Latinx Landmarks in L.A.

A central thoroughfare at El Pueblo, many of the City’s most historic buildings are located on Olvera Street — including the Avila Adobe built in 1818, Pelanconi House built in 1857, and the Sepulveda House built in 1887. In November 1928, a young Angeleno named Christine Sterling saw a condemnation notice on the Avila House, stating the building was slated for demolition. Knowing that the Avila Adobe was the oldest house in Los Angeles, she began to raise money to repair it and rejuvenate the area.

On Easter Sunday in 1930, this vision came to fruition with the opening of Olvera Street. Dozens of craftspeople, artisans, food vendors, and retailers have set up shop there over the years to honor the history of Los Angeles. The American Planning Association named Olvera Street one of the top five "Great Streets" in the United States in 2015.

The Avila Adobe was constructed in 1818 by a prominent ranchero, Francisco José Avila, who became mayor of Los Angeles in 1810. It is the oldest standing residence in the City, with walls that are 2.5–3 feet thick and built from sun-baked adobe bricks. With seven remaining rooms, the present adobe is a museum depicting the California lifestyle of the 1840s. Avila Adobe is a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument, a California Historical Landmark, and is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Sepulveda House is a 22-room Victorian house built in 1887. The original structure included two commercial businesses on the Main Street side and three residences on Olvera Street. Sepulveda House represents the architectural and social transformation of Los Angeles from a city of purely Mexican traditions to a multicultural blend of Mexican and American cultures. Now, it serves as El Pueblo’s visitors' center and has exhibits illustrating life in Los Angeles in the 1890s.

In 1932, political refugee David Alfaro Siqueiros came to Los Angeles and was sponsored by the Plaza Art Center to create a mural that is now known as América Tropical. Siqueiros used this artwork to make a political statement regarding US imperialism and oppression in Latin America.

América Tropical would go on to inspire the Chicano art movement in the U.S. and play a huge role in Mexican Muralism, a tradition that continues in Mexico today. The work was whitewashed until the late 1960’s when whitewash began to peel and display Siqueiros’ work once again. With restoration aid from the Getty Foundation and the City of Los Angeles, the artwork is now on display at the El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument where it is covered by a protective shelter.

The parish church in the Los Angeles Plaza Historic District was founded as La Iglesia de Nuestra Señora la Reina de Los Ángeles in 1814 and dedicated in 1822. Our Lady Queen of Angels Catholic Church, also known as  La Placita Church , was one of the first three sites designated as Historic-Cultural Monuments by the City of Los Angeles in 1962 and has been designated a California Historical Landmark. It is part of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and is the only building at El Pueblo that is still used for its original purpose today.

The 2.2-acre  LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes  campus includes two historic and recently renovated buildings — the Vickrey-Brunswig Building and Plaza House — that are surrounded by 30,000 square feet of public gardens. At LA Plaza, visitors can learn about the founding story of Los Angeles with interactive exhibits that focus on exploring Mexican and Mexican-American identity. LA Plaza is a project of the County of Los Angeles and a Smithsonian Affiliate.

Built as a luxury hotel in 1870 by Pío Pico, the last Mexican Governor of Alta California, Pico House is located across Olvera Street. It was the first three story building in Los Angeles and, in its prime, was considered one of the most extravagant and lavish hotels in Southern California, featuring a fountain and an aviary of exotic birds. The back of the hotel faces Sanchez Street, where the large gate once used by supply wagons and other large vehicles can still be seen. Pico House is listed as a California Historical Landmark and a National Historic Landmark as a part of the Los Angeles Plaza Historic District.

Located in what is now Dodgers Stadium in the Elysian Park neighborhood, Chavez Ravine was home to generations of Mexican Americans until the 1950s when the City cleared out the neighborhoods to make space for public housing. The housing never materialized as Norris Poulson, an anti-public housing stalwart, was elected mayor in 1953. In 1958, with a few families remaining in the area, the City reached a deal with Walter O’Malley, owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, to bring the team to Los Angeles and build a stadium in Chavez Ravine.

A lesser-known feature of the area is the  Chavez Ravine Arboretum , founded in 1893 by the Los Angeles Horticultural Society on City land and maintained by the Department of Recreation and Parks. The Arboretum contains more than 100 varieties of trees from around the world, including the country’s oldest and largest Cape Chestnut, Kauri and Tipu trees.

The old boathouse in  Lincoln Park  was built in 1912, but later fell on hard times and was slated for demolition in 1969. A passionate group of local residents then worked with the City to establish  Plaza de la Raza  (Place of the People) as a non-profit to serve Latinx communities. Since its opening, it has provided programs in arts education and a space for cultural enrichment for L.A.'s Eastside neighborhoods.

What began as an informal gathering spot for mariachis seeking work is now known today as Mariachi Plaza. From early in the 1930s, Mariachis would wait around this gathering space and the nearby Boyle Hotel looking to be hired. On November 22, 1992 (the first day of Saint Cecilia), the Department of Cultural Affairs and Metro sought to make this plaza a formal space.

Today, Mariachi plaza exists as a historic gateway as it hosts numerous celebrations, festivals, community events and processions of Mariachis on feast day of Saint Cecilia, with optimism that it will continue to remain a place for musicians to thrive. It displays the various gifted traditional art from the State of Jalisco, including a Cantera stone kiosk and seventeen wrought iron benches that reflect the 17 Jalisco municipalities.

What started off as a public housing project is now known as the  “the site of the 1970s birth of the Chicano Mural Art Movement.”  It is home to a cluster of murals painted at the peak of the Chicano Civil Rights Movement that bring Chicano culture and tradition to life in this Boyle Heights housing complex.

Pictured below is We Are Not a Minority, a mural seen in music videos by several artists including Tupac Shakur. Other murals at the site have been featured across a variety of media, including music videos, TV shows and movies.

A connection between Downtown L.A. and the predominantly Latinx neighborhoods east of the Los Angeles River, the Fourth Street Bridge over Lorena Street and Bernal Avenue is one of a group of major bridges constructed by the City of Los Angeles in the 1930's. The bridge is a significant engineering achievement in concrete construction and has ensured the flow of traffic and pedestrians from downtown to East Los Angeles for decades.

Formerly known as Laguna Park, this was memoralized after protestors clashed with law enforcement during the 1970 Chicano Moratorium. Advocating against the disproportionate number of Chicanos dying during the Vietnam War, civil unrest broke out during the demonstration as protestors were arrested and injured, resulting in the deaths of Ruben Salazar, Angel (Jose) Diaz, and Brown Beret Lyn Ward.

Laguna Park was renamed as Ruben Salazar Park to honor the journalist who died during the standoff. In addition to housing the 2001 mural The Wall That Speaks, Sings, and Shouts, which highlights key cultural and historical figures of the Latinx community, this park provides a number of services to the surrounding Latinx community.

El Mercado, also known as “El Mercadito”, is a Latin American marketplace in Boyle Heights. A social, cultural, and commercial center, it provides space for sale of Mexican products and food, features live music and showcases murals displaying the community’s history.

Although once a multiethnic market for Mexican, Japanese and Italian communities, the marketplace is now primarily identified with the Latinx community, as the culture, goods and food that exist today continue to attract thousands of visitors.

This public space is named for the five-way intersection of East Cesar E. Chavez Avenue, Lorena Boulevard and Indiana Street. Los Cinco Puntos also contains two memorials — Morin Square Memorial and the War Memorial — honoring Mexican-American veterans of World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War, and paying tribute to the strong presence of the Eastside’s veteran community. 

The site was also made famous as the starting location of the first  Chicanx Moratorium  march in protest of the Vietnam War in East Los Angeles on December 20, 1969. The demonstration — one of several marches that took place between 1969 and 1971 — was a significant milestone for Chicanx activists from the Eastside and drew national attention.

Named after East L.A. native and iconic actor Anthony Quinn, the Anthony Quinn library serves as an important community center and an unofficial memorial to the late actor. On the exterior, the library presents the  Tree of Knowledge  by Mexican muralist Josefina Quezada that displays a woman reading to a group of children. Inside the library contains Quinn’s memorabilia of his old scripts, scrapbooks and personal papers.

Soledad Church, also known as Our Lady of Solitude, played a vital role in Latinx activism and was home to significant social movements that advocated for farm workers’ rights and the plight of low-income neighborhoods. A centerpoint within the community, the church has brought vital resources and services to East Los Angeles.

Sources describe how leaders such as Cesar Chavez would meet with priests in the basement of the church. The church's leader, Father Luis Olivares, often fought against the injustice found in his own parish by advocating for community-based services and violence prevention, making the congregation an influential force in Los Angeles.

Belvedere Park—often called  “the recreational heart of East Los Angeles" —has been central to both Latinx and Eastern European communities throughout its time. Renamed from Soledad Park in 1949, the park was notable for hosting local Mexican American baseball league games in its “El Porvenir” northern field and the variety of birds that congregate near its pond, making it known to locals as “El Parque de los Patitos.” Today, the park hosts a vareity of local and international musicians in its amphitheater.

In recent decades, Latinx communities have increasingly established roots in different areas of Los Angeles. Born out of this was Mercado La Paloma, located in the Figueroa Corridor of South Los Angeles — a neighborhood that is full of creative entrepreneurs, artists, musicians and cultural traditions.

Created in the early 2000's in response to residents' suggestions for a local version of the bustling markets similar to those in their home countries, Mercado La Paloma has become a bustling commercial and community cultural center.

Located in the San Fernando Valley where Studio City and Universal City meet, the  Campo de Cahuenga  is the site of the signing of the Treaty of Cahuenga in January 1847. This document was instrumental in ending the conflict over the southwest territory between the United States and Mexico. The original adobe structure was demolished in 1900, but the City of Los Angeles provided the funds to purchase the property in 1923. It is now a park and interpretive center managed by the City's Department of Recreation and Parks in collaboration with the Campo de Cahuenga Historical Memorial Association. Each January, the Campo hosts a reenactment of the treaty signing.

The half-mile-long  Great Wall of Los Angeles  is a pictorial representation of the history of ethnic people in California from prehistoric times to the 1950's conceived by Chicanx muralist Judy Baca, founder of the  Social and Public Art Resource Center . Beginning in 1974 and completed over five summers, the Great Wall employed over 400 young people and their families from diverse social and economic backgrounds — working with artists, oral historians, ethnologists, scholars and hundreds of community members.

The artistic style of the mural reflects the Chicanx mural movement of the 1970s. It is one of the longest and largest murals in the world, located in the Tujunga Flood Control Channel of the San Fernando Valley. The Great Wall is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

The  Andres Pico Adobe  is the second oldest adobe home in the City of Los Angeles. Built in 183 during the Mexican government’s secularization of the Missions, it represents the rich past of the San Fernando Valley.

Now owned by the City’s Department of Recreation and Parks, the Adobe has been restored and serves as a museum of Valley history with exhibits of Native American beads, Mission and Spanish-Mexican era artifacts, costumes and clothing, and furniture from the Victorian era. It contains a research library, photographic archives, and is used as the official headquarters of the  San Fernando Valley Historical Society .