Eagle Rock to Celebrate Its Close-Knit Identity

Eagle Rock was an independent city for only two years, from 1921 to 1923. But, in the minds of many of its residents, the northeast Los Angeles community is still a world apart--both spiritually and geographically.

“We’re not saying we hate Los Angeles. But we don’t even think a lot about Los Angeles,” explained Katie Smith, a real estate agent active in the Eagle Rock Chamber of Commerce.

So it is fitting, local residents say, that a big community celebration on Sunday will commemorate the 75th anniversary of Eagle Rock’s incorporation as a city, rather than its annexation by Los Angeles two years later. After all, some contend, if it weren’t for water--which Los Angeles had and Eagle Rock needed--Eagle Rock would still be independent.

Snuggled in a small valley between Glendale and Pasadena, the foothills and York Boulevard, Eagle Rock remains something of a small town only 10 minutes from the heart of the megalopolis.

When people talk about the area, they often use phrases like “close-knit,” “stable,” “safe,” and “family-oriented.” And, when they refer to “City Hall,” they usually don’t mean the place where Mayor Tom Bradley has his office. They mean the building at Colorado Boulevard and Maywood Avenue that used to house Eagle Rock’s municipal functions and is now home to a small local history museum and a field office of Councilman Arthur K. Snyder, who has represented the area for 18 years.

Addresses on Letters

Many Eagle Rock citizens are so fiercely proud of their community’s separate identity that they address local mail to Eagle Rock, Calif., and not to Los Angeles. The letters usually get there.

“Eagle Rock is unusual in the sense that other parts of Los Angeles are not as cohesive,” explained Richard Polanco, chief of staff for Assemblyman Richard Alatorre (D-Los Angeles), whose district includes Eagle Rock. “As opposed to other neighborhoods, people there know each other and they know each other for years.”

“It’s the kind of place where people wave to you and come up to talk,” said Bob Mosley, the senior police officer assigned to Eagle Rock. “It’s a friendlier atmosphere than the rest of the city.” He attributed that in part to the many residents who have lived their entire lives in Eagle Rock, so that the community traditionally has included many seniors.

Sunday’s affair, which begins at 1 p.m. at the local City Hall and will feature bands, clowns and hot dogs, is partly a Chamber of Commerce celebration of that stability. Yet many celebrants are aware that change has been coming to Eagle Rock in recent years.

Ethnic Influx

Ethnic groups are moving into what once was nearly an all-white area. The commercial heart of Eagle Rock has been hurt by nearby shopping malls. And, with Snyder’s anticipated resignation from the City Council, Eagle Rock is about to lose its political clout, residents fear.

Even the community’s namesake, the 150 foot-high rock with an indentation that resembles a flying eagle, was cut off from the rest of Eagle Rock by the Ventura Freeway in 1971.

Some people wonder whether Eagle Rock’s special identity can be maintained much longer.

Others, however, seem certain that it will. “Sure, you hear certain squawks about new people moving in,” said Ralph Sherman, a former president of the Eagle Rock Valley Historical Society. “But it’s still a pretty quiet community holding its own.”

Until about 10 years ago, Eagle Rock had the reputation of being an almost entirely white, very conservative area, populated by many families of policemen and firemen seeking an easy commute to work and a refuge from inner-city troubles.

Today that is no longer entirely true, although Eagle Rock still has a much higher percentage of whites and a lower crime rate than the rest of northeast Los Angles.

Census Breakdown

Of its estimated 22,000 residents, about 65% are white, 23% Latino, 10% Asian and less than 1% black, according to the 1980 census. Overall, in northeast Los Angeles, about 60% of the population is Latino, 28% white and about 10% Asian, with 1% black.

The number of Asians and Latinos, particularly Filipinos and Central Americans, has increased even more in the last five years, officials say. About 65% of the students at Eagle Rock Junior High School and Eagle Rock Senior High are now non-Anglo.

“When I first came here in 1972, I couldn’t get over how white, Anglo-Saxon this area was. Now there is more of a mix. But there are still very, very few black people,” said Father Vincent Serpa, who was the associate pastor at Dominic’s Roman Catholic Church in Eagle Rock from 1972 to 1976 and who recently returned as pastor of St. Dominic’s.

Ruby de Vera, vice president of a social and philanthropic organization called the Filipino-American Community of Eagle Rock (PACER), said Filipinos were welcomed into the district. “It is a very warm community,” she said. However, most Filipinos speak English well and have had an easier time blending in than Latinos with language problems, she explained.

Perception of Threat

One federal government official familiar with Eagle Rock said: “I think some of the people there are threatened by other life styles. The mental attitude is generally conservative and, if you’re not white, you’re going to have a harder time.”

But he said that is changing because, along with minorities, younger white people are moving in, drawn by housing prices that are lower than in Glendale or Pasadena. Eagle Rock’s image as a place dominated by senior citizens doesn’t hold anymore, he added.

Some apartments have been built in Eagle Rock over the last decade, occupied in part by students and faculty of Occidental College, the liberal arts school on Eagle Rock’s south side. But the area remains overwhelmingly one of single-family homes, many of them built in the 1920s when trolley lines turned fruit groves into a suburb.

About 65% of the homes are owner-occupied--about 20% higher than all of northeast Los Angeles. And the median household income is about $17,000, significantly higher than in Highland Park or Glassell Park, but only $900 less than that of all of Los Angeles County, recent census figures show. There is, however, one relatively upper-middle-income area of lush homes along and above Hill Drive near the Ventura Freeway.

Role of Snyder

Eagle Rock has sought to stay a quiet residential community, fighting such proposals as allowing gas stations to sell liquor. But many people in the area say that might be more difficult without Snyder, who lives in Eagle Rock, as their City Council spokesman.

For 18 years, Snyder, a Republican turned independent, has represented the 14th District, which includes parts of the city’s heavily Latino East Side. After a series of political, legal and personal troubles--most recently an accusation by his former wife that he molested their daughter, a charge officials said could not be proven--Snyder is expected to resign soon. His successor is likely to be a Latino Democrat from outside Eagle Rock, observers believe. Alatorre, the assemblyman, is among those seeking the office.

So Sunday’s celebration has, in effect, also become a farewell party for Snyder. A few people in Eagle Rock say they suspect the timing was arranged that way--especially since the real 75th anniversary of Eagle Rock’s incorporation is not until Feb. 24.

Katie Smith, chairman of the celebration, scoffs at such talk. The idea for the party, she said, began with a 75th-anniversary edition of the Eagle Rock Sentinel, the local newspaper, last March. “The idea is to celebrate the community. And, if we’re a few months early, so what?” she said. “It’s kind of like a family reunion. You know, a family doesn’t keep going unless you get everybody together and wave the banners every once in a while.”

Concern for Future

Nevertheless, Smith conceded that people are concerned about how Snyder’s departure will affect the district’s identity. “Whatever you may think of Art Snyder’s personal problems, he takes care of the people here. And we won’t have the same close personal ties with whoever takes over,” she said.

One of the big concerns in Eagle Rock is the health of its retail areas along Eagle Rock and Colorado boulevards. Several landmark stores in the area have closed in the last 10 years. Most people blame Eagle Rock Plaza, the 12-year-old shopping mall just east of the Glendale Freeway, as well as the newer Glendale Galleria and Plaza Pasadena.

“Colorado Boulevard has been livelier. The malls did it in,” said John Tritch, whose hardware store on Colorado is often referred to as a prime example of how stable Eagle Rock can be. Tritch’s father founded the store in 1944. John and his brother, Merritt, now run the place, along with their sons. Their hedge against the malls, he explained, is to offer the personal service that a chain store cannot.

Fought Freeway Exit

Shirley Minser, Snyder’s Eagle Rock field deputy, recalls how some local merchants successfully fought off having an exit from the Ventura Freeway empty into central Eagle Rock. The unforeseen effect of that, she said, was to have a lot of potential business zoom past the community. “They wound up hurting themselves,” she said. Minser, however, pointed out that there has been some new development on Colorado recently: a mini-mall at Argus Drive and a motel.

“I think there are areas of Eagle Rock that are pretty sad. And there are others that have a lot of hope,” said Michael Lindsay, a probation officer who was active in the open-housing and civil rights movement in northeast Los Angeles in the 1960s. Eagle Rock, he said, “is not a real progressive community. But, on the other hand, it has a sense of identity that other communities don’t have.”