🏔️ HIGHLAND PARK

🏛️ Architectural Houses

El Alisal (The Lummis House) — 200 E. Avenue 43 (1898–1910) The defining house of Highland Park, and one of the most eccentric structures in Los Angeles. Around 1895, journalist Charles Fletcher Lummis bought three acres of land bordering the dry riverbed known as the Arroyo Seco. He named it El Alisal — "the sycamore" — and the project would take up the better part of the next 15 years. Its facade was made of boulders piled up and joined with concrete; the floors were all concrete so they could be hosed down after large parties. Lummis utilized the assistance of Isleta Indians to transport boulders from the Arroyo Seco for the walls. He gained fame for having walked across the United States from Cincinnati to Los Angeles in 143 days, writing newspaper dispatches for the Los Angeles Times along the way. A Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument and on the National Register of Historic Places, it now operates as a house museum. Etan Does LAwashington

Smith Estate / "El Mio" — 5905 El Mio Drive (1887) A Queen Anne Victorian mansion perched on a hilltop in Highland Park, designed by Abram M. Edelman. It has been the residence of a judge who wrote books on occultism, the head of the Los Angeles Railway, and a deputy mayor. The first owner, Judge David P. Hatch, later wrote several books on philosophy and the occult, including Scientific Occultism (1905). A British author, Elsa Barker, claimed that the spirit of Judge Hatch wrote through her via "automatic writing" after his 1912 death, producing War Letters From a Living Dead Man, "channeled" in 1913 and published in 1915. A judge communing from beyond the grave is a Highland Park detail that writes itself. WikipediaClio

Heritage Square Museum — 3800 N. Homer St. (Multiple structures, 1876–1918) In the late 1960s, as freeways and redevelopment swept away Victorian-era homes across the city, a group of volunteers formed the Cultural Heritage Foundation of Southern California and lobbied to save a few of the old buildings, having them moved to a city-owned property in Montecito Heights where they could be preserved. The eight rescued structures include the Hale House — a Queen Anne Victorian mansion built in 1887 and designed by architect Joseph Cather Newsom — along with a Victorian Italianate mansion, an octagon house, a Methodist church, and a Red Car depot. Some say the buildings are haunted — a docent reported that previous visitors claimed to have seen the original owner of the Hale House waving at them from inside. Discover Los Angeles + 2

Ziegler Estate — 4601 N. Figueroa St. (1904) Built in 1904 by architects Charles Hornbeck and Alfred P. Wilson with elements of both Queen Anne and American Craftsman architecture, the Ziegler Estate sits near the Southwest Museum. A designated Historic-Cultural Monument and National Register property, it's one of the finest surviving examples of the hybrid architectural moment when Victorian excess was giving way to the Arts & Crafts simplicity that would define Highland Park's housing stock. Wikipedia

The Murder of Stephanie Kuhen — Isabel Street, Cypress Park (1995) The crime that put Highland Park on the national map for all the wrong reasons. Around 1:45 a.m. on September 17, 1995, along Isabel Street in Cypress Park — a street nicknamed "Avenida... assecinos," a misspelled Spanish phrase meaning "Street of Killers" — members of the Avenues gang shot at a vehicle containing a family returning from a cookout. The car had made a wrong turn into an alley. Three-year-old Stephanie Kuhen was killed. President Clinton condemned the murder. The killing intensified a years-long federal and local campaign to dismantle the Avenues and their grip on Northeast Los Angeles. Wikipedia

🎬 Film & TV Locations

The Smith Estate / "El Mio" — 5905 El Mio Drive Highland Park's most filmed house, and for good reason. The Smith Estate was the site of the cult film Spider Baby (1964) and Silent Scream (1979); the interior appeared in Insidious: Chapter 2 (2013). The location chosen for Spider Baby was the Smith Estate. There was no power available when the opening scene was filmed, so the crew arranged reflectors to guide sunlight into the house for interior shots. It has also appeared in Falcon Crest and H.O.T.S. A house that started as a judge's occult lair and became a horror film staple is on-brand for Highland Park. ClioWikipedia

Heritage Square Museum — 3800 N. Homer St. Films shot at Heritage Square include Legally Blonde, Saving Mr. Banks, The Mortuary Collection, and The Babysitter Murders. The museum's Victorian streetscape is exactly the kind of location horror filmmakers seek out. Hidden California

Figueroa Street Corridor Highland Park's Figueroa Street is a popular filming location because its streets resemble vintage LA with vintage store fronts and elaborate street lamps, giving productions an authentic early-20th-century feel they can't easily find elsewhere. Handlebar Bike Tours

🔪 True Crime

The Avenues Gang & Northeast LA's "Avenue of Killers" For roughly three decades, Highland Park was defined by the Avenues, one of LA's most brutal street gangs. In the last half of the 1990s, northeast Los Angeles had more homicides than any other part of the city, with 500 gang-related shootings. The Avenues Gang became well known for hate crimes committed against African-American residents of their neighborhoods, trying to keep even non-gang-affiliated Black people from living in the Highland Park area. Wikipedia

The "Satellite House" — 3304 Drew St., Glassell Park (demolished 2009) The nerve center of the Avenues' most violent clique. In 2007, the city used a narcotics-abatement lawsuit to shut down the home of a family at the center of the Avenues' Drew Street clique. Then–City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo called the house the gang's "mother ship." The small two-bedroom stucco house was tricked out with two satellite dishes, a laser tripwire, and a camera surveillance system. Police say it was used to sell drugs and plan drive-by shootings on behalf of the Mexican Mafia. After numerous raids and a deadly police shootout, the city won a lawsuit to close it as a public nuisance. In 2009, Delgadillo gave the signal and a bulldozer tore the house down in front of assembled officials and neighbors. The city attorney's office took possession of the lot and brought in massive machinery that devoured it in what amounted to a public exorcism. A community vegetable garden went up on the lot. Police1 + 2

🥂 Legendary Party Houses

El Alisal — 200 E. Avenue 43 (1898–1928) The original Highland Park party house. When Lummis wasn't building or writing, he was throwing one of his "noises" — all-night parties full of food and music and boisterous conversation that attracted an eclectic assortment of artists and thinkers and influential folks from all walks of life. John Muir and John Philip Sousa, Will Rogers and Sarah Bernhardt, Helena Modjeska and Carl Sandburg all signed his guestbook, as did many more. Some guests stuck around for extended periods, as long as they didn't wear out their welcome. Notable guests also included Clarence Darrow and Theodore Roosevelt. Lummis poured concrete floors specifically so they could be hosed down after large parties. That is a man who knew what he was doing. Etan Does LAClio

Highland Park Bowl — 5621 N. Figueroa St. (1927–present) Not a house, but the neighborhood's essential gathering place across a century of Los Angeles life. Originally established in 1927 during Prohibition, the building housed numerous doctors' offices on the second floor, a pharmacy, a music store, and a recreation space. Patrons obtained legal doctor's notes for medicinal whiskey upstairs, then headed downstairs to fill the prescription at the pharmacy — which allowed permissible boozing and bowling. It later became Mr. T's Bowl, a beloved neighborhood dive where the local punk and indie scene played through the 1980s and 1990s, before being restored in 2016 as the city's oldest operating bowling alley. Loop Magazine