Angelino Heights

I’ve been trying to come up with some day trips in Los Angeles that fit the Halloween theme. A quick Internet search prompted us to take a stroll through one of the city’s most historic housing districts – a neighborhood that everyone says “should be haunted.” Angelino Heights sits right on the edge of downtown, north of the 101 and Bunker Hill and south of Silver Lake. According to historical markers, the 1300 block of Carroll Avenue has the highest concentration of Victorian houses in the city – many of them dating back to the late 1880s, when moneyed Midwesterners started settling here. The housing boom in Angelino Heights was extremely short lived – a banking recession prevented it from expanding much beyond the 1300 block until the early 1900s.

The result is a short stretch of road that looks like a movie set. Indeed, walking down Carroll Avenue feels a bit like traveling back in time. It might not be so jarring if one were in New England, but here in L.A. Victorian architecture is pretty rare… which explains why there were so many other people spending their Sunday afternoon here, gawking. We had had barely stepped out of our car at the east end of the block before a local man stopped us and started gushing about the beauty of the neighborhood. “I’m sixty years old,” he said, “I’ve lived in Los Angeles all my life, and this is the only neighborhood that hasn’t changed from how I remember it years ago.” Here are the pictures to prove it…

1300 Carroll Ave. / Philips House (1887)

1316 Carroll Ave. / Ford House (1887) & 1320 Carroll Ave. / Heim House (1887-88)

1330 Carroll Ave. / Sessions House (1888)

1325 Carroll Ave.

1329 Carroll Ave. / Innes House (1887) - This house was used as the main location for the WB series Charmed.

1345 Carroll Ave. / Sanders House (1887) - If this house looks familiar, you might recognize it from Michael Jackson's Thriller video.

Historic Carroll Ave. - looking east

1343 Kelham Ave. (1890)

1347 Kelham Ave. (1890)

Echo Park