Elysian Heights

Mildred Southall House — 1855 Park Drive (1938) Designed by Rudolf Schindler, this was his first house constructed entirely from plywood, built on a tight budget of $6,000 for music teacher Mildred Southall. The blueprint is a series of overlapping rectangles projecting out at a 45-degree angle, with two front doors — one for piano students, one for the owner. Hidden from street view and perched in the hills by Elysian Park, the house has balconies and floor-to-ceiling windows with views stretching from downtown to the Hollywood sign. One of the most celebrated modernist works in the neighborhood. USModernist Sight Unseen

"Queen of Elysian Heights" — 1153 W. Ewing Street (1895) A Queen Anne–style Victorian built in 1895, designated a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument in 2022. It's one of the earliest surviving houses in the neighborhood and a rare remaining example of Queen Anne architecture in this part of the city. Topla Condos

Paul Landacre Cabin — 2006 W. El Moran (c. 1932) This cabin was home to Paul Landacre, a highly celebrated wood engraver and block artist who lived here from 1932 until his death in 1963. It's registered with the city as a Historic Cultural Monument. Angeleno Living

Philip Dike House Among the notable homes in Elysian Heights famed for their architecture and historic significance, the Philip Dike House stands out alongside the Carey McWilliams House, the Estelle Lawton Lindsey House, and the Ross House — the last of which was home to famed film art director Al Nozaki in the 1950s and '60s. hotels

A. Starr Residence — Park Drive (1956) Designed by USC architect and educator William M. Mann, this mid-century compound on Park Drive has been sensitively restored by designer Andreas Larsson, who has also worked on homes by Neutra, A. Quincy Jones, and Kappe. redfin

AngelEno Heights (the Victorian heart of Echo Park)

1300 Block of Carroll Avenue Listed in the National Register of Historic Places, this block contains the highest concentration of 19th-century Victorian homes in Los Angeles. The meticulously restored manors draw camera-toting visitors and film crews on a regular basis. Los Angeles City Planning Angeleno Living

Standout addresses on the block include:

Phillips House, 1300 Carroll Ave. (1887): One of the most ornate and beautifully maintained homes on the street, this near-pure Queen Anne was built for Aaron Phillips, an Iowa hardware merchant who came to Los Angeles in 1887. It stayed in the family until 1942. Angeleno Living
Newsom House, 1330 Carroll Ave. (c. 1888): Designed by architect Joseph Cather Newsom for dairyman Charles Haskins, a 12-room Victorian showpiece. Wikipedia
1329 Carroll Ave. (1887): An Eastlake-style home built for City Councilman Daniel Innes. Wikipedia
Haskins House, 1344 Carroll Ave. (1888): The last Victorian built on Carroll Avenue and one of the few "Gay Nineties" houses remaining in Los Angeles, this quintessential Queen Anne vividly illustrates the height of late Victorian exuberance. Angeleno Living

Foy House — 1335–1341½ Carroll Ave. Home of Mary E. Foy, who became the first woman City Librarian of Los Angeles in 1880. It's among the earliest designated Historic-Cultural Monuments in the area. Wikipedia

Weller House — 824 East Kensington Rd. (1894) As elegant as the Carroll Avenue homes, the Weller house has the added distinction of having been moved 3,000 feet from its original location. Angeleno Living

The area's character as a whole comes through in its history: since the early 1900s, Elysian Heights has been a landing place for counter-culture types — writers, artists, political radicals, architects, and filmmakers. The combination of Victorian grandeur in Angelino Heights and modernist experimentation up in the hills makes it one of the more layered architectural neighborhoods in all of LA. Angeleno Living

💀 Death & Tragedy

Elliott Smith's Death House — 1857½ Lemoyne St., Echo Park On October 21, 2003, in this small bungalow in Echo Park, Elliott Smith died from two stab wounds to the chest. He lived there with his girlfriend Jennifer Chiba, who told police she had locked herself in the bathroom during an argument. When she came out she found him with a knife in his chest. She pulled it out — a detail that made the autopsy evidence inconclusive as to whether the wounds were self-inflicted. The case was never ruled definitively a homicide or a suicide. Smith was 34 and in the middle of recording what became the posthumous From a Basement on the Hill. The house still stands. Pilgrimages are made. Magnet Magazine

🎬 Famous Film & TV Locations (Carroll Avenue, Angelino Heights)

The entire 1300 block is essentially a standing set. Locals call it the Haunted House District of L.A., thanks to the homes' frequent appearances as eerie exteriors in Hollywood productions. Roadside America

The "Thriller" House — 1345 Carroll Ave. This is the house where Ola Ray fled from the zombies at the end of Michael Jackson's 1983 "Thriller" music video, directed by John Landis and still regarded as the most influential MTV video of all time. The house is 3,532 square feet, built in 1887, and has also appeared in Teen Witch and the Charmed episode "Size Matters." Roadside America Then & Now Movie Locations

Halliwell Manor ("Charmed") — 1329 Carroll Ave. The purple Victorian at 1329 Carroll Avenue served as the exterior of Halliwell Manor in Charmed. The same home was also used in Sweet Dreams, Of Mice and Men, and Deuce Bigelow: Male Gigolo. Wordpress

The Gillis House ("Dead & Buried") — 1355 Carroll Ave. Directly next door to the Thriller house, 1355 Carroll is the Gillis house from the 1981 horror film Dead & Buried. Then & Now Movie Locations

Grandma Lilly's House ("Grandma's Boy") — 1324 Carroll Ave. The house at 1324 Carroll Avenue was used for the main home in Adam Sandler's 2006 comedy Grandma's Boy. Wikipedia

🔪 True Crime

The "Bat Man" Murder House — Echo Park (North Alvarado area) One of the most deranged domestic crime stories in LA history played out in this neighborhood. Walburga "Dolly" Oesterreich gained notoriety for the shooting death of her husband and the bizarre revelation that she had kept her lover, Otto Sanhuber, hidden in the attic of the home she shared with her husband for ten years. Esotouric crime tours include the house where Walburga Oesterreich kept her lover hidden in the attic from 1913 to 1922 as one of their Echo Park stops. The night of the murder, Otto crept down from the attic, shot Fred Oesterreich, then scurried back up and hid while police searched the house. The case went cold for years before unraveling spectacularly in court. Wikipedia The Eastsider LA

🌟 Celebrity Residents

Lana Del Rey — Elysian Heights Singer Lana Del Rey purchased a home in Elysian Heights in 2018. Team Tensen

Al Nozaki — Ross House, 2123 N. Valentine St., Elysian Heights The Ross House was home to Al Nozaki, the art director who designed the Martian War Machines for George Pal's War of the Worlds, during the 1950s and 1960s. It's now a designated Historic-Cultural Monument. Team Tensen

Philip Dike — Elysian Heights During the 1930s and 1940s when he lived in Elysian Heights, Dike built his reputation as one of California's most prominent watercolor painters and as an influential artist at Walt Disney studios. Historicechopark

Carey McWilliams — 2041 Alvarado St., Echo Park Author, lawyer, and social activist Carey McWilliams lived here during the 1940s and owned the property until his death. McWilliams' work on California's agricultural labor conditions inspired the screenplay for the film Chinatown. Historic Echo Park

🥂 LEGENDARY PARTY HOUSES

"Red Hill" — Elysian Heights / Echo Park (1930s–1970s)

Not a single house but a circuit of homes on the hills above Echo Park that functioned collectively as the most politically charged salon network on the Eastside. This corner, nicknamed "Red Hill" for the socialist and communist sympathizers who gravitated to the left-leaning hills of Echo Park, was home to activist author Carey McWilliams and a tight community of radicals, writers, and artists. Over the decades the same hills also drew Hollywood mavericks John Huston and Steve McQueen, jazzman Art Pepper, and singular artists like Jackson Pollock and Frank Zappa. The gatherings here were less cocktail parties than political forums and artistic collisions — readings, organizing meetings, late-night sessions that blurred the line between ideology and bohemia. Theamericanhabit Cultural Daily

1020 Laguna Ave., Echo Park (early 1970s)

Not a party house in the conventional sense — more a legendary crash pad that seeded an entire era of American rock. Legendary rock musicians Jackson Browne, Glenn Frey, and J.D. Souther all lived in this apartment building during the early 1970s when the area was attracting up-and-coming musicians and artists. "J.D. and I shared a $60-a-month, one-room apartment — a couch and kind of a bed with a curtain in front of it," Frey told rock journalist Cameron Crowe. "Right underneath us in an even smaller studio apartment was Jackson." The three of them living within a few feet of each other, broke and hungry in Echo Park, were writing and trading songs that would shape what became the California sound and the Eagles. Historic Echo Park