Lincoln Heights is considered to be one of the oldest neighborhoods outside of La Placita / Sonoratown dating to the 1870s and is found wholly within the original Spanish four leagues pueblo of the Los Angeles land grant.

Lincoln Heights was well located to serve as a home for people who worked in the industrial areas lining the Los Angeles River and wanted to live upstream.

By the late 1880s a neighborhood commercial district had been built around the intersection of North Broadway and Truman Streets, with business buildings such as the Hayden Block.

This is identified as the first suburban neighborhood shopping district in Los Angeles; it was demolished in the mid-20th century to make way for I-5, the Golden State Freeway.

[2] Thereafter, what would be known as North Broadway became a crowded commercial thoroughfare, and by the turn of the 20th century, unfettered industrial construction and numerous rock crushing operations within the once scenic floodplain made it less appealing for Angelenos of means, who moved out first to the Arroyo Seco area and Hollywood, then (from the 1920s onward) to rapidly developing Mid-Wilshire.

Mexico (57.0%) and Vietnam (16.9%) were the most common places of birth for the 55.8% of the residents who were born abroad—which was a high percentage for Los Angeles.

Just 5.5% of Lincoln Heights residents aged 25 and older had earned a four-year degree by 2000, a low percentage for the city.

The Golden State Freeway (I-5) runs through the district, and the Metro A Line has a station in the far northwestern portion of the neighborhood.