Chávez Ravine

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Chávez Ravine is the current site of Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, California. ^[1]

It was named after Julian Chavez, a Los Angeles Councilman in the 1800s.

Contents 1 History 1.1 1940s 1.2 1950s 1.3 1960s 2 References in the arts 3 References 4 External links

[edit] History

Before being cleared for public housing, Chavez Ravine was made up of the three mostly Latino communities of La Loma, Palo Verde, and Bishop.

[edit] 1940s

In the 1940s, Chavez Ravine was a poor, though cohesive, Mexican-American community. Many families lived there because of housing discrimination in other parts of Los Angeles. With the population of Los Angeles expanding, Chavez Ravine was viewed as a prime, underutilized location. The city began to label the area as "blighted" and thus ripe for redevelopment. Through a vote, the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, with the assistance of federal funds from the Housing Act of 1949, was designated the task to construct public housing, in large part to address the severe post-World War II housing shortage. Prominent architects Richard Neutra and Robert Alexander developed a plan for "Elysian Park Heights." The city had already relocated many of the residents of Chavez Ravine when the entire project came to a halt. Fear of communism was sweeping the United States and loud voices in Los Angeles cried that the housing project smacked of socialism.

[edit] 1950s

The land for Dodger Stadium was purchased from local owners/inhabitants in the early 1950s by the City of Los Angeles using eminent domain with funds from the Federal Housing Act of 1949. The city had planned to develop the Elysian Park Heights public housing project which included two dozen 13-story buildings and more than 160 two-story townhouses, in addition to newly rebuilt playgrounds and schools.

Before construction could begin, the local political climate changed greatly when Norris Poulson was elected mayor of Los Angeles in 1953. Proposed public housing projects like Elysian Park Heights lost most of their support as they became associated with communist/socialist ideals. Following protracted negotiations, the City of Los Angeles was able to purchase the Chavez Ravine property back from the Federal Housing Authority at a drastically reduced price, with the stipulation that the land be used for a public purpose. It wasn't until the baseball referendum Taxpayers Committee for Yes on Baseball, which was approved by Los Angeles voters on June 3, 1958 that the Dodgers were able to acquire 352 acres (1.42 km²) of Chavez Ravine from the City of Los Angeles.

Noted Los Angeles author Mike Davis, in his seminal work on the city, City of Quartz, describes the process of gradually convincing Chávez Ravine homeowners to sell. With nearly all of the original Spanish-speaking homeowners initially unwilling to sell, developers resorted to offering immediate cash payments, distributed through their Spanish-speaking agents. Once the first sales had been completed, remaining homeowners were offered increasingly lesser amounts of money, to create a community panic of not receiving fair compensation, or of being left as one of the few holdouts. Many residents continued to hold out despite the pressure being placed upon them by developers, resulting in the Battle of Chavez Ravine, an unsuccessful ten year struggle by residents of Chavez Ravine, to maintain control of their property.

In 1952 Frank Wilkinson of the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles would end up being fired and blacklisted, and a few years later reported to the House Un-American Activities Committee. He was jailed when the United States Supreme Court ruled 5-4 against Frank Wilkinson's attempt to use the First Amendment to refuse questions about possible involvement in the Communist Party.

In the end, the project died. Some years later, the city made the controversial decision to trade the land to the Brooklyn Dodgers and Walter O'Malley, in exchange for land around the minor league park Wrigley Field, in a move to provide incentives for a migration to Los Angeles. ^[2]

Many cities had been subsidizing sports stadiums in an effort to bring prestige to their cities, and Los Angeles was no exception. With Chavez Ravine slated to become the site of the new Dodger Stadium, the remaining members of the Chavez Ravine community were physically forced to relocate. While some had initially left the neighborhood, voluntarily or involuntarily through either the use of eminent domain or condemnation, others stayed until the end. Eventually the sheriff's department went in with bulldozers and armed men. A few property holders in the area had actually managed to avoid eminent domain proceedings and they were finally bought out by O'Malley. The homes and streets were razed and the community was buried.

[edit] 1960s

During the time when the Los Angeles Angels used it from 1962 through 1965, the stadium was called "Chávez Ravine". The site was also the stage of a housing controversy, the "Battle of Chavez Ravine", about plans for redevelopment of that site.

[edit] References in the arts

Chavez Ravine was an album recorded by Ry Cooder in 2005, based on a series of photographs of the area by Don Normark.

A portion of the Great Wall of Los Angeles, a mural by Judith F. Baca in the Tujunga Wash Drainage Canal in San Fernando Valley, California, is titled "The Division of the Barrios and Chavez Ravine." It depicts familes separated by freeways and the Dodger Stadium in the air like a spaceship.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• In 1957, a zoo was proposed for Chavez Ravine.