A History of Boyle Heights

    The history of a small suburb of Los Angeles called Boyle Heights begins about 150 years ago, way back before California had entered the Union of the United States of America. This land that is now Southern California, more specifically is now Boyle Heights, was once a land that was only populated by Mexicans and the San Gabrielino Native Americans. There wasn't a single white man east of the river for miles. This was in the years before the 1850s and before the Compromise of 1850 that let California into the union as a free state.

Andrew Boyle's house, 1858

Boyle Heights was mainly an agricultural region that grew food for the rest of the town of Los Angeles.

    The only white Americans here at the time lived in a small town known to the Mexicans as Nuestra Senora, La Reina de Los Angeles, as it was named by Felipe de Nueve, envoy of Spain in the early 1600s. By the mid 1800s, Los Angeles was a small western town built mainly by white Americans but mostly populated by the Mexicans and some Native Americans. About 350 years after the founding of Los Angeles, a group of people known as the Workman Party, led by William Workman, left the East Coast for California in the year 1841. These men left the East Coast for two reasons: 1) to search for new trading markets and 2) to hunt down wild animals for their priceless hides. When they arrived in Los Angeles, they lived among Americans who were living west of the Los Angeles River. A few years later, some of the members of the Workman party, along with some other Americans, decided to cultivate some vineyards in the rich soil right next to the eastern river banks. These men, however, still lived in their homes in what today is downtown Los Angeles.

    There were three main reasons why people did not live on the east side of the river. The first of these reasons was that most of the suitable desirable land was the land that was right next to the river.

Boyle Heights area

Most of this land, however, was already taken by other people that had set up vineyards there. The land that was not taken by vineyards in Boyle Heights was all the land that was on the hills. At this time, the only people living on the hills were the Mexicans and the Native Americans. This was because the Americans (whites) preferred to live on flat lands such as in downtown Los Angeles. Another reason why nobody lived in Boyle Heights was because there were no bridges that crossed the Los Angeles River.

    The only way that you would be able to cross the river would be on horseback and in the rainy season this would be a very dangerous task. At this early time in Los Angeles history, all of the stores and supply shops were in the town on the west side of the river. This would mean that during the rainy season, when the river would flood, the East side would be cut off from the rest of the town as well as from vital supplies. The third reason why no Americans had homes on the east side of the river would be because every season around winter, during the rainy season, the river would flood, covering most of the desirable land. The land that wouldn't be under water was all considered to be too far from town. That is why nobody would set up permanent homes in Boyle Heights for about 150 years after the founding of Los Angeles.

    In the year of 1858, a man known as Andrew A. Boyle, whom Boyle Heights was named for, had moved down to Los Angeles from San Francisco. He came down here because a friend of his who was of the original Workman Party had persuaded him to pay a "visit". Boyle's friend had acquired a good amount of money and owned a vineyard on the east side of the river. This man was apparently eager to show off his good fortune in Los Angeles. Mr. Boyle, up in San Francisco, was also very well off and had heard many good things about the little town of Los Angeles. After many years, Boyle finally accepted his friend’s invitation and decided to pay him a visit in Los Angeles.

    When Boyle saw his friend’s beautiful land, he was mystified by the East side’s simplicity and ruggedness. He was so astonished by so much beautiful land that he decided to buy big piece of it. Some of the land he bought was part of a vineyard that ran right along the eastern border of the Los Angeles River. Most of the other land, however,

Andrew Boyle

was deemed “undesirable” and is what we call Boyle Heights today. Boyle bought the land right next to the river for $3000 an acre and bought the rest of the land for 25 cents an acre. This land of Boyle Heights is mapped out from the Los Angeles River in the west to what is now Indiana Street to the east and from Valley Boulevard in the north to Washington Street in the south. What was so important about Boyle was that Boyle was the first white man to live east of the Los Angeles River. He built his house among Mexicans and some Native Americans on what today is the intersection of Boyle and Third Street.

    William H. Workman named Boyle Heights, as well as Boyle Avenue, in the memory of his friend Andrew A. Boyle, who had died in 1871. William H. Workman, son of William Workman, was, at the time, mayor of Los Angeles. Ever since 1876, this area on the east boundaries of Los Angeles, has been called Boyle Heights. A couple of years after Boyle had died there was a mass migration of people, not only into Los Angeles but into Boyle Heights. The more prominent of these men included William H. Workman himself, John E. Hollenbeck, and a few of the owners of the First Commerce Bank of Los Angeles.

     John E. Hollenbeck was a very wealthy man who had lived in Nicaragua. One day while Mr. Hollenbeck was visiting Los Angeles, he too got enchanted by all the beautiful land that the area east of the Los Angeles River had to offer. So he decided to permanently move here to Boyle Heights by buying land from his old friend, William H. Workman. Mr. and Mrs. Hollenbeck built their home on what today is near the intersection of Boyle and Fourth. As a matter of fact, this structure still stands today but it is now called the Hollenbeck Home for the Aged. The Hollenbeck mansion is now directly

John E. Hollenbeck’s house

across from Hollenbeck Park. The park was built by Mayor Workman sometime after Hollenbeck’s death. In honor of his beloved friend, Mayor Workman named the park and a street after John E. Hollenbeck. In those days, Hollenbeck Park was twice the size that it is today; the park was cut in half when the Santa Monica Freeway was built.

    The population of Los Angeles had grown from a population of less than 4,500 in 1854 to about 1,400,000 people in the 1935. This mass migration into the Los Angeles area occurred for many reasons. The first reason was that both the Southern Pacific in 1876 and the Santa Fe Railroad nine years later opened this area to migration from the east and from the south of the United States. Even though most of the migrants were moving into the area west of the Los Angeles River, many were also moving into Boyle Heights itself. The city took many steps in order to insure that Boyle Heights would become livable. The city was being pushed by Mayor William H. Workman. He supported the domestication of the Boyle Heights area. It was even said that Boyle Heights was Mayor Workman’s “project”. The first thing the city did was build bridges that finally connected Boyle Heights to the rest of Los Angeles. The first bridge was built on Macy Street in 1870. In the years that followed, six other streets were also bridged.

    Workman also subdivided Boyle’s property in 1876, giving some land away to attract desirable residents to that side of the river. Other land he saved for schools and churches and a site for Workman Park. The rest of the land was sold for $100 in 60'x150' parcels. Workman, in order to attract more people to live in Boyle Heights, set the city up to provide affordable transportation to its residents. He did this by making the city offer a horse-car line that Workman knew would not bring any profits to the city. The last reason was that most people that did venture into this side of the river tried to live at the eastern most part of the river so that their land and home would not be damaged by the river. Since most of the residents at the time had vineyards on their property, massive irrigation ditches, zanjas, and aqueducts were provided by the city to reach the Boyle Heights area.

    Through the years, Boyle Heights has always been a land where many people first start their lives in Los Angeles. Andrew A. Boyle, among the first of these examples, showed us the reasons for this when he first moved here. The main reason was that this area has always been known for offering very low, very affordable housing and land. Another reason was that Boyle Heights always had, and still has, a very beautiful landscape. The last of these reasons was that Boyle Heights has always been, and always will be, a place of ethnic, racial, and religious diversity. Ever since before Boyle moved east of the Los Angeles River, there already were Mexicans and different tribes of Native Americans living here in Boyle Heights. In the years that followed after the 1880s, all the way up to the present day, there have been different ethnic groups starting their lives in this city of Los Angeles, in Boyle Heights. The people that have lived in great numbers in Boyle Heights were or are the Mexicans, the Jews, the Japanese, the Russians, the African-Americans, the Armenians, and the Native Americans. All of these people followed a certain pattern: when they had acquired some money, they would move out of Boyle Heights and into more prestigious areas. For example, the Mexicans tended to go farther to the east of Los Angeles while the African-Americans went to the south; the Japanese tended to go to the northeast while the Jews and Russians tended to go to the west of Los Angeles. Over the years, these groups have left many landmarks and traces of their presence in Boyle Heights that you can still see today. In any case, Boyle Heights has always been a land of many cultures, rich in its ethnic history.