
L.A.’s Cultural Crescent and the Land That Draws People to It
The two ends of Los Angeles’ Cultural Crescent—formed by the majestic Santa Monica and San Gabriel Mountains and their foothills, which ring the northern end of the great L.A. Basin—are gone. For nearly a century they represented two ends of L.A.’s cultural spectrum.
This area is a geography of aspiration that begins at the ocean and extends inland for 30–40 miles. It includes the Palisades, Brentwood, Bel Air, Beverly Hills, Hollywood Hills, Silver Lake, and Echo Park, then jumps across the Los Angeles River into North East L.A., and then enters into the San Gabriel Valley and includes Pasadena, Altadena, Sierra Madre, and places further east hugging the mountains.
The Tongva Native Americans occupied this region for thousands of years. They were followed by the Spanish, Mexicans, and Americans; these later settlers were drawn to these foothills for protection, comfort, and seclusion. The Spanish established the original pueblo between the hills (later removed by the construction of the Hollywood Freeway) and the Los Angeles River. In the 1900s, cities that incorporated in Los Angeles County—Pasadena, Burbank, Glendale, Whittier—quickly grabbed these topographies for their scenic beauty and visual identity. These places offered landscapes for artists to ponder and, with the construction of grand hotels on bluffs, views for tourists.
Like yin and yang, the hills and adjacent flatlands represent the unique landscape of L.A. This topography provides two ideas of city buildings and cultural production that go back to turn-of-the-century Vienna. Two influential architects, Otto Wagner and Camillo Sitte, developed competing models of city planning. Wagner believed the modern metropolis was a machine with endless street grids of Euclidean perfection. Sitte believed that the city should be about the relations between people, and with nature, at a human scale. L.A.’s Cultural Crescent is the latter.
During the age of L.A.’s rapid industrialization, the farmlands were filled in with factories and worker housing. The hills became a place of retreat once the automobile allowed passage up steep grades. Architects supplanted the plein-air painters and began designing new forms of buildings that took advantage of the topography; cantilevered homes replaced the grand hotels. Movie stars and people with money quickly abandoned the flatlands and headed for the hills of Beverly.

The stunning views, palatial homes, innovative architecture, and landmarks such as the Hollywood Sign, the Griffith Park Observatory, the Getty Center, the Eames House—all of this dominated L.A.’s cultural narrative and became part of its mythology. The Palisades represents a place where “I made it,” while Altadena, at the other end, represents a place where “I am making it.”
While the world has marveled over this lifestyle of the rich and famous, at the same time the valleys and ravines of these hills harbour alternative, hidden, lifestyles. These same hills provide seclusion for people to reflect on life. Many retreat centers and museums are built in the hills. Environmentalists find easy access to nature and activities like hiking accessible. They trade in the panoramic views for cozy corners like in Grandma’s house in Little Red Riding Hood. I’ve always been fascinated by the isolation of that small, simple, 1920’s wood bungalow on a hillside with 50 steps in the front yard to enter it.
The seclusion of these places has provided places for L.A. alternative communities to strive in relative privacy. The early gay movement began in the Echo Park/Silver Lake hills. For people who could not afford to live on the flatlands, they took to the hills. For decades, Mexican Americans lived in Chavez Ravine. My distant cousin grew up there 70 years ago and told me that when they moved out, he was surprised that doors had handles in his new Boyle Heights home. Chavez Ravine was later cleared out in the 1950s and replaced by Dodger Stadium and its massive parking lot.
I have witnessed fires along this crescent my whole life, but from afar… this time, it’s different.
I have witnessed fires along this crescent my whole life, but from afar. They usually impacted places and people I didn’t know; this time, it’s different. Altadena is part of my physical, social, and cultural ecosystem. It shares a vibe and history similar to East Los Angeles (where I grew up), West Hollywood, Ocean Park, and other do-it-yourself communities that were not tightly regulated or master planned but evolved over time because of people’s struggles, limits, needs, and aspirations. Because of this, these communities form strong social ties, which I relate to having grown up Latino in L.A. Altadena and places around it were settled by African Americans during the great migration of the 1940s, and was and is a hub for this community in the San Gabriel Valley. Artists have also been living in this area, attracted to the affordability, large lots, sunshine, and mountains. I have spent time in their yards, their gardens, their homes.
Whenever I ascend up to Altadena, driving on the slight grades on Lake or Fair Oaks streets, it feels like I’m on top of L.A. and that the city stops here at the foot of the majestic San Gabriel Mountains.
Prior to the fire, I had been facilitating Reconnecting Communities workshops on how to reimagine what to do with the 710 Freeway spur with the city of Pasadena. These meetings brought in a cross-section of people, many of whom are African Americans from northern Pasadena and Altadena. All of these communities connected physically, socially, and culturally. By having them build their favorite childhood memories with objects—many of these places are gone due to time or development, and perhaps now fire—they can understand and articulate the rich multisensory experiences of these places they carry with them.
These intangible memories for people holding them are as real as brick and mortar, and should be the foundation for rebuilding efforts, so they are not erased. Before we start replacing the objects lost, let’s make sure we get the feeling right.
In 1966, Edward Ruscha created Every Building on the Sunset Strip, a famous photo collage that captures both sides of a mile-and-a-half stretch of Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. These photographs illustrate the transactional nature of the built form of the machine city. In the hills there is nuance and multiple perspectives of place, where residents form an intimate mind and body relationship to nature, a connection that’s harder to achieve in the flatlands.
Los Angeles is that rare city where landscape shapes ways of being. In the early 1970s, Reyner Banham wrote The Architecture of Four Ecologies, which divided Los Angeles into four sections—beach, foothills, flatlands, and freeways—to help understand the sprawling city’s architecture and culture. These landscapes form a relationship to the human spirit and affect attitudes and beliefs.
Cultural production and the dreaming necessary for it is resilient, and it’s what we don’t see in charred landscapes: the memories, know-how, and creativity in the minds that will build these places back stronger.
Featured image: Chavez Ravine, Los Angeles, 1937, via Department of Special Collections, UCLA.