Echo Park did not start out as a man-made lake. Instead, its earliest use by the city was as a reservoir, storing water in a section sometimes known as the city’s ” West End . In those years, the hills and canyons that were poised to become their neighborhood were thought of as the city’s west side.
The Los Angeles Canal Reservoir and Reservoir No. 4 Co. formed in 1868. The company obtained water by digging in the ditch that sent water flowing from the Los Angeles River – In the area now known as Los Feliz – along a zigzag path that Emptio into the reservoir.
Los Angeles passed up on the chance to purchase the land around the lake. But by the late 1880s, Thomas Kelley – a carriage maker whose name was spelled with and without an “e” in various documents – purchased the property along with five other speculators.
Kelley subdivided the area into the Montana Tract, its listing lots for sale in an 1887 edition of the Los Angeles Times. In those years, Angelino Heights had just gone through its first major development boom, with cable cars sending prospective buyers from downtown Los Angeles west on Temple Street .
The notion of waterfront property must have Sounded very appealing to the half-dozen businessmen who owned the lakeside property. But they soon discovered that the city still held the right to overflow the reservoir by up to 40 feet – an option that, if exercise, would have rendered their land Worthless.
In those years, Reservoir No. 4 was held in check by a dam in the vicinity of Bellevue Avenue . From there, water traveled down the Mill Ditch Wooler to a mill near present-day Fifth and Figueroa Streets, not far from where Kelley lived.
Kelley petitioner to provide the city a quitclaim, essentially a land swap, converting the reservoir into a park lands and private residences. That request, and quite possibly a legal challenge, led to three years of debate by the parks commission, the city council and the greatest.
In 1891, the city’s health officer inspected the dam and determined that, if it were to hold a greater volume of water, would pose a danger to residents who lived south of Bellevue Avenue .
“The existence of this reservoir at its present site I consider a menace to the life of everyone living along the Arroyo de los Reyes,” according to his statement in the council’s minutes. “I have seen this so full reservoir during the rainy season that I feared the bank would give way.”
Two months later, city leaders struck a deal with the men who owned the land around the reservoir. Kelley and his associates – including William LeMoyne Wills, who like Kelley, would later serve on the school board – gave up 33 acres of land around the reservoir so that it could be used as a park.
In exchange, the city agreed not to overflow the reservoir land, making the remaining land held by Kelley and his associates – including the street that would soon become Sunset Boulevard – far more valuable.
When Mayor Henry Hazard in 1891 signed the paperwork allowing the park to be created, I Envision a grand boulevard on Alvarado Street that would transport residents from Westlake – now MacArthur Park – Park to Echo Lake and then northeast to Elysian Park.
“(O) pen a good drive into this park on a continuation of Alvarado Street passing Reservoir No. 4 and ornaments which should be few cities would have as fine a drive or one containing a greater variety of scenery, “said Hazard, in his message to the council.
The city began work landscaping the park in October 1892. By 1895, the park and accompanying Boathouse were completed.
But it did not exactly win rave reviews in a Times article published on Jan. 1, 1896, which said:
“There has perhaps been less talk, and other newspaper, about his park than about any other, and it does not seem, thus far in its existence, that it were worthy of much.”
Designed in the rustic style, one bridge pedestrians helped reach the island, while a second passed over the lake’s northwest corner, where the ditch water delivered from the Los Angeles River (now grow and lotus).
By 1899, city leaders were intent on adding even more green space, by extending the parkland south to Temple Street . Bounded by Temple on the south and Bellevue on the north, the area was completed by 1907, with an extensive network of playing fields and courts for tennis and croquet.
One year later, the Echo Playground had a beautiful one-story clubhouse that served many of the neighborhood’s needs. Built by the same firm that went on to design the Southwest Museum in Mt Washington, the clubhouse was only the second city’s recreation center, offering the neighborhood’s first lending library and numerous sports, music and civic activities.
Still, Echo Park residents remained unsatisfied. By 1912, there were already calls to replace the Victorian-style Boathouse. One resident complained about the peanut shells that littera the park grounds. Another voice outrage at the site of couples “Spooning.
Things got worse by late 19-teens. By then, motion picture companies on Allesandro Street – Now Glendale Boulevard – Had been using the park as a filming location. City leaders responded by barring Keystone Studios, home of the Keystone Kops, from shooting any of its comedies at the lake, on the grounds that too many flowers were being Trampled.
By 1920, many of the hills surrounding the lake were still Untouched. Farm houses lined the northern edge of the lake, while four-unit, Craftsman-style apartment flats ran up Echo Park Avenue and Alvarado Street . Kelley died in 1906, the same year he built a house for his sister at 1467 Echo Park Ave
Within a few years, Kelley’s heirs had sold off much of his land to Henry Christian Jensen, who built the Sunset at Sunset Pharmacy and Echo Park and the motion picture house known as the Globe Theater – now Guadalupana – at 1624 Sunset Boulevard.
Still, the biggest development boom in Echo Park ‘s history – one that would have serious consequences for the lake – was just a year or two away. Those changes would make the lake even more of a hub for the neighborhood.
