Lafayette Square was the last and perhaps finest of banker George Lafayette Crenshaw’s real estate projects built in Los Angeles in the early 1900s. I had the occasion to visit the neighborhood after being invited to a dinner party there last week, and vowed to return as soon as possible to capture its charm with my camera.
The Square is a neighborhood within Arlington Heights, a densely populated, highly diverse district of Central Los Angeles, California, where most people live in rented homes or apartments. Situated just west of Crenshaw Boulevard at St. Charles Place, there are just 236 homes in the gated neighborhood, with architectural styles being an eclectic mix of Neo-Federalist, Craftsman, Italianate and Spanish Revival, as well as several notable examples of early Modern.
Famous residents of Lafayette Square have included George Pepperdine (founder of Pepperdine University), actors W.C. Fields and Fatty Arbuckle, industrialist and art collector Norton Simon, boxer Joe Louis, and architect Paul R. Williams (who designed his own home in the neighborhood), and members of the Crenshaw family.
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