In the early morning hours of 17 June 1926, a series of powerful blasts rocked Boyle Heights. At about five minutes to four, five explosions broke windows, toppled chimneys, and drove panicked residents into the streets. Soon, it was determined that the scene of the blast was the single screen, 900-seat Brooklyn Theatre, located at…
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“The Buddhist Temple of Los Angeles”: Rafu Bukkyokai/Higashi Honganji in Boyle Heights
An essential component to any community is its religious life. In the early years of Boyle Heights, religious structures were almost certainly all Christian, but, by the first part of the 20th century, as the neighborhood’s population diversified, so did its religious buildings.
A 1920s Boyle Heights Artifact: 1921 Walker & Todd Ford Dealer Ink Blotter
This is a small little item that no one (or very nearly) uses anymore: an ink blotter. These were just to wipe excessive ink on when people used the old ink pens with steel nibs on them, before fountain and ball-point pens came into being. Frequently, blotters were an opportunity for businesses to advertise their…
Santa Fe Coast Lines Hospital
The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad, one of the main rail empires in America’s railroading history, built a hospital for company employees in 1904-05 at 610-630 St. Louis Street in Boyle Heights. The facility, known as the Santa Fe Coast Lines Hospital, was razed and rebuilt in 1924. The hospital was opened under the…
The Los Angeles Orphans’ Asylum
In 1856, the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, a society of apostolic life for Roman Catholic nuns founded by St. Vincent de Paul and St. Louise de Marillac in 1633 to serve the poor, took possession of the Los Angeles house of Benjamin D. Wilson, early mayor of Los Angeles, later state…
Rare Boyle Heights Map: Valencia Tract
In April 2010, a post was dedicated to some historic photos of the Queen Anne-style residence of Robert Wirsching and his wife, Carlota Valencia, which still stands on Brittannia Street in Boyle Heights.
Volunteers of America and the Maud Booth Home in Boyle Heights
Back in spring 2010, this blog featured a post (see http://boyleheightshistoryblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/historic-houses-of-boyle-heights-joseph.html) on the 1882 house of Joseph M. Workman, cousin of Boyle Heights founder William H. Workman. By 1895, however, Joseph Workman lost the house, located at 451 South Boyle Avenue, to foreclosure and the home was occupied by others, including saddler Allan Ball and…
The Los Angeles County Crematory Cemetery
t is little understood but, at 1st and Lorena streets at the southeast corner of the original grounds of Evergreen Cemetery, which is operated by a private company and has been since 1877, there is a separate parcel operating as the Los Angeles County Crematory Cemetery and which has served indigent residents interred at the…
Evergreen Cemetery: The First Corporate Cemetery in Los Angeles
Although settled in 1781, the pueblo of Los Angeles did not have its own cemetery until the establishment of the Plaza Church. Prior to that, the denizens of the sparsely populated hamlet, were interred at Mission San Gabriel, ten miles east. The first recorded burial “in the cemetery of the church in the pueblo” was…
Historic Photos of Boyle Heights: Hollenbeck Park
Easily the most photographed and publicized part of Boyle Heights from the 1890s onward was Hollenbeck Park, a twenty-one acre City of Los Angeles park created in 1892. Following national and international trends, the city actively embarked on a park development program starting in the 188os. Hollenbeck followed such early parks as Central (created as…