Walk in Solano Canyon (Near La Loma, Palo Verde, Bishop) • 2013
Located just at the edge of the displaced La Loma community bordered by Elysian Park, Dodger Stadium and the 110 Freeway, Solano Canyon and its vicinity has been affected by competing intentions that have continually pushed up against one another in Los Angeles: natural geographic features, public recreation space, transportation, housing, and for-profit stadium and entertainment uses.
Within the context of Pacific Standard Time: Modern Architecture in LA, this walk was created in 2013 in a collaborative dialogue of learning with Solano Canyon community members Lydia Moreno, Virginia Pinedo-Bye, Alicia Brown, Nancy De Los Santos, and Sara Harris, as well as in conversation with Melissa Arechiga whose family was forcibly removed from Palo Verde in 1959. I also utilized the City of Los Angeles Archive and referred to my past research in the UCLA Neutra documents on Elysian Park Heights understand how the top-down aspirations of remaking LA through modern architecture, city government and zoning along with shifting social and economic policies resulted in multiple forms of displacement with reverberating effects for the people who lived and still live in the community—the daily physical/social landscape of Solano Canyon and its interconnections with surrounding neighborhoods of Elysian Valley and Echo Park. We listened to recollections and reflections that active community members shared, climbed staircases, trespassed on DWP property to pay tribute at some sites of demolished houses where traces of the houses remain, and visited Our Lady of Fatima in the saint’s plaza behind Mission San Conrado Church.
Part of Ken Ehrlich's series Walking Places: Four Walks in Los Angeles for Machine Project's Field Guide to L.A. Architecture for Pacific Standard Time: Modern Architecture in L.A.
