Thursday, July 1, 2010

Angelino Heights


Angelino Heights is a small quarter within the Echo Park district of Los Angeles, California. It is most notable for its impressive well-kept Victorian era residences, although these are small in number.


Angelino Heights is bordered by Westlake on the south, Echo Park proper on the west and the north-west, and Elysian Park neighborhood on the east and north-east. Its boundaries are roughly Echo Park Avenue on the west, Sunset Boulevard on the north and east, and the Hollywood Freeway on the south. No major thoroughfares run through the district.


Originally spelled Angeleno Heights, Angelino Heights is second only to Bunker Hill as the oldest district in Los Angeles. Founded in 1886, it was originally connected to the downtown mainline ( which ran east to west on Temple Street) by a small spur line of the cable car and later, electric streetcar. Like Echo Park proper and Chinatown, it is known for its steep hills. The district contains several notable examples of Victorian architecture, particularly of the Eastlake and Queen Anne styles, and though found throughout the neighborhood, they are especially concentrated on Carroll Avenue. Two of these residences served as the houses used for the TV shows Charmed and Journeyman, used in the shows as San Francisco Victorian residences, and because of the picturesque nature of the neighborhood, they have served as the backdrop for countless motion pictures from the earliest days of cinema to the present. Traveling around the neighborhood, one also discovers that many other styles of achitecturally significant homes are to be found here, such as Craftsman, Bungalow, Mission Revival, Art Deco, and Colonial Revival, to name a few.


A large swath of Angelino Heights was destroyed to build the Hollywood Freeway, which cut it off from Temple Street save an overpass at Edgeware Road.


Angelino Heights was the City of Los Angeles' first recognized historic district, or Historic Preservation Overlay Zone (HPOZ). Enacted in 1983 and spelled out in Angelino Heights' Preservation Plan, this zoning prohibits unsympathetic remodelling of historic houses and requires new construction to resemble original architecture in scale, massing and materials.

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