This article contains spoilers
Apple TV+’s “Lessons in Chemistry” contains two interesting secondary stories, as I noted in my previous article. The first is about cooking; the second is about Sugar Hill*—aka West Adams—the prosperous, mostly black neighborhood where the two main characters, Elizabeth Zott and Calvin Evans, both white chemists, settle in 1951.
Calvin discovers West Adams first, buying a charming Craftsman there not only because the neighborhood is desirable but because it’s the perfect running distance from the lab where he works. (A jogger as well as avid rower, he doesn’t drive.) Upon moving in, he gets a homemade pie and a warm greeting from his black neighbors, Harriet and Charlie Sloane, a legal aide and doctor who are surprised not only by Calvin’s whiteness but his weird running habit and unusual love of jazz. After Charlie is deployed with the Navy to Korea, Calvin helps Harriet with the children and household repairs, and their friendship deepens. When plans for a new freeway threaten the neighborhood, Harriet becomes a leader in the opposition and asks Calvin for his support.
Around that time Elizabeth moves in with Calvin, who soon dies in an accident. As she and Harriet become friends, Elizabeth begins to grasp what Calvin didn’t—that fight against the proposed Santa Monica Freeway demands the participation of West Adams’s white residents as well as its black majority. After becoming a popular TV chef, Elizabeth uses her celebrity to fight the destruction of Sugar Hill, participating in a peaceful demonstration that the police put down violently.
Los Angeles wasn’t unique in destroying black and brown neighborhoods to build freeways—Miami, Nashville, New Orleans and other cities across the country suffered the same fate. What set West Adams apart was its prosperity during the two decades before its destruction. After black families moved in and renovated its Victorian, Tudor and Mediterranean mansions, the neighborhood regained much of its pre-Depression grandeur. Its property values rose steadily. Nevertheless, West Adams was designated a likely “blighted area” by the racist, federally sponsored Home Owners’ Loan Corporation—a apt characterization only after the freeway cut through it.**
Angelenos know how the West Adams vs. Santa Monica Freeway war ended. Homeowners in the path of the freeway were forced out by eminent domain and poorly compensated for their properties. A broad swath of houses was razed along with the streets they stood on. In 1960, construction on the westernmost section of I-10—downtown LA to the Pacific Ocean—began. It was completed in 1966.
West Adams was cut in half lengthwise by the freeway. Property values plummeted. In the following five decades, the neighborhood declined from an upper-middle-class enclave to a marginal commercial and residential district. Some areas were poor; in more prosperous parts the faded mansions of its late nineteenth and early twentieth century heyday still stood. But Berkeley Square, a gated community whose gracious homes were designed by leading architects like George Lawrence Stimson, Myron Hunt and Elmer Grey, was completely razed. The only part of its 20 acres that isn’t under the freeway now houses a public high school.
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In recent years, West Adams has experienced a revival, gentrifying into a neighborhood of new restaurants and apartment buildings. Old houses have been renovated and new businesses have opened, but bifurcation by freeway isn’t something that can be overcome. West Adams today is a smaller, poorer, and less cohesive community than it was in the 50’s, when “Lessons in Chemistry” is set.
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*Sugar Hill, named by its black residents for the richest section of Harlem, comprised the northwestern section of West Adams and was home to actresses Hattie McDaniel and Louise Beavers, and later Marvin Gaye.
**In contrast the Beverly Hills Freeway—proposed at the same time to connect the 101 to the 405, thereby alleviating crosstown traffic—was defeated by the largely white neighborhoods it would have affected. While Beverly Hills has been held up as the main protester, its residents narrowly supported the project. The Beverly Hills Freeway was defeated by West Hollywood, not yet an independent city, whose opposition proved overwhelming.
Sources:
“Black Americans and the Racist Architecture of Homeownership”: NPR, May 8, 2021.
“Historic Los Angeles: Berkeley Square”: www.berkeleysquarelosangeles.com