Welcome to Silver Lake, California. Our lake is a reservoir.
Silver Lake is between Downtown L.A. and Hollywood, near the Griffith Park Observatory, Greek Theater, Vermont Avenue, Dodger Stadium, Hollywood Boulevard, etc. It is one of the first suburbs of Downtown Los Angeles, along with Echo Park and Pasadena. They used to have trolly cars that took people from these old, original neighborhoods into Downtown. The area is also dotted with old, cement staircases, which commuters used to use as shortcuts to get to their mountain top homes.
The reservoir, built in the 1920s, is one of a network of underground and above ground waterworks controlled by the L.A. Department of Water and Power (DWP). The water may become tap water, or it may be used to put out fires near the City.
This picture shows a City of Los Angeles maintenance worker killing weeds with Round-up. This is another good reason to drink bottled or filtered water if you live in Los Angeles, since Round-up is alleged to be an endocrine disruptor. After taking the photo, I asked the man what he was spraying.
Following are several examples of the several hundreds of 8-1/2 x 11 and 11 x 14 sketches I did between 1997-1999 when this was the view from my living room. I also took hundreds of photos.
Scroll down for photos of the houses on the other side of the lake. The first photo shows the number of walkers who may be out on a nice day; the next few photos show homes on West Silver Lake Boulevard facing the lake; the last photo shows the roof lines of some of the homes on the hill that are often on the Silver Lake modern home tour. Twentieth century architects Gregory Ain, Ed Fickett, Harwell Hamilton Harris, Richard Neutra, Rudolph Schindler, and Raphael Soriano built houses in the Silver Lake bowl.
