Koreatown (often abbreviated K-town ) is a neighborhood in the Mid-Wilshire district of the city of Los Angeles, California. Home to a population of 340,000 and covering just under 5-square-mile (13 km 2 ), it has the highest population density of all neighborhoods in Los Angeles. Only Midtown Manhattan, downtown Manhattan, parts of San Francisco, and Chicago's North Side neighborhoods rank higher in density in the United States.
The neighborhood is in the midst of a construction boom that has helped fuel an influx of hipsters and gay & lesbian residents priced out from nearby Los Feliz and West Hollywood. Koreatown is ranked America's 8th Fuel-Efficient Neighborhood for 2008 by Forbes Magazine and is considered one of the top walkable neighborhoods in the nation.
Today, Koreatown leads Los Angeles in its effort for gentrification. The neighborhood is known for its many commercial and residential mid and high rise towers, its rich collection of pre-1940 brick colonial revival buildings, Asian high fashion boutiques, and holding the largest concentration of nightclubs and 24-hour businesses and restaurants in Southern California. It was also the location of the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.
Geography
The city of Los Angeles has never set an official boundary for Koreatown and does not recognize any borders claimed by other agencies or offices. The Los Angeles Police Department, Los Angeles Fire Department, Los Angeles Unified School District, Wilshire Center-Koreatown Neighborhood Council (WCKNC), Los Angeles County, US Census Bureau and the Koreatown Cultural Center all maintained their own set of boundaries, none of them in agreement.
The neighborhood is centrally located in the city of Los Angeles. It lies 3 miles (5 km) west of downtown, 4 miles (6 km) south-east of Hollywood, 12 miles (19 km) from Santa Monica Beach and 16 miles (26 km) from Los Angeles International Airport.
The neighborhood is of general flat terrain with an average elevation of 200 feet (61 m); latitude 34.058 and longitude -118.301.
History
Recorded settlement of the neighborhood first began in the 1870s. In 1888, the Los Angeles area suffered a real estate land bust and forcing the sale of lots to be sold at $2.50. Henry Gaylord Wilshire had arrived with his family in Los Angeles four years prior and began purchasing lots in the neighborhoods of Hancock Park, Westlake Park and Lafayette Park, including a 35-acre (140,000 m 2 ) tract on the edge of Hancock Park and the north western section of what will later become Koreatown.
In 1887, private funds had been donated to Los Angeles to convert the city dump into Westlake Park, now MacArthur Park. Because Wilshire's property surrounded the future park site, the city negotiated with Wilshire to build a street, bisecting his property in exchange for the street to meet the 120-foot (37 m) width sought by Wilshire and the street bearing his name.
In 1900, Germain Pellisser paid $25 per acre to the Southern Pacific Railway for 160 acres (0.65 km 2 ) between what is now Normandie and Western Avenues to raise sheep and barley. Also settling in the area was Reuben Schmidt, who purchased several acres of land east of Normandie for a dairy farm.
A 1911 donation to a local church by the Chapman Brothers lead to the construction of the Wilshire Christian Church, the first church on Wilshire Boulevard. In 1913, Wilshire Boulevard received its first high-rise building with the construction of the 10-story Bryson Hotel and owned by film actor Fred MacMurray. With Hollywood officially becoming part of the city of Los Angeles, many of its luminaries including Mary Pickford and Harold Lloyd built homes in the area as did Los Angeles Times founder General Harrison Gray Otis. Other notable residents, in Los Angeles history, to move into the area were Isaac Van Nuys and G. Alien Hancock.
The Roaring Twenties
In 1920, the Western Avenue Businessmen's Association was formed. The association later became the Wilshire Chamber of Commerce. The following year saw the opening of the Ambassador Hotel on the former site of the Reuben Schmidt dairy farm. Also that year was the construction of the 14-story Gaylord Hotel, the tallest building in Los Angeles at the time and built by Wilshire. The following two years also saw the construction the Asbury, the Langham, the Fox Normandie, the Picadily and the Windsor high-rise apartment buildings. Many of Hollywood's elite live in these elegant New York-style apartment buildings.
Joseph Schenck, president of United Artists, purchased a newly constructed high-rise apartment for his actress wife Norma Talmadge in 1922, which was renamed the Talmadge. The couple lived on the 10th floor. The Doheny family opened the Town House on Wilshire and Commonwealth as an apartment hotel in 1924, later selling the building to Conrad Hilton. The same year saw the installation of the first neon sign in the country at a Packard car dealership on Wilshire Blvd.
Only one year later, Wilshire Boulevard became a tourists attraction for Southern California residents because of the large number of roof-top neon signs. With Westlake Park lake the backdrop for many of his movies, Charlie Chaplin moved to an apartment building he purchased near the Ambassador Hotel. Also taking cue from the move was Gloria Swanson, who moved into an apartment building she purchased across the street from the Ambassador. Swanson and her husband, Herbert Somborn, opened the iconic Hollywood hangout the Brown Derby on Wilshire and Alexandria in 1926.
The world's first drive thru opened in 1929 at the Chapman Market building located on 6th and Alexandria. That same year, department store Bullocks opened its first "suburban" department store on Wilshire and Westmoreland. The 12-story building was modeled after the Paris Exposition des Arts Decoratifs et Moderne. Also that year, the Academy Awards ceremony moved from the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel to the Ambassador Hotel and a section of the Germain Pellessier sheep farm on the corner of Wilshire and Western became the construction site of what would be the crown jewel of the Warner Brothers theater chain. The theater, and adjoining 12-story Pellessier building, opened in 1931 and the following year renamed the Wiltern Theater.
Role during the Hollywood golden age
The 1930s saw the height of the area's association with Hollywood. The Ambassador Hotel hosted the Academy Awards ceremony in 1930, 1931, 1932, and 1934. The now Koreatown area began to be referred to as the Upper Eastside of the West Coast. Hollywood's elite continued to settle in the neighborhood as did the city's leading families such as the Jansses, Banning, Rowan, Mulholland, Hilton, Sepulveda and Windsor. In 1939, I. Magnin opened the first store in the country to be entirely operated by electricity and the first air-conditioned building on Wilshire and New Hampshire.
The Great Depression only slightly affected the development of the neighborhood and before the end of the decade, the neighborhood would rival Beverly Hills and Pasadena in wealth and prestige. Wilshire Boulevard gained international notoriety during this period and was more known than Hollywood Boulevard. Wilshire, between Vermont and Western Avenues was the place to see and be seen and the place to see movie stars strolling the streets during Hollywood's golden era.
With the Ambassador Hotel as anchor, the Brown Derby, Cocoanut Grove club, and Wiltern Theater frequently saw the likes of Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Louis Armstrong, Howard Hughes and Julie Andrews, who all resided in the neighborhood at some point.
In 1943, the Ambassador Hotel hosted its 6th and final Academy Awards ceremony. The hotel continued to draw well-known and powerful people of the day including Presidents Herbert Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Ronald Reagan and an endless list of dignitaries from Queen Elizabeth II to Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.
In 1951, the Wilshire Center country club a
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