Privately owned public park:
In 1868 he formed a company to build the dam No. 4 – now known as Echo Lake Park. The water from the dam flowed through a ditch to shoot at a wool mill in downtown Los Angeles. By the end of 1880, however, investors like Thomas E. Kelly, bought the dam and some land to build homes and businesses, but faced with a problem. The City was entitled to raise the water level of the dam an additional 40 feet, which meant that the properties of Kelly (which now includes the commercial area of Sunset Boulevard) could be flooded. It reached an agreement in which the City would give up their right to flood the area, after Kelly donated 30 acres of land including the dam, to build a public park. In 1895, the park and its lake were opened to the public even in a somewhat primitive, but they bought more land and by 1907 the park was extended to the South Street Temple.

Echo Park and its boat
The boat has since worked since 1896 as the first structure built in the style Queen Victoria. The current position of Spanish style, was built in 1932, after the lake was emptied for construction. In the early years when he built canoes glided by the lake and the boats were parties at night.

Our Lady of the Lake
This Art Deco-style statue located north of the position of boats, was designed by artist Ada Sharpless and displayed to the public in 1934. The statue was originally located across from where you are now, but in 1980 was damaged and was removed from public view to be restored temporarily. More than a decade later, in 1999, Our Lady of the Lake was returned to the park.

The lotus flower litter
The giant pink flowers that emerge from the lake each summer, have dazzled visitors for more than seventy to us. Who planted them?, Remains a mystery. The legend says they were planted by missionaries from the Angelus Temple after returning from China. The lotus flower blooms in July and coincides with the annual Lotus Festival.

Deteriorated to the point where it was unsafe to cross, the bridge and island were closed to park users. In the interim, with the exception of the occasional filming or special event, the island has become a de facto bird sanctuary.

Recreation and Parks, Metro Griffith Park Construction Services crews under the supervision of Larry Mottler stripped the bridge of all its wood decking and rails, all the way down to the steel support structure. With pontoons as a work platform, the crew stripped the paint, rebuilt the wooden deck and railing, repaved the approach, and finally repainted the bridge.

At the urging of the Echo Park Historical Society several layers of red paint were peeled away from the steel structure to expose 4 or more layers of green, last seen over more than 14 years ago before the bridge was unfortunately painted red. The green bridge can also be appreciated in the 1974 film classic Chinatown.

By September it is anticipated that a new decorative, artist designed and fabricated gate will replace the steel bars that currently restrict access to the bridge and that the island will might be made accessible for special events or possibly during daylight hours.

Special thanks to Council President Eric Garcetti and District Director Mitch O’Farrell for facilitating the discussions between Recreation and Parks and the Echo Park Historical Society that resulted in a historically sensitive reconstruction of this Echo Park Landmark.

Additional thanks to the Recreation and Parks construction crew: Head Carpenter Louis A. Suarez, Carpenters Omar Vegas and James Shakir, Apprentice Carpenter Bryan Kelly, and Helper Jose Ramos.

The Right Site Coalition and the Echo Park Historical Society are in the midst of a CEQA lawsuit against LAUSD that will not be heard until December 18th so in the meantime the school district is attempting to demolition the evidence before the case goes to trial.

Council President Eric Garcetti has said that he would not allow the closure of streets necessary for the school to be built; now we need him to block the issuance of demolition permits for the project. For background on the Site 9A fight click here.

LAUSD will conduct a public hearing this Tuesday, October 10 at Rosemont Elementary School at 6PM. (See attached PDF). Help support the preservation of part of the fabric of our community by acting today.

From the Right Site Coalition:

Hello everyone,

Please take a moment of your time and fax, call or email CD 13 representative, Council President Eric Garcetti today!

He must request a stay of demolition. The Right Sight Coalition has fought for over a year to stop the LAUSD from foolishly demolishing this essential part of Echo Park. Directly in our Community Center, it is full of historic housing and commercial uses. We need to show LAUSD that when you’re wrong you are wrong.

Enrollment numbers for 06/07 are about to be released and according to a Logan Street Elementary parent, the school was down to 742 students this year. That would mean over 150 less students than last year! Imagine how the other schools have fared.

Please support the Right Sight Coalitions fight to save this part of our neighborhood while preventing LAUSD from putting a school in an area that doesn’t need it! We have a trial date of December 18 for the CEQA lawsuit. Donations for the Right Sight Coalition may be mailed and made out to:

EPHS
PO Box 261022
Los Angeles, CA 90026

Fax or send your letters to:
Councilmember Eric Garcetti
323-957-4500
fax#323-957-6841

5500 Hollywood Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90028

That all changed this morning when his female mate returned his call with her own soft hoo-hoo hoooooo hoo-hoo.With her return it appears that order has been restored in Elysian Park…at least until next season. In other Elysian Park bird news, the LA Weekly celebrates the mystery of the Bird Man of Elysian Park.

Perhaps an early copy of Echo Park will show up in my mail box for a review too, especially when all the Connolly fans start Go ogling “Echo Park” and they end up here and only find quotes from James Ellroy books!

Here’s the image of the American cover, too bad it appears to be Palisades Park in Santa Monica and not Echo Park. Previously

The free directory will be aimed at residents, business owners and
artists. The guide will include Echo Park commercial photographers,
garden designers, arts attorneys, musicians, architects, graphic
designers, jewelry makers, writers-for-hire, printers and many other
creative professionals.

Delirium-Tremens joined Ojala Fine Arts & Crafts, which opened in May 1998, in an emerging ‘‘gallery row’’ on Echo Park Avenue. In September 1998, a third art space—Fototeka, which focuses on photographic arts—opened its doors on the same block.

Aaron Donovan, whose paintings and have been exhibited in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New Orleans, and Patti Castillo, who works in ceramics, are both residents of Echo Park.

Our former landlords and old-school Echo Park resident’s Jeb & Sandy lost their Hi-Desert Hide-a-way in last weeks Morongo Valley fire. They fell in love with their little place and shared it’s plantings with us for our desert cabin; we wish them all the best with their inevitable rebuild!

First off I want to thank Angeleno Heights resident David Gee for setting up the WordPress software on my server! David’s offer of assistance ended the hiatus and motivated me to sit down and figure out how to manipulate, through trial and a lot of error, the CSS code that I’ve never played with before.

What you see is a couple of days worth of messing around with the look of the site by modifying Sadish Balasubramanian’s very clean C4M theme more to my liking. I’ve retained the blue lake theme but dumped the always disliked blue font. I’ll be manipulating the site some more, making some subtle tweaks here and there and adding a Flickr powered photo sidebar very soon.

Now that EchoPark.Net is blog-powered you’ll be able to feed via RSS the latest entries to your email or blog reader (I use Bloglines) without checking in here at the site (only to find that nothings changed for the last 4 months).

I’ve also taken the last 4-years of post and entered them as individual dated entries that are now categorized.

Thanks for your patience and queries about the site,

Scott

Some history from the Electric Railway Historical Association:

The Elysian Park Street Railway Company built this line in 1889 on Echo Park Avenue from Temple Street to about 600 feet north of Sunset Boulevard as a horse car line. In the fall of 1890 that part of the line between Temple and Sunset was abandoned and the rails removed. In late 1890 the line was extended about a mile up Echo Park Avenue to Cerro Gordo Street.

The Los Angeles Pacific purchased the line on November 15, 1895. The line was electrified by LAP in 1902, opening for service as such on November 20, 1902. The line was standard gauged in 1909. The Pacific Electric acquired this line in 1911, and it was operated until converted to bus operation on October 1, 1950.