Echo park » Echo Park Historic http://echopark.net Echo Park since March 1998. Tue, 12 Apr 2011 20:33:59 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.1 HISTORIC ECHO PARK GUIDE http://echopark.net/history/historic-echo-park-guide-2.html http://echopark.net/history/historic-echo-park-guide-2.html#comments Tue, 09 Jun 2009 02:49:46 +0000 admin http://echopark.net/?p=718 Read more »]]> echo1An urban oasis: Echo Lake Park is a true symbol Angelino. His image has been captured in photographs, films, murals and even promotional postcards that were sent from one side to another country at the beginning of the 20th century. Because after all what they can image better remember to Echo Park to its red bridge connecting the island in the middle of the lake with the rest of the park?

Private property to public park:

In 1868 a company was formed to build the dam No. 4 – now known as Echo Lake Park. Water from the dam by a ditch that flowed into a rolling mill for wool in downtown Los Angeles. By the end of 1880, however, investors like Thomas E. Kelly, bought the dam and land to build more homes and businesses, but were faced with a problem. The City was entitled to raise the water level of the dam 40 feet further, which meant that the properties Kelly (now includes the commercial area of Sunset Boulevard) would be flooded. An agreement was reached whereby the City would give up its right to flood the area, after which Kelly donated 30 acres of land including the dam, to build a public park. In 1895, the park and its lake opened its doors to the public even in a somewhat primitive state, but bought more land and for 1907 the park was extended south of Temple Street.

Echo Park and its boats

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 they had built canoes glided the lake and made parties to the boats at night.

Their 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 The statue was originally located across from where you are now, but was damaged in 1980 and was withdrawn from public view to be temporarily restored. Over a decade later, in 1999, Their Lady of the Lake was returned to the park.

echo2The layer of lotus flower

The giant pink flowers that emerge from the lake each summer, have dazzled the visitors for over seventy years. Planto Who?, Remains a mystery. Legend says they were planted by missionaries of the Angelus Temple after returning from China. The lotus flower blooms in July and coincides with the annual Lotus Festival.

The Echo Park Recreation Center

On the shore of the south side of the park is the center are the Spanish Colonial style designed by the same architects who designed the County Medical Center, and USC. The Center opened in 1925, replacing the club house. Second was the Recreation Center of the City. The Club House moved to 1004 Echo Park Avenue, where it remains today. The Center was built on land that was added to the park shortly after 1900 and had the popular play area and library. The park was divided by the highway to the top Holywood 1950

Bridge

The extension allows us to reach the island has existed for over 80 years. In the early years had a second bridge over what is now the flurry of lotus flower.

Echoes from the past ….

According to legend, the park was christened with that name because the workers who built the original dam, claimed they heard echo when speaking.

]]> http://echopark.net/history/historic-echo-park-guide-2.html/feed 0 Echo Park Historic Heart http://echopark.net/echo-park/echo-park-historic-heart.html http://echopark.net/echo-park/echo-park-historic-heart.html#comments Sat, 03 Jan 2009 12:05:54 +0000 admin http://echopark.net/?p=264 Read more »]]>

Echo Park didn’t 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 our neighborhood were thought of as the city’s west side. The Los Angeles Canal and Reservoir Co. formed Reservoir No. 4 in 1868. The company obtained the water by digging a ditch that sent water flowing from the Los Angeles River – in the area now known as Los Feliz – along a zigzag path that emptied 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, listing its 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 exercised, 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 Woolen Mill Ditch to a mill near present-day Fifth and Figueroa Streets, not far from where Kelley lived.Kelley petitioned the city to provide a quitclaim, essentially a land swap, converting the reservoir lands into a park 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 mayor.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 reservoir so full 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 signed the paperwork in 1891 allowing the park to be created, he envisioned a grand boulevard on Alvarado Street that would transport residents from Westlake – now MacArthur Park – to Echo Park 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 which should be ornamented and 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 didn’t exactly win rave reviews in a Times article published on Jan. 1, 1896, which said:“There has perhaps been less talk, newspaper and other, 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 helped pedestrians reach the island, while a second passed over the lake’s northwest corner, where the ditch delivered water from the Los Angeles River (and lotus now grow).
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 city’s second 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 littered the park grounds. Another voiced 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 Pharmacy at Sunset 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.
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