MacArthur Park's lake sits inside a ring of 1920s apartment buildings, split in two by Wilshire Boulevard. The Alvarado Street market and the Westlake Theatre stand close by.
What Westlake looks like
's lake sits at the center of the neighborhood, split in two by Wilshire Boulevard, with palm trees and a paved path along the near shore. Soccer fields and a playground cover the ground to the north, with the downtown Los Angeles skyline visible past the trees. Canada geese and pigeons graze on the grass beside the water.
Alvarado Street runs along the park's east side as the commercial spine, storefronts packed together under shared awnings with a swap meet and market stalls at street level. The , a 1926 movie palace now run as a swap meet, stands a few blocks south. The sits across Alvarado Street from the park, with a sidewalk vendor market outside its entrance.
Away from the park, small two story dingbat apartment buildings with arched pilasters across the upper floor sit on side streets such as Ocean View Avenue. The , a seven story brick building from 1915, stand at Sixth and Lake streets. Taller apartment buildings from the same years stand nearer the park. The on Eighth Street and a nine story block on Sixth Street, now used for self storage, keep their original rooftop signs and fire escapes.
Shot in Westlake
Buster Keaton used the corner of Seventh and Alvarado for a chase scene in 1921, and two years later Harold Lloyd's stunt double climbed the Dresden Apartments a few blocks east for Safety Last! The park has kept drawing productions since, most recently Lorde's 2017 video for Green Light.
The Goat, 1921
Played the edge of Westlake Park
Buster Keaton flees Joe Roberts past the southeast corner of Seventh and Alvarado, at the edge of the park. A 1923 aerial photograph places the gag on this exact corner. Street View
Safety Last!, 1923
Played the building climbed to escape a policeman
Bill Strother climbs the four story building early in the film, escaping a policeman on the street below. The building survives today at the same address, its facade substantially altered. Street View
Green Light, 2017
Played an unplaced nighttime setting
Lorde's video was shot mostly in the park and on its streets. Director Grant Singer has said he avoided making the location specific, describing it as "a no man's land between downtown and Koreatown." Street View
What Westlake can double for
Humboldt Park in Chicago, Illinois
Humboldt Park's lagoon and its Prairie style boathouse sit inside the same kind of ring of courtyard apartment buildings and greystones as MacArthur Park's lake, in another dense immigrant neighborhood. There are no palm trees on the Chicago side, so a frame that holds the shoreline and the boathouse and crops out the horizon reads more convincingly than a wide establishing shot. Try searching park lagoon and boathouse now.
The Sheridan Plaza Hotel and its Uptown neighbors are the same kind of high rise apartment hotel as the converted storage building and the William Penn Apartments here, both put up in the 1920s with terra cotta and brick fronts. Uptown's buildings run taller and closer together than Westlake's, so a wide shot needs a tighter frame to hide the extra storeys. There are no palm trees to dress out of a winter shot either. Try searching 1920s apartment hotel now.
Little Village's Twenty Sixth Street is a similarly dense corridor of family run shops, bakeries and street vendors to Alvarado Street's, though its storefronts run one and two storeys under flat cornices rather than Alvarado's mix of taller mixed use blocks. A terracotta arch marks the corridor and gives away the location in a wide shot, so tighter frames on the storefronts and street vendors hold the illusion better. Try searching storefronts and street vendors now.
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