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Harvard Heights, Los Angeles, California
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Harvard Heights is a district in the Mid-Wilshire region of Los Angeles, California.
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The boundaries of Harvard Heights are Pico Boulevard on the north, Western Avenue on the west, Washington Boulevard on the south, and Hoover Street on the east. Koreatown lies to the north, Pico-Union to the east, West Adams to the south, and Arlington Heights to the west. Major thoroughfares include Washington and Venice Boulevards and Normandie and Vermont Avenues. The district lies within ZIP code 90006.
Harvard Heights is a motley neighborhood of brick apartment buildings and Victorian and Craftsman houses built on the hills southwest of downtown, primarily between 1900 and 1910 (ZIMAS). It is currently home to Southern California's oldest high school, Loyola High School, a highly-selective all-boys Jesuit institution. A middle-class neighborhood through the first half of the 20th century, with a notably large Greek-American population that built the neighborhood landmark St. Sophia's Greek Orthodox church, it began to go into decline after World War II, as suburbs and the newer neighborhoods of the Westside drew away much of its population. The overturn of segregation covenants in 1948 led to an infusion of working- and middle-class blacks in the ensuing decade, but by the 1980s most of the black population had moved on to other parts of the city; the district's only remaining concentration of blacks is in the areas west of Normandie. As was the case in many other areas, they were replaced by Latinos, with a particularly heavy concentration of Central Americans. Drawn by the area's abundance of classic architecture at bargain-basement prices, many "bourgeois bohemian" Anglos also moved into the district. Since the late 1990s, the city of Los Angeles has erected numerous signs and billboards commemorating the area's Greek heritage and highlighting its present ethnic majority with the name Byzantine-Latino Quarter. The area has also been designated as a Los Angeles Historic Preservation Overlay Zone.
Harvard Heights comprises U.S. Census tracts 2211.10, 2211.20, 2212.10, 2212.20, 2213.01, and 2213.02. As of the 2000 census, the district had a population of 24,557 people. Racial composition was 27.5% white, 12.9% black or African-American, 1.2% Native American, 5.4% Asian or Pacific Islander, 47.1% some other race, and 5.9% of two or more races; 78.2% of respondents, of all races, claimed Latino or Hispanic ethnicity. Per capita income was $10,034; 34.9% of individuals were at or below poverty level.
The neighborhood is within the Los Angeles Unified School District [1].
Several different elementary schools serve different sections of the neighborhood. They include:
- 24th Street Elementary School
- Los Angeles Elementary School
- Magnolia Elementary School
- Pio Pico Elementary School
Two different middle schools serve portions of Harvard Heights.
- Berendo Middle School
- Cochran Middle School (formerly Mount Vernon Middle School)
All of Harvard Heights is zoned to Los Angeles High School.
