Wood porch houses line the hillside streets above the river, and My Family shot its pivotal scene at the Fourth Street bridge over Lorena Street.
What Boyle Heights looks like
Boyle Heights sits on a hillside above the Los Angeles River, mostly small wood frame houses with porches on the side streets, set behind low fences and short yards. Some are painted and others show bare wood siding. Many keep their original porch columns and railings. The crosses Lorena Street on a run of open concrete arches, its roadway lined with ornamented lamp posts and a low balustrade. 's tiled kiosko and a Metro E Line station stand at First Street and Boyle Avenue, the Boyle Hotel's corner tower and downtown Los Angeles rising behind them.
is lined with the neighborhood's main storefronts, most signs in Spanish. Brick corner buildings hold a bicycle shop and a storefront church at street level. A two tower stucco church stands nearby on St. Louis Street, and an Art Deco apartment building a few blocks over has a fluted pilaster surround at its entrance. sits along Cesar Chavez Avenue near Boyle Avenue.
's lake sits below a freeway ramp on one side of the neighborhood, and 's marble monuments and headstones stand among palm trees nearby. The , up to 27 lanes wide, forms the edge beyond that. Ramps and overpasses stack several levels there.
Shot in Boyle Heights
My Family shot key exterior scenes at the Fourth Street bridge over Lorena Street in 1995. The production built the Sanchez family's house facade there and shot the scene where Chucho is killed underneath the span. Cheech Marin's Born in East L.A. and Edward James Olmos's American Me both used the neighborhood as well. Blood In Blood Out opened with a scene at Los Cinco Puntos, the five way intersection where the neighborhood meets East Los Angeles. The film used El Pino, a bunya pine tree at Indiana and Folsom Streets, as a recurring meeting point for its characters. The Starz series Vida and the Netflix series Gentefied are set here too.
Born in East L.A., 1987
Hollenbeck Park
Cheech Marin wrote and directed the film, starring in it as Rudy. It opens with a Frenchwoman crossing the old Sixth Street Bridge on foot into Boyle Heights, and Rudy first spots her at Chavez Avenue and Fickett Street. He chases the sighting through Hollenbeck Park and the corner of Evergreen and Wabash Avenues, ending at a house on Dundas Street. Rudy's own house, a five bedroom home built in 1890, still stands at 122 North Chicago Street. A Victorian church from the same period stands next door.
American Me, 1992
Evergreen Cemetery
Most of American Me's violence takes place inside real prisons, including Folsom State Prison. Evergreen Cemetery and the nearby Our Lady of Guadalupe Sanctuary also appear in the film. Blood In Blood Out used the cemetery again the following year.
Vida, 2018
Mariachi Plaza
The Starz series is set in Boyle Heights. Mariachi Plaza appears through a car window in the first few minutes of the pilot, shot on location here. Community pushback over the production's use of the neighborhood followed. Most exterior filming for later seasons moved to the neighboring Pico-Union neighborhood, though the show stayed set in Boyle Heights. The Netflix series Gentefied also used Mariachi Plaza for some of its own location scenes.
What Boyle Heights can double for
Logan Barrio in Santa Ana, California
Logan Barrio's small bungalow houses date from the same decades as many of Boyle Heights' own houses, and the neighborhood has the same working class Mexican American character. Santa Ana's blocks run flat rather than climbing a hillside, so a wide establishing shot loses the rise toward downtown that Boyle Heights has. Try searching small bungalow houses now.
Barrio Logan in San Diego, California
The Coronado Bridge and Interstate 5 cut directly through Barrio Logan, and small houses sit beneath the interchange much the way Boyle Heights runs up against the East LA Interchange. Chicano Park's arches stand under the bridge itself, at the same close urban grain as Boyle Heights' own streets. The park's murals cover the bridge pillars, so a wide shot of the interchange needs care to keep them out of frame. The Coronado span's cables look more modern than Boyle Heights' own freeway ramps. Try searching houses beneath a freeway interchange now.
Chihuahuita in El Paso, Texas
Chihuahuita's small adobe and stucco houses sit on a narrow strip above the Rio Grande, echoing the way Boyle Heights' own houses sit above the Los Angeles River. Both neighborhoods keep a working class Latino population on one bank of their river. Chihuahuita's houses are adobe and stucco rather than wood frame with porches, so a close shot of the buildings themselves gives it away; wider street shots hold up better. Try searching adobe houses above a river now.
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