STRUKTR was recently asked to participate in a photo documentary of Echo Park. Founder Marni Epstein-Mervis has helped to shine a light on many of the neighborhood's unique fixtures as an architectural writer, historic preservationist, and Echo Park resident. The photo-documentary captures Echo Park residents in and around the neighborhood places that have become most meaningful to them. For Marni that place was Echo Park's rare example of Art Deco architecture - a building which she has spent a great deal of time researching and writing about.
Echo Park is no stranger to photographers or film crews - Glendale Boulevard was home to some of Los Angeles' first movie studios, and in 2014, an eponymous film took over the neighborhood for its shoot. So what makes Echo Park a muse to so many?
The answer is almost too voluminous for photo-documentarian Andy House when he's asked to briefly characterize the neighborhood's appeal. "A sentence or two will be tough," he laments. "There are so many things to say." Echo Park's appeal is found, ultimately, in its diversity of population and topography. "From the wild birds on the lake, to the urban scene in the park and on Sunset Boulevard, and then up in hills where homes built along twisting webs of steep streets and stairways overlook downtown Los Angeles," he notes. This mutli-cultural, mutli-dimensional essence of Echo Park is present in every ounce of the neighborhood's history, architecture, people, sounds, and smells. It is all this that House aims to capture, and through an utterly humanistic lens.
Photos courtesy of Andy House