Riots hastened the decline of the once-vibrant corridor.

It was an all-too-brief time in the sun: for 20 following World War II, the Crenshaw community in South-Central Los Angeles was a center of commerce, culture and perhaps the leading example of multi-ethnic co-existence in Los Angeles.

The Crenshaw community gave birth to one of the first shopping malls in the nation. It was also one of the first locations where an exclusively white, middle-class neighborhood-Leimert Park--gave way to a prosperous black middle-class community, all while co-existing with a sizable Japanese community a few blocks up the road.

The area even played host to two landmark events that took place on its borders: the establishment of the world's fast Olympic Village in the 1932 Olympics and the discovery of a mutilated body in a field that launched the notorious Black Dahlia murder case.

But the 1965 Watts riot destroyed all this, prompting a massive flight of money and middle-class residents and setting in motion a 35-year decline that only now is showing signs of stopping.

"The Watts riot really killed the area," said black activist, commentator and longtime Crenshaw Corridor resident Earl Ofari Hutchinson. "It has never really recovered."

This roller-coaster ride was never envisioned by the pioneers who moved in on the old Mexican ranchos and developed and settled the area in the early decades of the last century. At the time, the land was largely agricultural, with acres of barley crops and cattle ranches. The development came in spurts from the northeast--places like Arlington Heights and Jefferson Park--and from the southwest, especially Inglewood.

The name Crenshaw came from George Crenshaw, a banker from the Midwest who came out to Los Angeles around 1900 and built 10 residential developments throughout the city. The last of these was what's now known as Lafayette Square, just north of what's now known as the Crenshaw Corridor.

Lafayette Square sat in the midst of a neighborhood known as Arlington Heights, a plateau that stretched along what is now the Santa Monica (10) Freeway from Crenshaw Boulevard on the west to Normandie Avenue on the east. With its commanding views, Arlington Heights was home to a number of exclusive developments inhabiting stately Victorian-style mansions. Today, much of this area is known as the West Adams Historic District.

At the southern foot of Arlington Heights, on the eastern side of what would become Crenshaw Boulevard, the working class community of Jefferson Park sprung up just about 100 years ago. "The original homeowners were plumbers, painters and shoe salesmen--all tradesmen who wanted to move up the economic ladder," said longtime West Adams resident Laura Meyers.

This community was home to many recent and fast generation immigrants, including Japanese-Americans and a significant Jewish population.

Enter Leimert

Meanwhile, to the south, another middle-class community emerged: Hyde Park. Originally planned as an agricultural district in the 1880s, Hyde Park was soon transformed into a working class residential community that absorbed some of the growth from neighboring Inglewood.

Enter developer Waiter Leimert, who in the late 1920s, decided to plunk his own middle-class residential district--named Leimert Park-smack in between Jefferson and Hyde parks. He commissioned the services of famed planner Frederick Law Olmsted (whose father designed much of New York's Central Park) to work out the details, including a retail/commercial district with a park at the south end.

The Depression put a stop to most of the breakneck development in the Crenshaw area-with one notable exception. Seeing the lack of suitable hotel space, planners for the 1932 Olympics decided to build the first Olympic Village specifically to house the male athletes. This village was situated on the eastern slopes of the Baldwin Hills in what is now known as View Park, looking out on both the ocean and the burgeoning Leimert Park development.

While residential development slowed, a mix of small retail shops and some heavy industry came into the area, especially as the World War II neared. During the war, the Japanese-American enclave around Jefferson Park suffered a major disruption as many residents were rounded up by the government and sent off to the relocation camp of Manzanar in the Owens Valley.

After the war, the Crenshaw Corridor was primed for a boom. The GI bill provided home loans to thousands of returning veterans, prompting a rash to build bungalow-style tract housing. With all the new homes springing up, the area soon beckoned to retail developers. In 1947, two major department stores, May Co. and Broadway, opened huge stores right across the street from each other. In a major departure that set the tone for retail for decades to come, Broadway's owners selected dozens of retail tenants to set up shop on adjacent land and form a shopping center--one of the first in the nation.

That same year, the Crenshaw area was the locale for one of the most sensational murders in L.A. history: the Black Dahlia case. On Jan. 15, 1947, the mutilated body of aspiring actress Elizabeth Short was discovered on a vacant lot on Norton Avenue, right behind Crenshaw Square. Despite dozens of confessions, the case has never officially been solved and has become grist for many books and feature films.

In 1948, a Supreme Court decision would have far-reaching implications for the Crenshaw Corridor. In Shelley v. Kraemer, the Court overturned some restrictive covenants on the sale of homes and renting of apartments that had kept blacks and some Japanese-Americans out of communities all along the Crenshaw Corridor. especially Leimert Park.

That decision opened the floodgates as blacks--who had been hemmed in to a small area just south of downtown Los Angeles and in Watts-fanned out across the city. Many came just a few miles west to the Crenshaw Corridor, settling in an area of apartments just west of Crenshaw Boulevard. Many of these blacks opened businesses along Crenshaw, and as soon as they accumulated enough money, they began buying up homes in Leimert Park and Hyde Park, challenging the legality of restrictive covenants that often still remained.

This trend--called "block busting"--started the first wave of white flight from the Crenshaw area, though it was relatively small compared to what was to come. Whites still remained a prominent force in the community. And the affluent blacks who were buying into Leimert Park soon made it into a center of black culture, with jazz clubs, dinner theaters, and other cultural institutions.

Japanese enclave

Meanwhile, less than a mile up the street, Japanese-Americans--also freed from restrictive covenants--created a cultural center of their own. At its core was Crenshaw Square area right across the street from the Baldwin Hills-Crenshaw Plaza and home to the famed Holiday Bowl, which closed in 2001.

"The Holiday Bowl was more than a bowling alley. It was a gathering place--a place to get a side of 'char siu' (barbecue pork) and a side office. It was also one of the first places to have a sushi bar," recalled Emy Murakawa, who grew up in the area.

All three ethnic communities--whites, blacks and Japanese-Americans--were thriving well into the 1960s, when the Crenshaw Conidor reached its zenith. And they might have continued to flourish side-by-side, had it not been for the Watts riot, which was set off in August 1965 when two California Highway Patrol officers stopped a young black man driving a car on suspicion of drunken driving.

The riot's immediate

impact was felt in the Crenshaw Corridor as many blacks--especially those around the apartment areas--joined in the looting. And the impact stretched on for decades as the riot set in motion a chain of events leading to a downward spiral. Whites--including many Jews--fled the area en-masse over the next five to 10 years, moving to the San Fernando Valley and other areas of L.A. Middle-class blacks also fled for many of the same areas.

As the wealthier residents fled, the department stores that catered to them--including Silverwoods and Desmonds--also left the area, heading for newer malls in the suburbs. The Baldwin Hills-Crenshaw mall, along with the adjacent Santa Barbara Plaza, became a ghost town. "The business decline really set in after the Watts riots," Hutchinson said.

All of this was compounded by a rapid decline in the area's manufacturing base as heavy industry came under increasing competitive pressure from abroad. This left working class blacks without jobs. Poverty and welfare cases soared and along with this came a surge in crime.

In the 1980s, Los Angeles redevelopment officials stepped in and tried to resuscitate the area around the mall, but were unable to drum up much investment interest as gangs and drug-related crime tightened its grip on the area amid the explosion of crack cocaine.

Then in the early 1990s, outside events again intervened. The collapse of the aerospace industry took away what few remaining high-wage jobs were left in South L.A. Finally, in April 1992 came the riots that followed the acquittal of four L.A. police officers in the televised beating of Rodney King. During the rioting, track driver Reginald Denny was pulled out of his cab in broad daylight at the corner of Florence and Normandie avenues, less than two miles from Crenshaw Boulevard at the southern reaches of the district.

"That's when the Crenshaw area really hit rock bottom," Hutchinson said.

By HOWARD FINE

Staff Reporter