Silver Lake is a residential and commercial neighborhood in the central region of Los Angeles, California, United States,Los Angeles County—LA City (East Central/Silver Lake, Echo Park & Westlake) PUMA originally home to a small community called Ivanhoe, so named in honor of the 1819 novel by Walter Scott. In 1907, the Los Angeles Water Department built the Silver Lake Reservoir, named for LA Water commissioner Herman Silver, giving the neighborhood its name. The area is now known for its architecturally significant homes, independently owned businesses, diverse restaurants, painted staircases, and creative environment.
Geography and climate
Silver Lake is flanked on the northeast by Atwater Village and Elysian Valley, on the southeast by Echo Park, on the southwest by Westlake, on the west by East Hollywood and on the northwest by Los Feliz."Central L.A.". Mapping L.A., Los Angeles Times. Retrieved June 2, 2013.Thomas Guide: Los Angeles County, p. 594. Irvine, California: Thomas Bros. Maps, 2004."Silver Lake, Los Angeles, CA". Google Maps. Retrieved June 11, 2013.
Street and other boundaries are: the Los Angeles River between Glendale Boulevard and Fletcher Drive and Riverside Drive on the northeast, the Glendale Freeway on the east, Effie Street, Coronado Street, Berkeley Avenue and Fletcher Drive on the southeast, the Hollywood Freeway on the south, Virgil Avenue on the west and Fountain Avenue and Hyperion Avenue on the northwest."Silver Lake". Mapping L.A., Los Angeles Times. Retrieved June 2, 2013.
The prime real estate around the Silver Lake Reservoir is known as Moreno Highlands. It was originally developed in the 1920s and 1930s by Daisy Canfield, wife of silent film star Antonio Moreno. Much of the Silver Lake Residential Historic District is associated with this tract.Historic Resources Survey Report: Silver Lake-Echo Park-Elysian Valley Community Plan Area, SurveyLA, May 2014.Silver Lake – Echo Park – Elysian Valley Report: Historic Districts, Planning Districts and Multi-Property Resources – 05/09/14
The Silver Lake neighborhood council has mapped the boundaries of its council region."Silver Lake NC Map — Boundaries and Regions". Silver Lake Neighborhood Council. Archived from the original on November 15, 2012. Retrieved March 16, 2013.
History The area known as Ivanhoe to the north of the current reservoir was originally developed by Byram & Poindexter as early as 1887, named for Sir Walter Scott's book of the same name with many streets in that area referencing other works and characters of British literature such as Herkimer, Rowena, Kenilworth, Locksley, Ben Lomond, Hawick, and St. George.
In 1904 the Fletcher Drive Viaduct was constructed at the northeastern boundary of Silver Lake for the Glendale Line of the Pacific Electric Railway Company, connecting the area to Downtown Los Angeles. Originally constructed of timber, the viaduct was replaced in 1928 by a steel span construction to make way for Fletcher Drive underneath it. It was demolished in 1959 and only its concrete footings remain.
William Mulholland identified the area as an ideal location to place emergency reservoirs for the rapidly growing city, building the upper Ivanhoe Reservoir in 1906 and the eponymous Silver Lake reservoir in 1907. The reservoir was named for former LA City Councilman and then City Water Commissioner Herman Silver, who was instrumental in gaining the approvals to purchase the of land and the funding for the construction of the reservoir.
The hills of Ivanhoe and the neighboring Edendale had always attracted bohemians seeking safe haven from the prying eyes of polite society, and the further development of Silver Lake as a lush parkland only increased its appeal. The 1930s and 1940s saw artists, writers, actors and musicians join other progressives such as union organizers, civic activists, and communists flock to the area. With them came the area's modern aesthetics as architects such as Gregory Ain, Craig Ellwood, John Lautner, Rudolph Schindler, Walter Dorwin Teague, and Raphael Soriano designed their houses and businesses, creating what local realtors now point out as having more architecturally significant homes per square mile in Silver Lake than in other parts of Los Angeles.
William Selig set up what may have been the first permanent film studio in Los Angeles in the Edendale neighborhood to the east of Ivanhoe valley in 1909, soon followed by Mack Sennett in 1912. Walt Disney's first studio was at the corner of Griffith Park Boulevard and Hyperion Avenue, currently the site of Gelson's Market. As a consequence, the name "Hyperion" is used by The Walt Disney Company and its subsidiaries, with company entities past and present carrying the name, such as Hyperion Books and the Hyperion Theater at Disney California Adventure Park. The fictional Seattle neighborhood of Hyperion Heights in the final season of the Disney-owned ABC series Once Upon a Time traces its name to the same origin.
William Fox bought Selig's former Edendale lot on Glendale Boulevard in the 1917, building a 12-acre (4.9 ha) backlot called Mixville for Western film star Tom Mix. The location is now known as the Mixville Shopping Center and occupied by a Whole Foods Market. It is rumored that Mix buried his horse "Old Blue" on the property.
The neighborhood is crisscrossed by numerous municipal staircases that provide pedestrian access up and down the neighborhood's signature hills. Among these are the Descanso Stairs, Redcliff Stairs and the Music Box Stairs. The flight of stairs in Laurel and Hardy's film The Music Box is located between lower Descanso Drive and Vendome Street, as it winds up and around the hill.
In the 1940s, Chinese-American architect Eugene Kinn Choy sought to build a house for his family in Silver Lake, but due to racial covenants still in effect prohibiting the sale of property to "any person not of the Caucasian race," he was prevented from doing so. He went door to door to seek the approval of every house in the neighborhood before he was given approval to build in 1949.
Choy's groundbreaking efforts opened the door to the Asian American and Latino communities in the 1950s and 1960s. Beginning in the 1970s, the neighborhood became the nexus of Los Angeles' gay leather subculture, similar to the SoMA neighborhood in San Francisco.Townsend, Larry. The Leatherman's Handbook. New York: Other Traveller, 1972. Since the late 1990s, gentrification has changed the area by pushing out public sex and "gay cruising" and facilitating the opening of many independent upscale boutiques, coffee shops, fitness studios, and restaurants.
The community continues to evolve, incorporating its bohemian roots with its racial and sexual diversity of the mid-20th century as architects such as Barbara Bestor and Gustavo Gubel, artists such as cache and Eric Junker, and musicians like Moby and Flea continue to define Silver Lake’s environment as a cultural and creative enclave.
LGBT+ community Early history
In the 1930s, Silver Lake and Echo Park still comprised Edendale and acted as a space where members of the LGBT community were able to express their identities. Prominent drag queen Julian Eltinge built his house in Silver Lake and performed until the city passed laws criminalizing cross-dressing, after which he continued to recount his drag performances to audiences.Hurewitz, Daniel (2007). Bohemian Los Angeles and the Making of Modern Politics. Berkeley: University of California Press. Retrieved March 8, 2016.
Silver Lake was also home to Harry Hay, credited with founding the first gay organization, the Mattachine Society, which began as Bachelors' Anonymous. Hay lived and had meetings in Silver Lake at the time the group began in 1950. Kevin Roderick wrote in his eulogy for Hay in Los Angeles that many consider the house located near Silver Lake to be the birthplace of the gay-rights movement.Roderick, Kevin (January 2003). "Epitaph: Harry Hay". Los Angeles. Retrieved March 8, 2016. A staircase by the house is designated the Mattachine Steps.
Queer liberation The Black Cat Tavern, a fairly popular bar that has now become a historic-cultural monument, was the site of a police raid in 1967 that spread to adjacent bars, becoming a full-blown riot, which resulted in more than a dozen arrests. The protests in response to the raid predated the Stonewall riots by two years.
Beginning in the 1970s, the neighborhood became the nexus of Los Angeles' gay leather subculture.
HIV/AIDS epidemic As the HIV/AIDS epidemic gripped the US in the 1980s, tensions between gay men and the Los Angeles Police Department escalated. Several LGBT activists in Silver Lake claimed they felt unsafe reporting hate crimes against them to the police, who they felt harbored anti-LGBT sentiments. Their complaints grew to the point that then-City Council member Michael Woo advocated establishing a hotline to relay information to police indirectly and compile statistics on the frequency of gay-bashings. Some bath houses, which acted as social spaces for gay men, were shut down by the city government in an effort to curb the spread of the virus. The ensuing controversy reflected a nationwide debate about whether this type of action constituted public health policy or perpetuation of discrimination against the LGBT community.
Circus of Books was a bookstore and gay pornography shop that was notable as a gay cruising spot in the 1980s.
The 1993 documentary Silverlake Life: The View from Here recorded the experience of a gay couple diagnosed with HIV.
Gentrification
Beginning in the 1990s, gentrification changed the area by pushing out cruising for sex.
In 1992, about 85 activists protested gay-bashing and violent acts against homosexuals in the area, carrying banners emblazoned with "Stop the Violence" along Sunset Boulevard.
Gay bar Akbar opened on New Year's Eve 1995. In 2004, fearing displacement through gentrification, the bar's owners purchased the building and converted the neighboring unit into a dance floor.
Since 2006, Eagle LA has served as a popular gathering point for the local gay leather subculture. Its location was home to several prior gay bars: Shed (1968–1972), Outcast (1972–1983), and Gauntlet II (1983–2005).
Beginning in 2011, the City of Los Angeles removed anti-cruising traffic signs installed in Silver Lake, but additional such signs were identified and removed in 2024.
In response to gentrification and the closure of several local gay bars, the Off Sunset Festival was launched in 2013 to celebrate the neighborhood's rich LGBT+ history.
In 2019, Maebe A. Girl became the first drag queen ever elected to public office in the United States, joining the Silver Lake Neighborhood Council.
Reservoir
The neighborhood was named for Water Board Commissioner Herman Silver, who was instrumental in the creation of the Silver Lake Reservoir in the neighborhood, one of the water storage reservoirs established as part of the controversial Los Angeles Aqueduct project in the early 1900s. This is one of ten that still remain in Los Angeles.de Turenne, Veronique (March 13, 2008). "Silver Lake goes dry". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved January 28, 2010.
In the community of Silver Lake lies the namesake reservoir composed of two basins, with the lower named Silver Lake and the upper named Ivanhoe. The lower body of water was named in 1906 for Herman Silver; the upper body received its name from the 1819 Sir Walter Scott novel Ivanhoe.Rob (June 16, 2009). "13 Facts About The Silver Lake Reservoir". Take Sunset. Retrieved January 28, 2010. In 1989 the City of Los Angeles, Cultural Heritage Commission, Cultural Affairs Department declared both reservoirs Historic-Cultural Monument No. 422.