Barlow Hospital Seeks Rezoning

The American City of Los Angeles  inherited a great deal of municipal land California became a state in the union in 1850.  The City preferred to give away if it could not sell most of its municipal land, which is a reason why Los Angeles to this day does not have adequate parks. 

In 1886, the City established its Department of Parks and Recreation with three parks: the Plaza downtown, La Plaza Abaja–now Pershing Square–and Elysian Park.

The City may have created Elysian Park because of the difficulty of selling or even giving away land that had such steep hills in the days before bull-dozers.   The location, moreover, near the City’s second suburban subdivision, Angeleno Heights (now “Angelino Heights”) could have been another reason to establish the City’s first real park.  (Phyl Diri, “Where the Fern Brake and the Willow Find a Home,” California Historical Society Journal, October 1983)

J. B. Lankershim owned the world's largest wheat-growing empire.  The world wheat market remained strong through the 1870s and early 1880s, but then supply began to exceed demand, and prices fell.  When the Santa Fe Railroad reached Los Angeles in 1885, fare wars between the Santa Fe and the Southern Pacific brought ever more settlers to Southern California during the era people of the time called the Rose Dawn.  Angelino Heights was developed during the Rose Dawn.  The real estate market collapsed in the 1890s. 

In 1902, Walter Jarvis Barlow purchased a 25-acre meadow adjacent to Elysian Park from J.B. Lankershim for a tuberculosis hospital. Dr. Barlow purchased the 25 acres from J. B. Lankershim for $7,300. He convinced Lankershim to donate back $1,000 of the purchase price, received $1,300 from Alfred Solano, and chipped in the balance of $5,000.

Walter Jarvis Barlow founded the Barlow Sanatorium in 1902 on 25 acres of meadowland next to Elysian Park.   The location seemed ideal because the surrounding hills ensured clean air and the neighboring Elysian Park seemed to guarantee any future development.

The site has thirty-two separate “contributing” (historic) buildings dating from 1902 to 1952, mostly in the Craftsman and Spanish Colonial Revival styles. A building on the Barlow property is designated Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument No. 504, and a historic resources evaluation in 1992 found the site eligible for listing as a National Register historic district.

In 2009, Barlow Respiratory Hospital applied to the City of Los Angeles to change its zoning from agriculture to High Medium and Low Medium density (depending on the parcel), and it requested amendment to the Silver Lake-Echo Park-Elysian Valley Community Plan for the Community Plan to be consistent with its proposed changes in zoning category.

The City Planning Department is currently reviewing the first administrative screen-check of the Draft Environmental Impact Report (Draft EIR, or DEIR). Nothing has been released or completed, according to an email from Diane Kitching, the planner in charge of the EIR, dated May 4, 2011)

The applicant proposed (and still proposes) to replace the existing hospital, and to build a 31,000 square-foot administration support facility and a 17,000 square-foot skilled nursing facility, and to subdivide and redevelop the remainder of the property with 888 multi-family residences (1,050,500 square feet) and 15,000 square feet of commercial space.  (August 25, 2009 Notice of Preparation and Notice of Public Scoping Meeting for an Environmental Impact Report). (E-mail messages from Diane Kitching, August 25, 2009 and May 4, 2011). 

The City’s decision to either allow the proposed land use changes, to require mitigation of environmental impacts or to deny the project, should be seen against the backdrop of the history of the area. 

Barlow Hospital has been able to take advantage of the site for 109 years. It now seeks the change the character of the neighborhood and of Elysian Park substantially.