West Adams is one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city of Los Angeles, with most of its buildings erected between 1880 and 1925, including the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library.

It was once the wealthiest neighborhood in the city, with its Victorian mansions and sturdy Craftsman bungalows, and a home to Downtown businessmen, as well as professors and academicians at the nearby University of Southern California.

In 1887, the Los Angeles Herald announced that the ensuing St. James Park neighborhood would have a stone entrance to "rival the Arc de Triomphe" and would be eventually be surrounded by "the most costly residences yet erected on this coast".

[10] In September of that year, a Los Angeles Times reporter wrote: "The growing popularity of apartment houses is causing them to encroach on grounds heretofore exclusively reserved for high-class residences".

He was reporting on "one of the handsomest apartment-houses in the city", which was designed by Thornton Fitzhue and was to be built on the southern side of St. James Park.

[15] In 1925, silent screen star Ramon Novarro purchased a home in "the exclusive West Adams district" for $12,000 and spent an additional $100,000 on renovations.

[16][17] In 1927, during the prohibition era, the Times reported that the vice squad raided a "luxurious fourteen rooom mansion in the exclusive West Adams district".

[citation needed] In 1931, during the Great Depression, the recently organized West Adams Relief Committee provided work for twenty men for ninety days.

They are of the wealthy Los Angeles of a past generation, and a visitor to the neighborhood will find evidence of its elegance, if somewhat frayed and faded in spots.

Notable residents included Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company president Norman O. Houston, actress Hattie McDaniel, civil rights activists John and Vada Sommerville, actress Louise Beavers, band leader Johnny Otis, performers Pearl Bailey and Ethel Waters.

He said, "It is time that members of the Negro race are accorded, without reservations or evasions, the full rights guaranteed them under the 14th Amendment to the Federal Constitution.

Its construction resulted in the taking (by eminent domain) and demolition of numerous West Adams homes, including a number of mansions owned by African Americans.

[24] The construction resulted in substantial displacement of West Adams residents, including the relocation of much of the area's affluent Black families.

"[27] In 2000, the Alpha Gamma Omega sorority house, a Craftsman structure built in 1911 and located in West Adams, received a Preserve L.A. grant from the Getty Trust.

[29] The Times reported that "a century-old neighborhood of houses and businesses" were demolished to make room for a new $130 million 15-acre high school.

[30] In 2007, the city approved the "West Adams Streetscape Enhancement Program" proposed by LANI (Los Angeles Neighborhood Initiative).

[33] The magazine noted that West Adams was "once home to Los Angeles’s wealthiest 19th-century bankers" and that the neighborhood was best for movie buffs and city life.

[34] In 2011, the Times reported on neighbors pushing back against crime and wrote: "The neighborhood around them at Western Avenue and Adams Boulevard might be blighted, but they are not about to cede to urban ills their graceful streets of century-old bungalows, well-tended lawns and curbside jacarandas and towering palms.

[49] In 1985, West Adams was a predominantly "Black middle-class area with growing Latino and Korean segments, plus a mix of Hungarians, Poles, Japanese, USC students and an increasing young professional and gay population.