It’s official: North Long Beach has its first historic district.
The 6000 Block of Walnut Avenue was technically designated a historic neighborhood in 2019 after three years of effort by its residents, but only last Thursday did it receive its official, white street signs.
“It’s awesome. It’s kind of exciting,” said Shelly Hemphill, who’s lived in her 1928 Spanish colonial revival-style home for 19 years. “It’s crazy, that it’s just this block. I went down on the other side of Long Beach this weekend and I’m like, ‘All the streets down here are white!’”
Jeff Rowe, a resident of the block and member of the Nehyam Neighborhood Association, pioneered the effort beginning in 2016.
The process took three years. Surveyors were sent out to assess the properties. Neighbors underwent voluntary emergency preparedness training. Rowe and others went to public meetings to watch their designation move along the bureaucratic pipeline.
“There were certainly times along the way, I thought ‘Holy mackerel, what have we gotten into here,’” Rowe said. “But I did respect the process and the diligence. You’ll never get a place declared a historic district, at least not in Long Beach, that’s not authentic.”
In 2019, the Long Beach City Council gave its final approval of the historic district.
The 19 homes total were surveyed for the distinction—the majority of which were built from 1928 to 1930—of which 14 are primary contributors to the street’s historical status, three are secondary contributors and two homes from the ‘50s which do not contribute.
Only after surveyors came out to the street to sum up the block’s historical chops did Rowe learn the name of the neighborhood’s distinct and unique architectural style: minimalist traditional.
“It was so humbling,” Rowe said.
Though it doesn’t have the ring of “Spanish Colonial Revival” or “storybook,” which the block does include, it carries a history of its own.
Heritage Society member Linda Dragga has spent the last few years compiling the history of each historic district.
“Different neighborhoods arose because of different reasons,” Dragga said. “Maybe because the train started coming, so there was better access to an area […] or because of the oil boom in Signal Hill, there was a huge burst of housing need, or because of the port expansion and the naval presence. So there were different drivers of different neighborhoods being built.”
Popularized during the Great Depression, homes in the minimalist traditional architectural style were mass-produced (they could be built with Federal Housing Administration-insured home loans), according to La Jolla-based firm IS Architecture. During World War II, the simple, economical homes could be built quickly to house wartime factory workers and, later, returning veterans.
The homes are historically associated with the New Deal Era, when government programs increased residential construction and levels of homeownership.
The so-called “Minimum House” met the minimum threshold, in terms of square footage, plan, program and amenities, which would be approved and funded through the FHA, according to a spokesperson from Long Beach Development Services.
“Those houses being built, it was an example of how Long Beach survived the Depression, in better shape than some places, partly because we had oil revenues coming in at that point,” Dragga said.
Through the surveying process, Rowe also learned about the history of his block, including a sinking realization that the neighborhood was subject to redlining—the discriminatory practice of refusing homes to people of color in suburban neighborhoods, thereby forcing them into urban housing projects.
Decades ago, Black people were not allowed to live on the 6000 Block of Walnut.
“That was a difficult kind of historic fact to absorb,” Rowe said. “I was ashamed for weeks, because I thought, ‘What a terrible legacy.’”
But now, Rowe said, it’s a different story. The neighborhood represents a microcosm of North Long Beach, he said. Black residents, white residents, residents from different parts of Latin America, Vietnam and Cambodia are bound together as neighbors (and now, proud residents of a historical block).
“As the process began, I noticed that people started doing more. They painted things on the front or they spiffed up the yard a little bit,” Rowe said. “This sort of put in motion this sense of pride. Now you drive down the street and there are no scruffy fronts.”
Alvin Waldon, who’s lived in his 1928 storybook-style home for two decades, keeps meticulous care of his lawn. He came to Long Beach in 1974 with the Navy and put roots in the City for its impressive educational institutions and “beautiful” beaches.
“Long Beach was so beautiful. It was real California. Beaches open 24/7, the harbor 24/7, free parking, free concerts. It’s like living in Hawaii,” Waldon said. “They said if you can’t live in Hawaii live in Long Beach. That’s what they’d say back in the ‘70s.”
His house, like many others on the block, waves an American flag out front. His bushes are speckled with faux flowers and metal butterflies.
“I’m from a place in Maryland where it’s a tradition to take pride in your house. I bought the house in 2002 and I was just tickled pink,” Waldon said. “And since then it’s been on. I just added some stuff on today. So I’m always tinkering in the yard, in the backyard. I’m very happy to be in Long Beach.”
Rudy Calderon, a resident who lives on the end of the block, noticed the same trend.
“I do feel like people are more proud,” Calderon said. “I think people are taking better care of their houses for sure.”
Calderon, an architect, helped design the graphic on the block’s white street sign, a color reserved for historic districts. After researching the neighborhood’s history, he settled on the logo of the Homeowners Loan Corporation, which existed from 1933 to 1951.
According to Heritage Society member Dragga, the corporation bought problematic loans and offered lower rates to people who were struggling to keep their homes.
“It was a win-win for both the people who were homeowners trying to pay back their mortgages and for the banks, but the problem was there wasn’t equal access,” Dragga said. “It was racial, in that if you weren’t of a certain race, you would probably not be approved.”
Residents have made efforts to respect the checkered history of their neighborhood. In 2019, the neighborhood—formerly known as the Grant Neighborhood—changed its name to the Nehyam Neighborhood.
“It turned out that [the] Tongva, the original [Native American] tribes, were here as far back as 10,000 years ago,” Rowe said. “So we explored naming it after them.”
The group contacted a tribal office in Los Angeles and was put in contact with a tribal elder in Anaheim who was working to create a written form of the Tongva language, which was only verbal.
The neighborhood settled on “neyam,” the Tongva word for friend. They changed it to Nehyam to make sure people would pronounce it correctly, Rowe said, and that name is listed on the street’s historic signage.
“I think Nehyam is fortunate to have a really active leadership that’s really, really oriented toward the community,” Dragga said of the Nehyam Neighborhood. “They celebrate the whole neighborhood, not just that block.”
The task wasn’t easy, Rowe said. Though it only requires majority consent of the block to begin the process, Rowe wanted 100% buy-in from his neighbors before beginning the lengthy process.
“We had several meetings where we pulled everybody together on a lawn, meetings with people who were kind of charged with seeing the process through, and we gradually won over the doubters,” Rowe said.
Soon, they’ll meet on a lawn once again to celebrate their street signs, bright and white, flanking each end of the block.
“Long Beach for so long was considered to stop at Del Amo, right? Not realizing that there’s a full extension even further up,” Cultural Heritage Commissioner Tasha W. Hunter said. “So this was special, because now, look, we have a historic North Long Beach.”
