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Angelus Plaza is unique for a number of reasons:  it is the largest affordable housing community in the United States; the partnership formed of city, state and private organizations to make it a reality has never been able to be duplicated;  and now, it has been selected to house a piece of Bunker Hill history.

Fascinated with History

In the late 1940s, a young painter named Catherine (Kay) Martin of Springfield, Illinois relocated to Los Angeles with her new husband, Lowell Martin, an insurance executive.  While exploring her new surroundings, she became fascinated with Bunker Hill, a neighborhood of Victorian Residences nestled between the Civic Center and the Harbor Freeway.

At the turn of the century these once fabulous mansions signified Los Angeles’ transformation from a village into a sophisticated and affluent city.  However, by the 1950’s, Bunker Hill’s wealthy residents had moved west.  The intricate carving, romantic gables, cupolas, and grand arches that graced these stately quarters fell into a dilapidated condition.  Once elaborate residences were converted into shabby rooming houses catering to transient and low income residents.  Bunker Hill became a slum, marked with liquor stores, bars and a high crime rate.

This period coincided with the initial stage of the Bunker Hill Project.  This was a “plan to reclaim a blighted portion of the city’s core and restore and strengthen the central city through major new buildings, improved traffic ways, parking and physical beauty . . . to become one of the nation’s most modern business and residential centers.” (Los Angeles Times - 1959).  Ultimately, this push for revitalization involved the City of Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA/LA).  Many of the buildings were condemned, making the owners responsible for their demolition.

Vagabond of Bunker Hill

Martin, with an artist’s sensibility, recognized the former beauty hidden in this area, and thought that “the houses have developed personalities from a combination of wood lace, a pot of geraniums at an open window, people who come out of the houses, and the colors of the stained glass windows.”  From 1955 - 56, Martin made it her work to document Bunker Hill’s fading glory before it was lost.  She soon became a constant fixture in her white station wagon that doubled as a portable artist’s studio and became known as the “Vagabond of Bunker Hill.” 

Most of Martin’s paintings and drawings from this period are titled simply by addresses.  Each image is treated as a formal portrait and they stand as loving testimonials to a lost chapter of the Los Angeles’ history.

In 1994 Kay Martin’s relatives gifted this collection to the CRA/LA, which ironically was the agency responsible for slating her favorite subjects for demolition.  With respect to the artist’s work, the CRA/LA thought it was time for this collection to return to its rightful location in Bunker Hill. 

Angelus Plaza gratefully acknowledges the CRA/LA for their generous loan of the Kay Martin Collection in 2005.  The CRA/LA is indebted to Mr. & Mrs. William Reed for their bequest of the collection in 1992.

Thanks to Maria Luisa De Herrera for contibuting to this article.

Self-guided tours of the Kay Martin exhibit on the first and third floors of the Senior Activity Center are available Monday through Friday, 8 am - 4 pm, except holidays.