Angeles Mesa is a neighborhood in South Los Angeles, California.
Geography
By city council action in October 2001 (C.F. #01-1874), "Angeles Mesa" was officially named and designated.
The Department of Transportation was instructed to install neighborhood signs on 54th Street at 11th Avenue, 54th Street at 2nd Avenue, Van Ness Avenue at 48th Street and Crenshaw Boulevard at 54th Street.
In 2008, the city approved the Chesterfield Square/Angeles Mesa Gateway Median Sign Project. The Angeles Mesa median sign is located on Arlington Avenue on the north side of 54th Street.
The neighborhood of Chesterfield Square is located south of 54th Street.
The neighborhood is served by the Park Mesa Heights Community Council, which covers Hyde Park, Angeles Mesa and View Heights.
History
Development
The Angeles Mesa Land Company was incorporated in 1904 with a capital stock of $100,000. The investors were George S. Safford Sr., president; Robert Wankowski, E.G. Howard, Frank R. Rule and Fred W. Forrester. E.A. Forrester & Sons was the agent for the land company.
It was a subdivision of the Joughlin Tract on Slauson Avenue, comprising 2,000 lots, or 99 city blocks, said to be the largest single tract ever placed on the market in Los Angeles. (The figures were later publicized as and 88 city blocks.) The company forbade any billboards from being erected. It identified the property as "on the first decided rise south of West Adams street hill, . . . a fine, smooth piece of tableland which will require little grading." A water belt underlay the entire tract.
A 1910 news release said:
The subdivision is purely for residences, and . . . no unsightly business stands in struggling one-story shacks, such as mar even some of the most exclusive neighborhoods, can ever possibly find a foothold in this fastidious suburb. A building on the casino (pavilion) order will centralize all business, and house the company's offices, as well as the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker.
By 1916, the community had "10 stores, an apartment hotel with accommodations for 20 people and a high class motion picture theater in course of construction."
In that same year, a community celebration, with a torchlight parade, a brass band, "gaily decorated automobiles" and fireworks, was held to commemorate the installation of two hundred ornamental street lights, "set on marbleite pillars." Rubie Henrionnet was selected to reign over the festivities as queen of the carnival.
Water and annexation
The community lay "just outside the [Los Angeles] city limits" when its first lots went on sale. By 1916, it had its own fire department, under Chief S.O. Ritchey.
Angeles Mesa's water supply came from Inglewood, so residents petitioned the City of Los Angeles to provide service instead. In August 1916, the Los Angeles Public Service Commission decided to take no action because "of a large annexation movement" in unincorporated territory to the west of the then-current Los Angeles city boundary.
Angeles Mesa voters favored annexation of their unincorporated area by Los Angeles in an election held on April 6, 1917, by a vote of 237 to 200.
A month later, the Business Men's Committee of Angeles Mesa, headed by Fred W. Forrester, campaigned in favor of a large annexation into the city of Los Angeles stretching from Angeles Mesa on the northeast to the coastal Los Angeles sewage-treatment plant at Hyperion on the southwest, adjoining El Segundo. Proponents said that any increase in property tax would be more than offset by a decrease in water rates. According to the Evening Express, Forrester stated it was "of vital importance" that the entire area, with its two thousand residents, be annexed to forestall "at any point down the line [being] converted into a small municipality."
The West Coast Annexation area of , including the southern part of Angeles Vista, was admitted into Los Angeles in a citywide vote of 49,556 in favor and 26,241 opposed on June 5, 1917.
On July 29, 1919, Angeles Mesa rejected a proposal to buy the Inglewood Water Company's system at a cost of $80,000 and turn it over to the city of Los Angeles after annexation. The vote was 127 in favor and 103 against, with two-thirds needed for passage.
Angeles Mesa voters approved a separate annexation to Los Angeles north of 54th Street on July 21, 1922, by a vote of 174-149. The need for water was given as a reason.
Transportation and streets
The first subdivision was served by the "Inglewood branch of L.A. & Redondo Electric Railway, and get off at branch office, corner of Slauson Avenue."