Why Traction Avenue matters.
Traction Avenue is a storied corridor where the Arts District's creative character meets railroad-era industrial architecture, artist-led reinvention and the compact street geometry around which one of Downtown's most consequential cultural communities took shape.
Running through the Arts District between Little Tokyo and the Los Angeles River, the industrial corridor follows a short diagonal line from East 3rd Street toward 4th Street, cutting across the surrounding orthogonal grid near Hewitt, Rose and Merrick streets. Brick warehouses, concrete industrial buildings and converted manufacturing properties press close to the roadway, preserving the narrow proportions inherited from a district built around freight movement and production. Traveling southeast brings irregular intersections and angled building fronts into succession as Traction passes through the dense cluster around Third and Hewitt before approaching the former railroad properties lining Santa Fe Avenue. Murals, loading bays, steel-framed windows and restored masonry give the short route a physical continuity even as individual buildings reveal different periods of industrial construction and reuse. The result is a corridor whose diagonal alignment, compressed intersections, industrial facades and proximity to surviving railroad infrastructure preserve the physical character of the warehouse district that preceded its artistic reinvention.
What defines Traction Avenue.
Traction Avenue is best known for becoming the cultural center of the artist community that transformed an abandoned industrial quarter east of Downtown during the final decades of the twentieth century. Railroads had remade the surrounding agricultural landscape after Southern Pacific reached Los Angeles in 1876, and by 1905 three major transcontinental systems maintained depots, warehouses, transportation buildings and rail yards around the future Arts District. Manufacturing followed, filling the district with bakeries, clothing producers, foundries, furniture companies, printers, automobile-parts businesses and rubber manufacturers during the opening decades of the twentieth century. The shift from rail freight toward trucking after World War II weakened that industrial base, since large vehicles struggled with narrow streets and manufacturers increasingly sought larger properties in Vernon and Commerce. Vacant warehouses subsequently attracted artists priced out of Venice and Hollywood during the late 1960s and 1970s, with an especially important concentration forming around Traction Avenue and Hewitt Street. Industrial interiors offered large studios, abundant natural light and rents reaching six to eight cents per square foot, placing thousands of square feet within reach of working artists. The city legalized residential occupation of qualifying industrial buildings through its 1981 Artist-in-Residence program, and 811 Traction Avenue became one of the first properties to receive approval under that program in 1985. A street built into Los Angeles's industrial geography had become one of the principal addresses of its emerging downtown art community.
The intersection of Traction and Hewitt subsequently developed into the social center that gave the surrounding community a durable public name. Marc Kreisel and partners acquired the American Hotel in 1979 and converted portions of the property into studios, galleries and housing for artists, with Al's Bar operating downstairs as a gathering place for visual artists, musicians and performers. The venue remained active until 2001, hosting punk, experimental music, theater and exhibitions during a period when few conventional cultural institutions operated in the surrounding warehouse district. Joel Bloom arrived in the neighborhood in 1986 after work with Chicago's Second City and became a central organizer, later opening Bloom's General Store at the American Hotel in 1994. The tiny market functioned as a community gathering place as Bloom advocated for formal recognition of the neighborhood, and Los Angeles added the Arts District to its Community Plan Map in 2000. The city honored Bloom shortly before his death in 2007 by naming the area around 3rd Street, Traction Avenue and Rose Street Joel Bloom Square. The corridor moved beyond its role as an address for individual studios to become the geographic center of the organizing, performance culture and community advocacy through which the Arts District acquired its modern name.
How Traction Avenue fits.
Traction Avenue works as the anchor for a Downtown sequence connecting a pioneering railroad structure adapted for architectural education with a Japanese American institution created through veteran and business-community leadership and a former municipal warehouse converted by Frank Gehry into an influential contemporary-art venue.
Begin at Southern California Institute of Architecture, housed inside the surviving Santa Fe Freight Depot designed by Harrison Albright in 1907. The original project consisted of two parallel structures extending 1,250 feet along the railroad property, and Albright employed reinforced concrete in what became only the second Los Angeles use of the technology. The western depot disappeared during the early 1990s, leaving its quarter-mile counterpart as an immense industrial shell. SCI-Arc moved there in 2001 after a nine-month adaptation that inserted three steel mezzanines totaling 35,000 square feet into the existing 53,000-square-foot structure, deliberately leaving the historic concrete structure exposed. Continue to Japanese American National Museum, incorporated in 1985 after World War II veterans led by Young Oak Kim and Buddy Mamiya joined a Little Tokyo business group headed by Bruce Kaji. California support secured through State Senator Art Torres helped the organization lease the former Hompa Hongwanji Buddhist Temple in 1986, and extensive structural work prepared the historic building for the museum's May 1992 public opening. JANM subsequently raised $60 million for that rehabilitation and its adjacent Pavilion, which opened in 1999, and received the National Medal for Museum and Library Service in 2010. Conclude at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, originally constructed in 1947 by A.C. Martin & Associates for Union Hardware Company and later used by Los Angeles for municipal storage and police vehicles. MOCA leased the property from the city for $1 annually in 1983 as temporary quarters during construction of its permanent Grand Avenue building. Frank Gehry retained the industrial character while adapting the 55,000-square-foot complex for flexible exhibitions, and the Temporary Contemporary proved sufficiently successful to remain part of the museum. David Geffen's foundation contributed $5 million in 1996, after which the property received its present name. The progression moves from Albright's early reinforced-concrete freight architecture through a Japanese American institution built around preservation of community history and culminates in Gehry's conversion of industrial space for contemporary art, tracing three distinct forms of cultural reuse across the eastern edge of Downtown.
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