Baldwin Village is a neighborhood in the south region of the city of Los Angeles, California.

Geography

In 1988, Baldwin Village became a distinct community in the city's General Plan, and signs were to be posted to identify the area. It is bounded by La Brea Avenue, Marlton Avenue, Obama Blvd, Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Santo Thomas Drive.

History

Baldwin Village was developed in the early 1940s and 1950s by architect

Clarence Stein Clarence Samuel Stein (June 19, 1882 – February 7, 1975) was an American urban planner, architect, and writer, a major proponent of the garden city movement in the United States known for the Radburn concept. Biography Stein was born in Roche ...

, as an apartment complex for young families. Baldwin Village is occasionally called "The Jungles" by locals because of the tropical trees and

foliage A leaf (: leaves) is a principal appendage of the stem of a vascular plant, usually borne laterally above ground and specialized for photosynthesis. Leaves are collectively called foliage, as in "autumn foliage", while the leaves, stem, f ...

(such as palms, banana trees and begonias) that once thrived among the area's tropical-style postwar apartment buildings. The

Los Angeles City Council The Los Angeles City Council is the Legislature, lawmaking body for the Government of Los Angeles, city government of Los Angeles, California, the second largest city in the United States. It has 15 members who each represent the 15 city council ...

changed the name in 1990, after residents complained that it reinforced the neighborhood's image as a wild and menacing place. They renamed it Baldwin Village after the Baldwin Hills

neighborhood A neighbourhood (Commonwealth English) or neighborhood (American English) is a geographically localized community within a larger town, city, suburb or rural area, sometimes consisting of a single street and the buildings lining it. Neigh ...

Development

Marlton Square

Development of Marlton Square was stalled in bankruptcy after years of work and millions of dollars of public and private funds until 2012.

Kaiser Permanente

The neighborhood houses a 100,000

square foot The square foot (; abbreviated sq ft, sf, or ft2; also denoted by '2 and ⏍) is an imperial unit and U.S. customary unit (non- SI, non-metric) of area, used mainly in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pa ...

Kaiser Permanente Kaiser Permanente (; KP) is an American integrated delivery system, integrated managed care consortium headquartered in Oakland, California. Founded in 1945 by industrialist Henry J. Kaiser and physician Sidney Garfield, Sidney R. Garfield, the ...

medical

office building An office is a space where the employees of an organization perform administrative work in order to support and realize the various goals of the organization. The word "office" may also denote a position within an organization with specific du ...

and outdoor plaza which opened on September 7, 2017.

Costco

A first-of-its-kind, mixed-use development featuring a Costco store beneath 800 residential units has broken ground in the neighborhood as of September 2024. Occupying the former site of a cable company facility, the development will include over 180 units of affordable housing and surpass the Baldwin Village Apartments as the largest single residential complex in the area. Originally conceived as only a retail development, the project took advantage of new state laws streamlining development approvals and loosening zoning laws for projects with large amounts of affordable housing.

Education

* Hillcrest Drive Elementary - 4041 Hillcrest Dr, Los Angeles, CA 90008

Media

Film

Baldwin Village served as a location for the 1992 film ''

White Men Can't Jump ''White Men Can't Jump'' is a 1992 American Sports film, sports comedy film written and directed by Ron Shelton. It stars Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson as streetball Hustling, hustlers. The film was released in the United States on March 27 ...

''. The neighborhood also appears in the 2001 film ''

Training Day ''Training Day'' is a 2001 American crime thriller film directed by Antoine Fuqua and written by David Ayer. It stars Denzel Washington as Alonzo Harris and Ethan Hawke as Jake Hoyt, two LAPD narcotics officers followed over a 24-hour period ...

''. The 2025 film ''One of Them Days'' is also set in the neighborhood, with the characters referring to it as ‘The Jungles.’

Television

It was also in episode 1 of Season 3 of the

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast. It is one of NBCUniversal's ...

television series '' Southland''. It was a prominent setting in the '' S.W.A.T.'' episode "Local Heroes" (Season 4, Episode 15).

Music videos

Waka Flocka Flame's "Hard in Da Paint" music video was also filmed in Baldwin Village.

References

External links

Kaiser Permanente Baldwin HillsLA Improvements.The Gangs of Los Angeles - Part 3: Helping to Heal Communities

FBI The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and Federal law enforcement in the United States, its principal federal law enforcement ag ...

{{Los Angeles Neighborhoods in Los Angeles Crenshaw, Los Angeles South Los Angeles