THE BOYLE HEIGHTS NEIGHBORHOOD OF LOS ANGELES - Part 3 of a Series: THE LARGEST POPULATION OF JEWISH RESIDENTS WEST OF THE MISSISSIPPI IN THE 1930s©

Celebrating Jewish Heritage Month in May, we focus our Blog article for May, 2022 on Los Angeles' Boyle Heights neighborhood.

By the 1920s, there were approximately 10,000 Jewish households in the area, which was about one-third of Los Angeles’ Jewish population -- the largest urban Jewish community in the United States located west of the Mississippi River.   Boyle Heights was also one of the most diverse neighborhoods — home to many Mexican, Japanese, Armenian/Turkish, Italian, Russian and African American families.

Map of Boyle Heights Neighborhood in1921

For its "Jewish Histories in Multiethnic Boyle Heights" Special Exhibit, UCLA gathered archival materials, artifacts and personal stories to explore the rich history of the Jewish community in this neighborhood, while also observing how those experiences coincided with the other diasporic communities that lived there.

The first automobile ever to drive through Los Angeles did so through the streets of Boyle Heights on May 30, 1897.  A New York civil engineer, J. Philip Erie, spent $30,000 to design, invent and build the first gasoline-propelled automobile carriage west of the Mississippi River. The drive started in downtown Los Angeles and ended at Erie’s home near Hollenbeck Park.

In 1908, a group of Yiddish-speaking Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe founded Los Angeles’ first Yiddish organization, with the primary goal of establishing a Yiddish school so that Jewish parents could supplement their children’s public school education. In 1920, the Yiddish school's Board launched a fundraising drive to purchase a house at 420 N. Soto St., where the school would become a Yiddish cultural center. 

The new school, known as the folkshul (“people’s school”), opened the following year with 120 students. In addition to being a Yiddish school, the folkshul quickly became a popular destination for organizations and events, hosting meetings of local Jewish clubs, for fundraisers and bazaars, and for an annual dress ball.

The "folkshul" in 1922

As the movie and aviation industries blossomed and grew in Los Angeles in the 1920s, Jewish residents of Boyle Heights became prominent as business entrepreneurs skilled in various professions and crafts.  One such resident during the l920s was internationally-renowned businessman Max Factor, who settled in Boyle Heights with his family in close proximity to his store on South Central Avenue and to the local Jewish community on the eastside.  He first formulated, tested and developed his cosmetics out of the garage of his residence, eventually establishing himself as the source for the makeup and cosmetic treatments which became a favourite among the Hollywood studios and celebrities.

The Max Factor House on Boyle Avenue was built in 1909 in the Craftsman style of architecture with wide eaves and exposed rafters beneath.  During the time Max Factor and his family lived in Boyle Heights, his company car was often seen parked in the driveway because he never learned to drive, preferring instead the nearby public transportation.  The Max Factor House, pictured below, still stands today, and is under the watchful eye of the Los Angeles Conservancy, a local historical preservation group.

Max Factor House as it looks today
Photo Credit:  Adrian Scott Fine/L.A. Conservancy

In the early 1920s, Jewish residents created a place where Boyle Heights’ multiethnic residents could socialize, learn and organize. They called it the Cooperative Center, a large, three-story building near the corner of Brooklyn Avenue and Mott Street. There were several meeting rooms on the top floor, a large ballroom for lectures and social events on the second floor, and a bakery and café on the ground floor.

The Cooperative Center became a hub for neighborhood-based organizations and an important site of political organizing and social activities that blended consciousness raising, mult-cultural mingling,  and fundraising.

About a half mile from the folkshul was the Soto-Michigan Jewish Community Center,  referred to as "the JCC",  in Boyle Heights. The Center’s director, Rabbi J. M. Cohen, wanted to “integrate the Jewish community with the general community and the individual with the Jewish community and society as a whole.”  Cohen believed that by celebrating cultural pluralism, the Center would strengthen the Jewish identities of American-born children, foster integration and serve all of the neighborhood’s residents, including children of other ethnicities, such as of Mexican, Asian, Russian and African American descent.

The Soto-Michigan JCC’s three-story facility featured a lounge, game room and clubroom on the first floor and locker rooms in the basement.  The facility’s most popular feature was the Stebbins playground, where there was a jungle gym, volleyball and basketball courts, swing sets and ping pong tables.  As many as 1,000 people regularly visited the Soto-Michigan JCC just to use the playground, in addition to the 2,300 children and adults who used the meeting rooms and auditoriums every week.

SIDE NOTE:  The two photographs below of the JCC and some of the neighorhood children were both taken in 1938 by Julius Shulman (1910-2009), an American architectural photographer who, over his lengthy career, became widely known for documenting and preserving the aesthetic of Southern California's Mid-Century Modern architecture.

Jewish Community Center
in Boyle Heights, 1938
Photos credit:  Julius Shulman

During the early 20th Century, the Jewish community of Boyle Heights established several entities to take care of its residents -- especially the orphaned, the aged, and new immigrants who had fled the anti-Semitic oppression of generations of Jews being forced to live and starve in isolated, segregated impoverished ghettos (walled-off communities within European cities), and being repeatedly subjected to pogroms (violent massacres and forced relocations/removals through the expelling, uprooting and marching of residents of entire Jewish communities out of various European countries).  Included among the caregiving entities were the Jewish Home for the Aged, the Mount Sinai Home for Chronic Invalids, the Jewish Orphans Home, and the Jewish Wayfarers Home.

Pictured below is Mount Sinai Hospital in 1928, during the time it was originally located in Boyle Heights.  The origins of Mount Sinai Hospital can be traced to the 1918 worldwide flu pandemic, when a group of Jewish Los Angelenos provided kindness and comfort to the sick of all races, ethnic origins and religions.

The enduring legacy of Mount Sinai Hospital continues to the present day.  In 1950, a new Mount Sinai Hospital was built on Beverly Boulevard a few short blocks east of Doheny Drive on 3.5 acres of land donated by a locally-based Jewish charitable foundation.  In 1961, Mount Sinai Hospital merged with Cedars of Lebanon Hospital to form what has since become the world-renowned Cedars-Sinai Medical Center which currently occupies several square blocks between Beverly Boulevard and Third Street in the same -- albeit greatly expanded -- Los Angeles location adjacent to Beverly Hills.

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(Primary sources:  Mapping Jewish L.A.Project/UCLA Newsroom article by Cheryl Cheng, May 25, 2021;  Los Angeles Conservancy;  Los Angeles Eastside History Museum and Cultural Center/Boyle Heights Studios)

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