It feels isolated from the city's commercial mainstream. But it is not empty or blighted, just working-class and jumbled. Bus stops are crowded at rush hour. There are panaderias and 99-cent stores. People sell CDs, T-shirts and caged pigeons on street corners. Sidewalk taco stands have folding tables and bright umbrellas.
"You have streets and alleys here that haven't been paved since World War II, houses next to plating plants," Cremins said.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Tuesday, July 08, 2008 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 46 words Type of Material: Correction
South Los Angeles: A photo caption with an article in Monday's California section about the area formerly called South Central L.A. said a mural depicting the neighborhood's once-thriving jazz scene was at 25th Street and Adams Boulevard. The mural is at 25th Street and Central Avenue.
This same area was once called "The Avenue." It was L.A.'s Harlem, "the black main street of Los Angeles," said R.J. Smith, author of a history of the area in the 1940s. "It was a place where you could see Louis Armstrong . . . Joe Louis . . . Count Basie."
"South Central" meant something bigger than a place, Sides said. "It was synonymous with sense of black progress and accomplishment -- a physical manifestation of blacks' progress in the American West."
As segregation eased in the 1950s and '60s, blacks moved out and the population became more transitory. Malaise set in. Riots and economic forces battered the area, and youth gangs proliferated. The name "South Central" began being used outside of the black community in Los Angeles -- with a different connotation. "It became a loose way of describing everywhere that there were black people," Sides said.
As the name fell out of favor among residents, the proud and storied neighborhood became a prepositional phrase. "Over there," is how it is commonly referred to now, Bowers said.
Few remnants of the area's older days remain. There is the Dunbar Hotel, the childhood home of Nobel Laureate Ralph Bunche and the Lincoln Theater -- which now houses a Spanish-speaking congregation. "Iglesia de Jesucristo, Sur Central," reads the Lincoln's marquee.
Bowers and others are trying to spark a renaissance. Her 9-month-old booster group is called the Central Avenue Business Assn. Three new mixed-use affordable housing projects are in the works, along with a new city services building and a Central Avenue beautification project.
City Councilwoman Jan Perry, who represents the area, has tried to foster a sense of identity in recent years by giving names to three small chunks of Newton. Signs reading "Menlo Park" cover a three-by-seven-block area between Washington and Adams boulevards. The other two chunks are labeled the Gider and Dow's Adams Street Tract and the Nadeau Orange Tract.
