The West Adams Heights tract was laid out in 1902. The original neighborhood boundaries were
Washington Boulevard on the north, La Salle Avenue on the east, Adams Boulevard on the south, and Western Avenue on the west. The development had improvements such as: 75-foot-wide boulevards, some of the first contoured streets not to follow the city grid, lots elevated from the sidewalk and ornate street lighting. The entrances on Hobart, Harvard, and Oxford streets, south of Washington Boulevard are marked with stone pillars with the inscription “West Adams Heights.” Many of the neighborhood's early residents were required to sign a restrictive covenant. Amongst requirements such as building a “first-class residence,” of at least two stories, costing no less than two-thousand dollars (at a time when a respectable home could be built for a quarter of that amount, including the land), and built no less than thirty-five feet from the property’s primary boundary,” residents were also prohibited from selling or leasing their property to people of color. By the mid 1930s, most of the restrictions had expired, making space for non-white residents to move into the neighborhood. Between 1938 and 1945, prominent
African-Americans moved to West Adams Heights. Residents included Golden State Mutual Insurance Company president
Norman O. Houston, actress
Hattie McDaniel, civil rights activists John and Vada Sommerville, actress
Louise Beavers, band leader
Johnny Otis, performers
Pearl Bailey and
Ethel Waters. McDaniel’s case would go on to set a precedent that later impacted the 1948 Shelley v. Kramer Supreme Court Ruling which in summary states that “holding that state courts may not enforce racially restrictive covenants.”
Time magazine, in its issue of December 17, 1945, reported: In 1963 the
Santa Monica Freeway cut through West Adams Heights and divided the neighborhood. In 2012, the city named the section south of the freeway "The Sugar Hill Historic District". ==Geography==