course that examined the history of Leimert Park, and so I want them to take a moment and introduce themselves. So why don’t we start with Emily?
Emily Varley 08:39
Hi, everyone. My name is Emily Varley. I am in my second year of the master in Urban Planning, master of Heritage Conservation dual degree.
Kira Williams 08:49
I’m Kira Williams, and I just finished my first year of the Master in Urban Planning, Master of Heritage Conservation dual degree.
Zongqi Li 08:55
Hi, everyone. My name is Zongqi Li. I’m a second-year student in the master’s program of heritage conservation.
Trudi Sandmeier 09:04
You are technically a graduate of the Master of Heritage Conservation Program. As of yesterday, we had graduation yesterday, and Zongqi is finished with his thesis and is done with his classes and he is officially an alumnus of USC. So congratulations to you. Yeah. Tell me a little bit about the class.
Emily Varley 09:27
This is real-world knowledge and skills that we need to have. And then knowing we were going to be working on the same project all semester, it was a little bit daunting. It was exciting, but it was daunting.
Trudi Sandmeier 09:41
How about you, Kira?
Kira Williams 09:42
I was kind of excited to get into all of the research and find out more history about Leimert Park, because I’m not from California. But Leimert Park has always been kind of interesting because some of my favorite shows have taken place there. Moesha took place in Leimert Park, and Insecure with Issa Rae. They started filming there in the later seasons, so I wanted to get to know the area a little bit more.
Trudi Sandmeier 10:04
How about you, Zongqi?
Zongqi Li 10:05
It is quite interesting. And I really enjoyed to work with Professor Katie Horak, because I think [s]he didn’t just pass on knowledge to us but like guided us to take the initiative to do the research and the field work. And this even made me feel more accomplished with the results of our research project.
Trudi Sandmeier 10:27
Each of you was assigned 50 buildings in the neighborhood. What did you do? And what did you find?
Emily Varley 10:33
The 50 buildings I surveyed were all residential buildings. Some are single-family homes, some were multifamily homes. I had a little bit of a tough experience with some neighbors being confused as to why I was out there taking pictures of their homes and writing down all this information about their homes. And while I was out there in the street, observing the really beautiful, wonderful architecture, I was so green, I had no idea what I was doing. I would be staring at a house for like 20 minutes. I’d be like, Oh, windows, they have windows. Or they have a roof. You know, like, I’d be like, Oh, it’s gabled, I think? So it took me a long time to get used to it.
Trudi Sandmeier 11:19
Did you have any standout results that you found?
Emily Varley 11:23
I did. I had one home that I knew was by a famous architect. I didn’t realize it at first, but then I was taking the photographs and I was looking at the different features and elements and it’s just exquisite. And so when I got home, I got back to my desk, I looked up the house by its assessor’s number, and I matched it to our kind of database and looked at the architect and it was the Edith Northman House. We knew she had designed at least a multifamily building in Leimert Park. But we were unsure if she had done any single-family residences.
Trudi Sandmeier 12:01
Well, it’s so great because it’s both an architectural landmark, but it’s also significant because Edith Northman was one of the women architects who was working in the early years in Los Angeles of some note. And so that’s also kind of a rare find. So Kira, how about you?
Kira Williams 12:24
I had all residential in my area, and they were mostly one-story single-family. But I found it interesting that there were so many Spanish Colonial Revival-style homes. I didn’t realize that Leimert Park had that heavy of a Spanish Colonial vibe to it.
Trudi Sandmeier 12:45
What was your experience like wandering the neighborhood staring at people’s houses?
Kira Williams 12:49
I kind of had a similar experience to Emily, where I would stand in front of one house for like 20 minutes just staring because I couldn’t figure out what I was trying to do. Even though I knew exactly what we needed to do, but for some reason, I was just like, intimidated, that someone might come up to me and say something. So I just kind of blanked for a while. I would just stare at a house for a long time. And then I’d go to a different house. And then I noticed something that I didn’t mark on the other house and I’d have to go back. And it was just a lot of back and forth.
Trudi Sandmeier 13:18
Okay, so Zongqi, you had 50 buildings?
Zongqi Li 13:20
Yeah, for my 50 buildings, I think most of them are residential houses, like the single-family buildings. And similar to Kira, I also found that the styles are very uniform, with the Spanish Colonial Revival. And especially for the Minimal Traditional buildings, I think they are most of them are paired with the Japanese-style courtyards, or decorations. So I guess it might be designed, initially, for the Japanese Americans. Most of buildings maintain a really high degree of historical integrity, except for two houses, one was torn down and another was changed too much. I also found that it is quite interesting that some buildings may have been a bit of mix of styles, which confused me at first in identifying them. Because for example, for some Minimal Traditionals, there will be things they have, red clay tile roofs, but I think this might be a characteristic of the Spanish Colonial Revival.
Trudi Sandmeier 14:26
So each of you had a different topic. Can you tell me a little bit about what you in particular explored in the neighborhood and what you discovered?
Emily Varley 14:38
I just looked at the development of Leimert Park, from the perspective of who is funding these buildings being built, who is paying for roads being paved, who is laying out the streets and why, and that kind of thing. It really begins when the Los Angeles Times reported that Walter Leimert had bought 231 acres from Clara Baldwin Stocker. It was purchased December of 1926. But 1927 is when he starts advertising. He very clearly had a plan. And I actually I went down to the county records office at Norwalk, into the scary basement, with my three-hour appointment. And I had no idea what I was doing. And it was cold. And the person told me I should bring food because I’d be down there a long time.
Trudi Sandmeier 15:33
Yeah, the process of deed research can be tricky the first time you do it, but once you understand the system of how these land documentation pieces are put together, and how you follow the bouncing ball from owner to owner back in time, it really, it does make a certain amount of sense.
Emily Varley 15:51
I was really glad I went in the end because I was able to look at the Declaration of Restrictions that’s attached to the land. Because we originally thought that there were going to be restrictions attached to every single home, we looked at the individual deeds to individual homes, and it would just say, “See Declaration.” And we were like, what, what is that? What, where is it? But essentially, when he purchased the 231 acres, he attached this extensive Declaration of Restrictions to all of the land. So whether it was going to be developed into a little parklet, or a commercial building, or a residential building, or even just a street, this Declaration of Restrictions applied.
Trudi Sandmeier 16:34
What kinds of restrictions were included in the original declaration?
Emily Varley 16:38
It was like 30 or 40 pages, describing details like sidewalk width, and where trees are going to be planted, and the setbacks and the lot sizes, and how tall your fences are allowed to be, and what materials the fences are allowed to be. You can’t have like ancillary buildings that are bigger than a certain size and taller than a certain size. And I feel like I’m only scratching the surface here with what I’ve told you guys so far. But essentially what I discovered from looking at from 1927, when they first break ground in the neighborhood, to 1941, when the last tract within the area we surveyed, what I think was the most intriguing was this pattern of development that was established, he and his architect Franz Herding, they built a couple of tract houses.
And that first year 1927, after they’ve put in the initial developments of improvements of streets and sewers, and trees, and then they have the open house exhibitions, and they’re just advertising like crazy. And he’s taking out full-page, advertisements in the LA Times like with his face on them, like come visit Leimert Park, see why I named this neighborhood after myself because it’s so wonderful. Essentially, what I was able to gather was that they would then take the funds that they had raised from selling individual lots, and selling the few tract houses they had built initially. And they would buy another parcel of land or they would start the improvements on the next section. Even though there were five different developments total, within our study area of Leimert Park, there were kind of ways that we realized that these separate developers were tying themselves to the style that Leimert had established in phase one, the initial development.
Trudi Sandmeier 18:40
All right, so let’s turn now to Zongqi. And what area of the context were you responsible for?
Zongqi Li 18:50
My cultural context is under a really big theme of deed restriction and segregation. Since the early 20th century, most of the neighborhoods in Los Angeles were racially segregated, and making it even impossible for the African Americans or Asians to rent or own property in white areas legally. And many developers would also sign the restriction in the contract to prevent them from entering the community. And the Walter Leimert he’s just assigned these restrictions in 1927 so this led to the communities’ earliest establishment as a totally white neighborhood. And also the FHA, the Federal Housing Administration, drawn up the redlining map in late 1938, to even deepen this restriction. And in the map, the communities are just a classified into a system from A to D and the labeling in different colors. And in that case, these communities where the African Americans or Asian Americans lived, tended to have really low ratings, and making it even more difficult for them to qualify for house mortgages and home improvement loans. Leimert Park contained the areas labeled A and B during these times because it was established as a white neighborhood. So it was considered as a place worth investing in. The turning point is the Shelley case.
Trudi Sandmeier 20:35
Right. So you’re talking about the US Supreme Court case, Shelley versus Kramer from 1948, which was all about the notion that restrictive covenants, which prohibited the sale of property to anyone who was not white, was unconstitutional, and violated the 14th Amendment. So that’s a big deal.
Zongqi Li 21:02
And based on this case, African Americans and Asians could legally move into the white neighborhoods. But during my research, I found that this process didn’t go really smoothly.
Trudi Sandmeier 21:16
Not shocking.
Zongqi Li 21:19
Many African American or Black families, they faced many difficulties and challenges. And I think one of the biggest problem is put by the white residents. So the homeowners associations, I think they tried their best to, to scare off African Americans, like by burning and destroying their property, and even making death threats against them. They also put tremendous pressure on other white residents who did not adhere to the segregation. I really admire their ability for overcoming such difficult circumstance.
Trudi Sandmeier 21:57
It’s just amazing. We all know that homeownership is a path to security and the ability to leverage that home equity into other wealth-generating platforms. So I mean, you can really understand what was at stake for these folks who were trying to move into the neighborhood and start building wealth.
Zongqi Li 22:19
Yes, I also searched the US Census data to understand these demographic transitions in the Leimert Park. And I found that in 1950, the Leimert Park only had less than 0.5% of the non-white residents. But by 1960, only 10 years later, this percentage had risen to 48%, means this place is a super diverse place. And in 1970, the rate of Black households reached nearly 70%.
Trudi Sandmeier 22:57
There was a significant Japanese American community in Leimert Park. And so maybe talk a little bit about what you found out about that group, Zongqi.
Zongqi Li 23:06
Yeah, Leimert Park is also really important for the Japanese Americans, especially after their long internment, their original communities will no longer belongs to them. And especially with segregation, it’s really hard for them to find the appropriate place to to resettle. And in that case, the Leimert Park became one of their first enclaves in the Los Angeles, and especially in 1950. They built the Crenshaw Seinan Community and it was really designed specifically for the Japanese Americans.
Trudi Sandmeier 23:15
So the name of this area is the Crenshaw Seinan Community. What does the word “seinan” mean?
Zongqi Li 23:49
Seinan means “youth” it is a Japanese word.
Trudi Sandmeier 23:52
If you translated it, it would be the Crenshaw Youth Community.
Zongqi Li 23:57
Yes, exactly. Because you can see there are so many Japanese-style architecture and gardens in these areas. There are also some Japanese commercial buildings or shops. They also moved in these parts to really create a Japanese community such as the Japanese restaurants, the banks, etc. They also cater for the local Japanese American residents.
Trudi Sandmeier 24:26
Right, and there’s a little coffee shop that’s still there called Tak’s that’s a big community hub, and has been for years and years and years. It’s totally fantastic. So Kira, what was your area that you explored for the context of Leimert Park?
Kira Williams 24:43
I focused on the education and religion and spirituality context under the institutional development theme. I looked at all of the early churches and schools in Leimert Park and I found that two of the schools, 42nd Street Elementary and Thomas Bradley Global Awareness Magnet Elementary, which was originally the 38th Street School, were developed and built in 1926, which was actually before development in Leimert Park started. And I believe that Walter Leimert had a deal with LAUSD to develop the elementary schools prior to the residential development to ensure that the children who came and moved into the neighborhood would have a place to go to school.
Trudi Sandmeier 25:32
Okay, so what else did you find?
Kira Williams 25:34
In some of the ads that Walter Leimert put in the LA Times, and just in the brochures and flyers that were advertised in the neighborhood, he ensured that all the schools would be ready for the children before they got there. And that they would have access to the playgrounds during off hours. And there’ll be supervised access to the playgrounds and ensure that someone will be there watching the neighborhood children as they played, and that they could walk safely to and from school. Because that’s how the streets were designed, in that layout to where there wouldn’t be crossing any major streets to get to the schools. In the mornings, or in the afternoons. I couldn’t find too much information on what the first churches were in Leimert Park, because it’s kind of hard to track church congregations as they moved to different buildings, or some of them might have started somewhere else and then moved to Leimert Park in like the 60s or 70s, or later on, in a time that wasn’t in our period of significance. But the earliest one I found was the Church of Transfiguration, which is on the east portion of our boundary. And that was founded in 1937. And they also have a school in their church, that services the Leimert Park area.
Trudi Sandmeier 26:47
So you found like five or six churches in the neighborhood.
Kira Williams 26:50
Yes.
Trudi Sandmeier 26:51
But many of the religious organizations that are there now started after 1970, right?
Kira Williams 26:58
Some of the other ones, they were not in a typical church building, they might have been in like a commercial building or a storefront, or some of them operated out of people’s homes. And they were just past 1970 when our period of significance cut off. So I didn’t include them in my context. But there are several churches in Leimert Park.
Trudi Sandmeier 27:18
So what is a period of significance? Tell us in your words what it is.
Emily Varley 27:23
Period of significance is the time period that we decided as a class to work within for defining our study area. We chose this time period for a reason, so that we can situate the architecture we looked at, the events that we looked at, the development we looked at, like within a certain time period and say, Okay, here’s when these things happened. And this is why it’s significant.
Trudi Sandmeier 27:54
So you all had to pick a period that you thought was the most appropriate and inclusive period of significance for the neighborhood that had meaning. And so then Katie asked you, What dates did you pick and why?
Emily Varley 28:12
For my historic context statement, the most appropriate period of significance was 1927, when they first broke ground on development, to 1941, when the last tract of like farmland, of Rancho land, was subdivided. But then Katie, she was like, Okay, well, that’s not inclusive of all of the other significant events that happened.
Kira Williams 28:37
I also set 1927 for the start date, just because the schools that were built in 1926 were developed by the school district, so I didn’t consider them developed by Walter Leimert. So I just started in 1927. And for my specific context statement, it was kind of hard to pick an end date, just because of the questions of when certain churches came to Leimert Park, or if they started somewhere else, and churches are constantly changing and evolving. I just said 1970, because that is the 50-year cutoff for the National Register.
Trudi Sandmeier 29:14
Okay, and how about you, Zongqi? What was your proposal for the period of significance?
Zongqi Li 29:18
Since 1950, it was the date when the first African American families moved into this community, and the for the Japanese Americans it is in the same period, because they also moved in during this place. But the difference is that in 1970, many Japanese Americans had moved out from these communities.
Trudi Sandmeier 29:43
1927 seems pretty obvious in terms of the beginning of the development of Leimert Park, but how did you guys decide as a group on 1970 as the endpoint?
Kira Williams 29:53
We kind of had a really hard time with that. So we all just ended up agreeing on 1970 as the end date because of the National Register age limit, because we wanted to extend it all the way until the 90s. But we couldn’t justify that. So we stopped at 1970.
Trudi Sandmeier 30:11
What did you learn this semester in terms of not just about Leimert Park, but about the field and the kinds of work that you were doing? And were there things that surprised you? Things that inspired you by this work?
Emily Varley 30:26
Yes. So in our thesis preparation class, we read Robert Caro’s Working book, which is a little bit about his research process and his writing process. And there’s a quote that he includes in there that he learned from one of his earliest research supervisors, who tells him that in order to be a great researcher, he needs to turn every single page, and read every single document, and look at every single primary source. Without realizing it, that was really what I ended up doing for the development historic context statement. Because it was like with every single newspaper advertisement, I gained insight into what Leimert was thinking. With every new piece of information I learned, I got closer to the heart of why he was making the decisions he was making in Leimert Park in terms of at least the development process.
Kira Williams 31:23
I was surprised with how invested I was into the research portions of this class. When we first started, we were just trying to find general research and information about Leimert Park. And I found myself sitting at my computer for hours digging up articles and information, and historic pictures, and photographs of different buildings, or of places in the village as the commercial development changed. And just compiling it all into a Word document and sharing it into our our class’s shared drive of information. Prior to this class, I wasn’t a big fan of research, as most college students aren’t, because it’s very time consuming. But I found this very interesting and fascinating to dig up all of the pieces of the history of Leimert Park, and try and tell the story with the bits and pieces that I can find.
Trudi Sandmeier 32:14
To me, it’s like a treasure hunt, you sort of look at all these clues from the past, and then try and match it with the world that we see today. And you can really see the roots and the basis of all of these clues that you’ve uncovered. And I mean, it’s kind of fascinating. It’s a really dorky scavenger hunt.
Kira Williams 32:37
Yeah, like I would find a picture of somewhere or an article about something. And then next time I drove past that place, I was like, wait, I know the history of this place.
Trudi Sandmeier 32:46
Yeah, I know. It’s very scary. It makes for dangerous driving conditions, I will say.
Kira Williams 32:50
Yeah, because I’m focusing on this building, and what it looked like in 1957 instead of the road.
Trudi Sandmeier 32:57
So definitely, note to all of our listeners to pull over before you do that, because it really can be quite dangerous. Okay. How about for you, Zongqi?
Zongqi Li 33:08
Well, actually, I have the similar feeling with Kira. Before this time, I know really little about this place. But through the research, I know what really happened. And I know the history, the policy that was in this period. So I think it’s really important to always dig history, and maybe the culture to know what really happens in the past. And also, I think, in this in our field of heritage conservation, I really think that every ethnic heritage is, is super valuable. Because it’s, it’s not only about a historic building, or street or site, these things is more like a carrier of their history, their culture and all the intangible but valuable things. So I think this makes me feel more excited about preserving other historic projects in the future.
Trudi Sandmeier 34:05
You were really looking at some very difficult history in the neighborhood. Was this hard for you? Was it hard to kind of find the things you were finding?
Zongqi Li 34:15
Yeah, it’s quite hard, because I just think maybe there was the segregation because of the policy in this period. But I didn’t really get if this policy was claimed unconstitutional, the local white neighbors still have such malice on the African Americans, other people. So I think it’s, I feel quite sad.
Emily Varley 34:42
Because like, there’s so much more to learn about Leimert Park. There’s so much more research to do. There’s so many more avenues to explore, because it’s really a rich history.
Trudi Sandmeier 35:00
So now we’re going to turn back to Katie. What were some of the things that the students found in their work that was interesting and surprising to you?
Katie Horak 35:08
Because I had done this class before in Leimert Park, I had already learned so much about the neighborhood from our great MHC students. I kind of had this attitude of, you know, I kind of know everything there is to know about this neighborhood. Because, because I’ve already done this class, and the students dug up so much great research before and but I really felt strongly that we needed to revisit it. I have to say, they blew me away. I learned so much from them this semester. And I think some of that has to do with the fact that some things are just more recently digitized. I think that there’s just research sources, archival sources that weren’t available when we did the class before, which was about six years ago.
So one of the things that I’ve always really not totally understood about Leimert Park was how it developed over time. There’s what everybody in the neighborhood knows as South Leimert Park, and then there’s North Leimert Park. And everyone knows that South Leimert, which is south of Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard was the original subdivision from 1927, 1928. And that everything north was a little bit later. But no one really knows was the later part also Walter Leimert, was it somebody else, was it a collection of developers, it all looks pretty cohesive, but it’s definitely different. And it’s a little bit later. So the students really unraveled that mystery in a way that I’d never seen before.
And it was incredibly enlightening to see how it was partially Walter Leimert doing a sort of phase two of his original development, but it was also other developers who were doing these sort of copycat neighborhoods on his model, which explains so much why the neighborhood looks so cohesive. And I think that that was really useful to the community too, because there’s been a lot of questions in the community about drawing the boundary, you know, what should the boundary of the Leimert Park Historic District be? Now we have these sort of logical boundaries that could be helpful to the community as they decide whether or not they’d like to go through with this. So that was really enlightening to me.
Trudi Sandmeier 37:12
So for the residents of Leimert Park, what would they do next, in terms of this process of designation?
Katie Horak 37:20
The first thing to do is to really just make sure the community wants it. And that, I think, is where the process is now is that there’s a big effort just to educate people about what it means to live in a National Register district and own a home in a National Register district. And to understand all the implications, so the positives, as well as the potential negatives. If there’s some consensus that this is what they’d like to do, that they would like to pursue this, then they’ll need to move forward with probably hiring a consultant firm to do the National Register nomination. So what the students have produced can’t just be like packaged up and sent to the state office, it does need some further refinement. And obviously, you know, the rest of the 2,000 buildings need to be documented.
Trudi Sandmeier 38:09
All the stuff in between.
Katie Horak 38:12
So there is some work to be done, I do hope that the community decides that this is the right thing for them. And if they do, I hope that they find the student work really useful, because the community would have a huge leg up in doing the documentation because of the work of the students.
Trudi Sandmeier 38:27
It’s hard not to watch that presentation and think, oh, my gosh, of course, this is a National Register-eligible district. I mean, just from an architectural standpoint, it’s pretty amazing and intact. But there’s all these cultural layers on top of it that make it even more compelling of a story.
Katie Horak 38:46
Yeah, I believe very strongly that Leimert Park is probably the most significant neighborhood in the city. And LA is a big place with a lot of very, very interesting historic neighborhoods. But I don’t think there’s any neighborhood in the city that tells so many different important stories about our history as a city, and that really has the integrity to still tell that story. I mean, it looks so much like it did in the 1930s, the 1940s, the 1950s. It’s just so wonderfully intact. It’s really amazing to me that it hasn’t been designated already. It certainly is eligible.
Trudi Sandmeier 39:28Fingers crossed. This is a step in the direction of getting that recognition for this amazing place. Thank you to Emily and Kira and Zongqi for coming and spending a little time with us here on Save As to tell us the story of your exploration of Leimert Park. It was really interesting and delightful to have you here to share that with us.
Kira Williams 39:52
Towards the beginning of the semester we met with a couple of individuals from different block clubs within Leimert Park, and we just want to say thank you to them for allowing us to come in and help with some of the research and potentially getting this neighborhood designated. And I want to say thank you to Katie for leading us in this whole extensive research process.
Emily Varley 40:12
Thank you so much, Trudi, for having us on today. It was really wonderful. Thank you so much to Katie, and Rosa and Morgan and Mary, all of the people who supported us during our research this semester.
Zongqi Li 40:25
I would like also to say thank you Trudi to have us to share our experience and then to Katie and everyone who helped us to finish this work.
Trudi Sandmeier 40:37
Absolutely.
