Before Dodger Stadium, Chavez Ravine was three Mexican-American neighborhoods; Palo Verde, La Loma, and Bishop, where more than 1,100 families built and owned their homes on a hill a mile north of downtown Los Angeles. In July 1950, a letter from the city’s Housing Authority promised every family “first choice” of the brand-new public housing that would replace their streets. The families were moved out. The homes were bulldozed and burned. And the housing was never built. Not one unit.
This documentary follows the promise from the letter to the wrecking ball: Richard Neutra’s Elysian Park Heights, the 3,600-apartment project that was supposed to rise on the hill; Frank Wilkinson, the housing official who sold families on the plan door to door, was destroyed by an FBI dossier in a 1952 Red Scare ambush, and later served nine months in federal prison; the “public purpose” deed clause that was supposed to protect the land; Walter O’Malley’s 1957 deal for the Brooklyn Dodgers; the 25,785-vote referendum, the ruling that briefly killed the stadium, and the 7-0 reversal; and Black Friday, May 8, 1959, when four deputies carried widow Aurora Vargas out of her family’s home at 1771 Malvina Avenue while the bulldozer waited outside. Then the stranger second act: Vin Scully and the transistor radios, thirty-cent Dodger Dogs, and the 1981 spring when Fernando Valenzuela brought the displaced families’ children back up the hill.
The families’ descendants, including Buried Under the Blue, are still asking for an apology, a monument, and compensation. A 2024 state bill passed the legislature and was vetoed. Malvina Avenue is no longer on the map.
Chapters:
0:00 The eviction before the ballpark
1:52 Three neighborhoods on the hill
4:39 The first-choice promise
7:38 The Red Scare kills the plan
9:53 The Dodgers enter Chavez Ravine
13:04 The vote, the courts, and the holdouts
16:48 Black Friday at Malvina Avenue
20:44 What survived and what remains
Sources for this episode include the Housing Authority’s July 24, 1950 letter and records in UCLA Library’s Divided Development exhibit, LAist’s “The House on the Hill” and Chavez Ravine histories, USC Digital Library’s Los Angeles Examiner photographic archive, SABR’s histories of the stadium fight, the California Supreme Court’s 1959 opinion, Latino USA and PBS SoCal’s Lost LA, History News Network on the Wilkinson dossier, and 2024–2026 reporting by The Eastsider, NBC News, and Dodger Blue.
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About This Channel:
Allan’s Abandoned America tells the stories of abandoned ghost towns, forgotten tourist resorts, and declining infrastructure across the United States. Each video investigates who built these places, who profited, and who was left behind.
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DISCLAIMER
This video is for educational and documentary purposes. Visit any locations mentioned at your own risk. Some visual sequences in this video are dramatic re-enactments created for illustrative purposes and do not depict real footage.
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