HistoricPlacesLA Revealed: Latino Los Angeles

HistoricPlacesLA Revealed is an initiative aimed at celebrating places and stories associated with Los Angeles’s underrepresented histories. Launched in September 2025, the pilot project, HistoricPlacesLA Revealed: Latino Los Angeles, will highlight sites that reflect the heritage of Los Angeles’s Latino communities through the installation of physical markers on City light posts adjacent to 140 sites across Los Angeles. The physical markers, which are planned to be installed in Fall 2026, will include QR codes linked to newly introduced multimedia content associated with each of the featured sites in the City’s online historic resources database, HistoricPlacesLA. The marker sites will not be receiving formal historic designation through this project.

Latino and Hispanic communities are central to the history, identity, and future of Los Angeles, with contributions that have shaped neighborhoods, opened doors to education and opportunity, strengthened local economies, advanced civic life, and enriched the culture experienced by all Angelenos. However, many places tied to those contributions remain underrecognized in the public record. HistoricPlacesLA Revealed: Latino Los Angeles brings those stories into public view and invites Angelenos to see the city’s history through the places that shaped Los Angeles.

The 140 sites selected to receive markers (hyperlink “140 sites selected to receive markers” to PDF of list of sites found here: 2026-08-24_HPLA Revealed_Latino LA_Final Marker Sites_webpage.pdf) were identified through public engagement and a collaborative effort among the Los Angeles City Planning’s Office of Historic Resources (OHR), a consultant team (managed by architecture, design, planning, and historic preservation firm Page & Turnbull), and a 14-member Community Advisory Committee comprised of non-profit, cultural, and civic leaders, historians, educators, and others that represent Latino communities.

Site Selection

To identify sites that would be considered for receiving a marker, the project team started with resources brought to light through the City’s Latino Los Angeles Historic Context Statement, as well as the National Park Service American Latino Heritage Theme Study and California Office of Historic Preservation Latinos in 20th Century California historic context statement. This initial list included nearly 200 sites citywide, and through community engagement efforts, more than 100 additional sites were uncovered.

In selecting the sites to receive a marker, the project team identified 11 themes that were prioritized for the initiative, which included legacy businesses; activism; arts organizations and murals; Central American and Indigenous communities; LGBTQ+; labor history; and churches.

The project team also developed criteria with a goal of collectively conveying the diversity and complexity of Latino history, culture, and experiences in Los Angeles from the 19th century through to the early 21st century. The marker sites were prioritized based on strong support from subject matter experts and Community Advisory Committee members. Two of the criteria were community prominence, or sites that are well-recognized or documented, and sites that represented underrecognized stories, historically or culturally significant sites that were not visible to the public at large.

The other criteria the project team used for selecting sites were geographic diversity, ensuring that sites represented Latino communities across the city, especially in neighborhoods or council districts where Latino history is underrecognized; and sites that possessed layered histories and/or were associated with more than one theme, ethnic community, cultural group, etc.

 

Survey Form
 

Using this form, we invite you to contribute stories, photographs, or other historical information about any of the 140 selected sites. All information can be shared anonymously, and while you may choose to provide your full name and email address, this information will not be published.

HistoricPlacesLA Revealed gathers and displays stories about places that matter to Latino Angelenos. For generations, people from the Americas have moved through and settled in the place we now call Los Angeles. Although the project uses the term “Latino” to describe them collectively, no single word or phrase conveys the diversity of these communities, historically and today.

In recent years, terms like “Latino/a,” “Latinx,” and “Latine” have gained popularity for their direct inclusion of women and queer people. Other words – such as “Chicano” identify specific ethnic and/or political groups. Here, we refer to all communities by their preferred name(s) and use gendered language where appropriate, including (but not limited to): Central American, Indigenous, Mexican American, Chicano, Afro-Latino, Caribbean, South American, and Hispanic.

The project team recognizes that the meanings of these words will continue to evolve in the future. Latino communities are not monolithic, and these places are a testament to their historical complexities. Taken together, we hope the markers will deepen our shared understandings of Latino experiences and identities across Los Angeles.

Following field surveys that took place from 2010-2017, the OHR completed a pioneering citywide survey of its historic resources, SurveyLA. The project resulted in the creation of a Los Angeles Historic Context Statement, a citywide framework that organizes the patterns of history shared by properties into narrative themes such as architecture, development patterns, and cultural landscapes. The OHR has also been creating additional historic context statements that reflect the histories of the City’s diverse ethnic and cultural communities.

In 2015, the OHR completed the Latino Los Angeles Historic Context Statement, a framework for identifying and evaluating properties related to Latino history in Los Angeles. Produced as a part of the overall citywide survey of historic resources, SurveyLA, the context statement was a first step in highlighting the lesser-known heritage of the Latino communities in Los Angeles. The resources identified in the historic context statement were added to HistoricPlacesLA, the citywide inventory of historic resources.

For more information about this project, e-mail planning.historicplacesla@lacity.org.


Web Banner Image:
The Great Wall of Los Angeles, completed between 1974-1984, Tujunga Wash, North Hollywood. Photo: Los Angeles City Planning Office of Historic Resources.

Designed by Chicana muralist Judith F. Baca, working with the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC), The Great Wall of Los Angeles is a half-mile long mural depicting the history of California through images of significant figures and historic events from diverse and traditionally marginalized communities.