Park La Brea (

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Cana ...

: ''La Brea''—"The tar", after the nearby

La Brea Tar Pits La Brea Tar Pits is an active paleontological research site in urban Los Angeles. Hancock Park was formed around a group of tar pits where natural asphalt (also called asphaltum, bitumen, or pitch; ''brea'' in Spanish) has seeped up from the gro ...

) is a sprawling apartment community in the

Miracle Mile District Miracle Mile is a neighborhood in the city of Los Angeles, California. It contains a stretch of Wilshire Boulevard known as Museum Row. It also contains two Historic Preservation Overlay Zones: The Miracle Mile and the Miracle Mile North HPOZ ...

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

. With 4,255 units located in eighteen 13-story towers and thirty-one two-story "garden apartment buildings", it is the largest housing development in the U.S. west of the Mississippi River.R. Daniel Foster
"Park La Brea, 70-year-old design still feels the love (and hate)"
''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...

'', February 24, 2012. (In February 25, 2012 print edition, p. E5, under headline "Park La Brea: monster or jewel?") It sits on of land with numerous lawns.

Geography and transportation

Park La Brea is bounded by 3rd Street on the north, Cochran Avenue on the east, 6th Street on the south, and

Fairfax Avenue Fairfax Avenue is a street in the north central area of the city of Los Angeles, California. It runs from La Cienega Boulevard in Culver City at its southern end to Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood on its northern end. From La Cienega Boulevard ( ...

on the west. The complex is notable for its octagonal street layout, with many internal thoroughfares at a 45° angle of displacement relative to the surrounding city street grid.

The neighborhood

After the arrival of the Spanish in the 1780s, most of the area that is now Park La Brea became part of the

Rancho La Brea Rancho La Brea was a Mexican land grant in present-day Los Angeles County, California, given in 1828 to Antonio Jose Rocha and Nemisio Dominguez by José Antonio Carrillo, the alcalde of Los Angeles. Rancho La Brea consisted of one square leagu ...

land grant, and remained largely devoted to agriculture and

petroleum Petroleum, also known as crude oil, or simply oil, is a naturally occurring yellowish-black liquid mixture of mainly hydrocarbons, and is found in geological formations. The name ''petroleum'' covers both naturally occurring unprocessed crud ...

production well into the 20th century. The growth of

Hollywood Hollywood usually refers to: * Hollywood, Los Angeles, a neighborhood in California * Hollywood, a metonym for the cinema of the United States Hollywood may also refer to: Places United States * Hollywood District (disambiguation) * Hollywood, ...

and the

Miracle Mile Miracle Mile may refer to: Places in the United States * Miracle Mile, Los Angeles, California, a district of Los Angeles * Miracle Mile (Coral Gables), a shopping area in Coral Gables, Florida * Miracle Mile (Manhasset), New York, a premium sho ...

made the adjacent areas desirable centers for residential development in the 1920s, but the mid-rise apartment towers that give the district its current name were built later, between 1944 and 1948. Park La Brea represents something of a historical anomaly, having been built at a time when most visions of Los Angeles' development were dominated by low-rise tracts of single-family houses along

freeway A controlled-access highway is a type of highway that has been designed for high-speed vehicular traffic, with all traffic flow—ingress and egress—regulated. Common English terms are freeway, motorway and expressway. Other similar terms ...

corridors. As the towers are relatively isolated from the rest of the Miracle Mile — set far back from major thoroughfares in a nod to

Le Corbusier Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (6 October 188727 August 1965), known as Le Corbusier ( , , ), was a Swiss-French architect, designer, painter, urban planner, writer, and one of the pioneers of what is now regarded as modern architecture. He was ...

, they developed a reputation as "the projects", since they are reminiscent of such notorious housing developments as Chicago's

Robert Taylor Homes Robert Taylor Homes was a public housing project in the Bronzeville neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois from 1962 to 2007. The largest housing project in the United States, it consisted of 28 virtually identical high-rises, set ...

and New York's Queensbridge. The street layout was created in a

masonic Freemasonry or Masonry refers to Fraternity, fraternal organisations that trace their origins to the local guilds of Stonemasonry, stonemasons that, from the end of the 13th century, regulated the qualifications of stonemasons and their inte ...

pattern as a reference to the Masonic heritage of the

Metropolitan Life Insurance Company MetLife, Inc. is the holding corporation for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company (MLIC), better known as MetLife, and its affiliates. MetLife is among the largest global providers of insurance, annuities, and employee benefit programs, wi ...

, which built the complex toward the end of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

and immediately thereafter. Metropolitan Life Insurance also constructed a sister complex,

Parkmerced Parkmerced is a neighborhood in San Francisco, California, designed by architects Schultze & Weaver, Leonard Schultze and Thomas Dolliver Church in the early 1940s. Parkmerced is the second-largest single-owner neighborhood of apartment blocks wes ...

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

, which features a similar street layout as Park La Brea. At the same time, they built

Stuyvesant Town Stuyvesant may refer to: People * Peter Stuyvesant (1592–1672), the last governor of New Netherland * Peter Gerard Stuyvesant (1778–1847), lawyer, landowner and philanthropist. * Rutherfurd Stuyvesant (1843–1909), socialite and land developer ...

and

Peter Cooper Village Peter may refer to: People * List of people named Peter, a list of people and fictional characters with the given name * Peter (given name) ** Saint Peter (died 60s), apostle of Jesus, leader of the early Christian Church * Peter (surname), a sur ...

in Manhattan,

Parkchester Parkchester is a planned community and neighborhood originally developed by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company and located in the central Bronx, New York City. The immediate surrounding area also takes its name from the complex. Its boundari ...

in The Bronx, and

Parkfairfax Parkfairfax is a neighborhood in Alexandria, Virginia, United States, located in the northwestern part of the city near the boundary with Arlington County. Nearby thoroughfares are Interstate 395 (Shirley Highway), State Route 402 (Quaker Lane), ...

in Alexandria, Virginia just outside Washington, D.C.

Design

The Park La Brea townhouses were designed by Leonard Schultze & Associates (New York) with associate architect Earl T. Heitschmidt in 1941. The style of the architecture has been described as Modern Colonial. The Park La Brea Towers were designed by Leonard Schultz Associates with consulting architects Stanton + Kaufmann in 1948. Inspired by the innovative housing of Le Corbusier in Paris, this architectural team set out to create innovative multifamily housing. Their plans included square-block sized formations of town houses surrounding shared common green space. The combined shared lawn spaces creates both a large courtyard and tree-dappled open space. The Landmark Towers, in a revolutionary "X" structure with a unique placement, became icons of the Los Angeles skyline. The ingeniously designed plan ensured that every unit would enjoy expansive views.

History and revitalization

In the 2000s, Park La Brea had become a desirable rental community with its own community center, health club and pool, beauty parlor, and drycleaner in addition to its convenient proximity to local museums,

Farmers Market (Los Angeles) The Original Farmers Market is an area of food stalls, sit-down eateries, prepared food vendors, and produce markets in Los Angeles, California, at the corner of Fairfax Avenue and 3rd Street. First opened in July 1934, it is also a historic Los ...

, and

The Grove at Farmers Market The Grove is a retail and entertainment complex in Los Angeles, located on parts of the historic Farmers Market. History The complex fills space previously occupied by an orchard and nursery, which were the last remains of a dairy farm owned ...

shopping complex. In recent years, additional improvements have been made, such as adding new pools. The complex completed another $8 million renovation in 2010.

Education

Residents are zoned to schools in the

Los Angeles Unified School District Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) is a public school district in Los Angeles, California, United States. It is the largest public school system in California in terms of number of students and the 2nd largest public school district in ...

. Three different elementary schools serve portions of this neighborhood:Maggie Barnett
Freshly hip, Park La Brea is an urban oasis
May 23, 2004, ''latimes.com'' (archived fro
the original
on 2008-03-08). * Carthay Center Elementary School
Hancock Park Elementary School
* Wilshire Crest Elementary School All of the neighborhood is zoned to

John Burroughs Middle School This is a list of schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District. The concept of zones is explained on the LAUSD website. K–12 schools Zoned schools *Elizabeth Learning Center (only K–8 is zoned) ( Cudahy, opened 1927) *James A. Fosha ...

and Fairfax High School.

References

External links

Official Park La Brea website

Yelp.com: Park La Brea ratings
{{authority control Neighborhoods in Los Angeles Mid-Wilshire, Los Angeles Apartment buildings in Los Angeles Planned communities in California Central Los Angeles Westside (Los Angeles County)