Park La Brea, Los Angeles, California
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Park La Brea (Spanish: La Brea - The tar, after the nearby La Brea Tar Pits) is a sprawling apartment complex in the Miracle Mile District of Los Angeles, California. It encompasses more than 4,000 apartments in both high-rise and garden-style buildings, and sits on 160 acres of land with numerous lawns.
[edit] Geography and Transportation
Park La Brea is bounded by 3rd Street on the north, Cochran Avenue on the east, 6th Street on the south, and Fairfax Avenue on the west. The complex is notable for its octagonal street layout, with many thoroughfares at a 45º angle of displacement relative to the Los Angeles street grid.
[edit] The Neighborhood
After the arrival of the Spanish in the 1780s and the displacement of the area's indigenous population, most of the area that is now Park La Brea became part of the Rancho La Brea land grant, and remained largely devoted to agriculture and petroleum production well into the 20th century. The growth of Hollywood and the Miracle Mile made the adjacent areas desirable centers for residential development in the 1920s, but the mid-rise apartment towers that give the district its current name were built later, between 1944 and 1948. Park La Brea represents something of a historical anomaly, having been built at a time when most visions of Los Angeles' development were dominated by low-rise tracts of single-family houses along freeway corridors. As the towers are relatively isolated from the rest of the Miracle Mile--set far back from major thoroughfares in a nod to Le Corbusier--they developed a reputation as "the projects," since they are reminiscent of such notorious housing developments as Chicago's Robert Taylor Homes and New York's Queensbridge. The street layout was created in a masonic pattern as a reference to the masonic heritage of the Metropolitan Life Insurance group. After a period of decline in the 1970s and 1980s, the complex was refurbished in the early 1990s and is once again considered one of the more desirable residential addresses in Los Angeles.
A sister complex was built by the Metropolitan Life Insuarance group as postwar housing. The sister complex, Park Merced in San Francisco, CA, features the same street layout as Park La Brea in Los Angeles.
[edit] External links
- Maps and aerial photos
- Street map from Google Maps, or Yahoo! Maps, or Windows Live Local
- Satellite image from Google Maps, Windows Live Local, WikiMapia
- Topographic map from TopoZone
- Aerial image or topographic map from TerraServer-USA
- Official Park La Brea site
- Los Angeles Times, Real Estate section, Neighborly Advice column: "Freshly hip, Park La Brea is an urban oasis" (23 May 2004)
