Community Signs : L.A.--a City Divided and Proud of It

Inspecting his street a few months ago, a resident of exclusive Bel-Air thought it would be nice if the little blue-and-white “Bel-Air” sign, mounted on a lamppost, could be moved just a bit farther west on Moraga Drive.

Los Angeles city crews obliged, reinstalling the 18-inch-high community name sign a football field’s length closer to Sepulveda Boulevard. That way, there could be no mistake that the man’s house was most definitely in Bel-Air.

As Howard Woo, the Western district engineer for the city Department of Transportation, recalled the request: “He told us that moving the sign would enhance the value of his house. He said he could say he was in Bel-Air and it would make a difference of several hundred thousand dollars.”

Posted Around City

Ubiquitous community identification signs such as the one in Bel-Air are posted all over Los Angeles, identifying the Central City, Hollywood, Westchester, Pacific Palisades, Boyle Heights, Venice and, of course, Winnetka, Arleta, Hermon, Westdale and others.

Although the signs bear the city seal and are city property, they have no official standing.

“They’re a matter of community pride, identity,” Donald Howery, the Department of Transportation’s chief, explained. “Los Angeles has gotten so big. And some communities--a neighborhood, even a shopping center--want the recognition.”

As a result of such demand, the little known and low-cost city program is nearing its 25th year--and thriving.

Ego Gratification

Sometimes called frivolous, community signs serve a variety of uses--from spotlighting a neighborhood to satisfying the egos of identity-conscious community leaders.

There are 433 such signs, according to the latest count, and the Department of Transportation knows exactly where each one is. But it’s another matter when it comes to how many communities those signs identify.

Principal transportation engineer Bruce Fredrickson guesses there are at least 58 communities. The city Planning Department has identified 52 centers. Thomas Bros., the map publisher, lists 70.

Often, the Department of Transportation explains, there is more than one sign--and as many as 20--identifying a single community or district.

In downtown Los Angeles, for example, the Central City is ringed by several signs, including one posted amid the filth, dirty buildings and wandering derelicts on East 5th Street. Most, though, are more strategically placed to let people know they have entered an orbit embracing the Central City’s gleaming new skyscrapers.

Of course, losing track of communities where signs have been placed--if not the signs themselves, which sometimes are stolen--is understandable.

It recalls an early description of Los Angeles, “Six suburbs in search of a city,” which historian W. W. Robinson revived in his 1968 book, “Los Angeles: A Profile.” Robinson attributed the phrase to newcomers flocking to Los Angeles in the 1920s. In later versions, the original six grew to 100 suburbs.

For a city that has 510,840 municipal signs of all types--from street name signs to no-parking signs--community name signs are a mere drop in the bucket. The community signs, made in the Transportation Department’s own shops, each cost $300 installed and are paid for out of the agency’s $2-million annual street sign budget.

Usually there is no trick to getting one, Transportation Department officials say.

Most often the idea is generated by a community or local Chamber of Commerce, a civic group or a neighborhood organization. The request is passed along to the City Council member in whose district the community is located, and then it is forwarded to Howery’s department for action.

Newest Community

This bureaucratic process was followed last summer, although with a rare detour through the City Council itself, to get identification signs for the city’s newest community--Harbor Gateway. Pointing south to Los Angeles Harbor, the eight-mile-long blue-collar area was known for years as the Torrance-Gardena Corridor or sometimes the Shoestring Strip.

Susan Prichard, a field deputy for Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores, said the old names were confusing because people thought they lived in Torrance or Gardena but were actually within the Los Angeles city limits. The strip’s 32,000 residents were surveyed by Flores’ office and picked the name Harbor Gateway.

“The area’s Community Advisory Council said the strip was an entity without an identity,” Prichard recalled. “The City Council actually changed the name and the advisory council requested signs.”

Just so there would be no mistaking the community, Harbor Gateway signs--20 all told--went up in late August.

Although details are fuzzy, Transportation Department veterans agree, the sign program started informally in 1962.

Hugh Gilman, the department’s retired assistant general manager, who worked for its predecessor, the old city Traffic Department, believes it had its genesis with the early directional and mileage signs posted by the Automobile Club of Southern California as far back as the 1920s.

He recalled that the Miracle Mile, so named to promote Wilshire Boulevard’s then blossoming commercial strip, put up its own “elegant looking gold or bronze sign mounted on a pedestal” in the 1930s. Bel-Air also had its own decorative signs in the 1920s. But those were special signs. They were paid for by merchants, developers or property owners and required the permission of the Board of Public Works.

“At first, in the early 1960s, the Traffic Department took the position that all the communities were part of Los Angeles and we didn’t want cities within cities,” Gilman recalled. “But the business sections wanted name identification. The department held the line for a while. We didn’t want to expand the workload but finally we gave in.

“Philosophically it made sense. Los Angeles is huge. The city had to recognize that there were communities that needed identification, including some that had been annexed, such as Venice and Mar Vista. People still think of them (as individual communities). What we tried to avoid was putting up signs at every intersection that had stores,” he said.

Hollywood, Wilshire Boulevard’s Miracle Mile and the Central City were among the first to get community signs when the city identification program started, according to Gilman.

Vandalized, Stolen

Hollywood boosters, he recalled, were so enthusiastic initially that they wanted signs posted all the way to Beverly Hills. The signs proved popular indeed. It took no time for Hollywood’s community signs--as well as its street signs--to rank among the favorite targets of souvenir hunters and vandals.

The problem also has plagued little Happy Valley, a lesser known Los Angeles neighborhood in the Lincoln Heights area northeast of downtown with a sign of its own. “Kids (from other neighborhoods) were jealous,” said Antonia Flores.

“We got the sign because people don’t know our neighborhood very well,” Flores, who heads the community organization in the tiny neighborhood, added. “First boys from other neighborhoods bent it in half. Then they put graffiti on it. Then all of a sudden it disappeared,” she said. “We want to put up another sign. Our boys are proud of their neighborhood. The sign gives them something to look up to. It’s neat.”

In its heyday, meanwhile, Wilshire Boulevard’s Miracle Mile was widely publicized as a “measured mile” between La Brea and Fairfax avenues. Although the once-thriving commercial strip “took a nose dive” some years ago, as one resident put it, signs designating the Miracle Mile District remain.

The old Miracle Mile Assn., for years the merchants’ voice for that stretch of Wilshire, no longer exists. But a new organization, the Miracle Mile Residential Assn., has appeared, serving residents and businesses alike in an area that extends south to Olympic Boulevard, where Miracle Mile community signs are starting to show a little wear.

Raising Awareness

“We’d like to see them spiffed up,” an official of the new Miracle Mile group said. “They raise people’s awareness.”

When the city’s community signs program began, neighborhoods and business districts alike scrambled to get signs. Occasionally friendly competition still pops up.

It happened again a couple of years ago when two adjacent neighborhoods, above and below Olympic Boulevard, decided they wanted their boundaries clearly marked. Each has about 1,600 residents.

One was the Carthay Circle neighborhood, which asked for community signs because, as Charles Rosin, the homeowners’ association president, put it, “This is a unique area--one of Los Angeles’ first planned neighborhoods.”

“The houses are a mishmash of styles,” he explained. “We don’t have architectural significance. But this is one of Los Angeles’ true neighborhoods. So boundaries are important.”

The community was known for its elegant Carthay Circle Theater, which brought it national recognition. But the theater, designed as a part of the community 60 years ago, was torn down in the early 1960s and then replaced by an office building.

The residential community, however, has remained intact and the community signs, as Rosin sees them, give the neighborhood “historical integrity.”

Lesser know South Carthay, its neighbor south of Olympic, also is unique. No two dwellings, most of which were built 50 years ago, are alike.

Historic Zone

While Carthay Circle was getting its community signs, South Carthay won recognition as a historic zone from the city Planning Department. But that designation didn’t satisfy everyone, according to Fred Naiditch, a former president of the South Carthay Neighborhood Assn.

“We wanted the identification,” he explained. “I remember saying at the time, ‘We ought to have signs, too, because Carthay Circle has them.’ ”

For Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky that was no problem. Carthay Circle had six. So South Carthay got six, too.

From the outset the Transportation Department has tried to please everyone, placing signs where people want them. Often this causes confusion.

Granada Hills is a recent case in point. It happened about the time the San Fernando Valley community was getting seven or eight new replacement signs to help the area dress up for its 58th anniversary celebration last summer.

The trouble started when the U.S. Postal Service wanted one of Granada Hills’ old signs on Lassen Avenue, just west of the San Diego Freeway, changed to read “Sepulveda,” so that it would match mail deliveries, according to Granada Hills Chamber of Commerce President John Ciccarelli.

City crews promptly obliged. But some residents complained, although others liked the new “Sepulveda” sign.

It was a tossup, a department engineer recalled. So city planners, who are making detailed community studies, were consulted.

Granada Hills Wins

Granada Hills won. A work order was issued to put the Granada Hills sign back up.

Another newer community, Koreatown, has strived for recognition--and gotten it--ever since its signs went up 10 years ago. Even so the signs have been unable to contain the sprawling, amorphous business and residential area west of downtown.

But despite its growth, noted a spokesman for Councilman David Cunningham, the ethnic community has failed to attract non-Koreans and tourists as rapidly as some businessmen hoped.

Koreatown’s leaders then asked the California Department of Transportation for freeway signs similar to those that have been up for many years for Los Angeles’ two other big ethnic communities, Chinatown and Little Tokyo.

Until 1982 Caltrans had no formal policy for freeway or highway signs for communities within a city. Finally the agency decided that Koreatown qualified for special recognition because, among other things, it is adjacent to a freeway--the Santa Monica. Thus Koreatown joined Chinatown and Little Tokyo as the only Los Angeles communities officially recognized from a freeway.

Like Koreatown, most communities and neighborhoods take their boundaries seriously. Mid City, known to most outsiders only as an area to drive through, is no exception.

Image Problem

Compactly located in the San Vicente-Pico boulevard area, Mid City has a population of 14,500 and an acknowledged image problem, according to community leaders.

Community name signs went up six years ago--but had to be pulled back by a few blocks when they infringed on Carthay Circle territory. Now Mid City, trying to upgrade its image, has set an ambitious goal: it hopes to become Los Angeles’ next frontier, according to Neil Barry, president of the Mid City Chamber of Commerce.

Name signs give a community an identity--something that “we’re all fighting for,” he said. But Barry believes there also is an intangible about the neighborhood identification process. “Boundaries . . . are in your heart,” he said.