Echo Park
The community of Echo Park was founded by Thomas Kelly, a carriage maker turned real estate developer. Legend says that the lake got its name after workers building the reservoir remarked that their voices echoed off the canyon walls.
Since its earliest days, the neighborhood has been known to attract the creative, underground, independent, and iconoclastic elements of society. The area became largely Latino after the war, although there have been Latinos living there since the founding of the city in the late 1700s. Many working-class Chinese immigrants also settled in Echo Park due to its proximity to Chinatown, and the area overlaps the Little Manila district of Los Angeles, home to thousands of Filipinos; a small enclave of African-Americans has existed there, east of Alvarado St. and west of Bonnie Brae Street, since the 1920s. Since the early 2000s, artists, actors, musicians and gay couples of all races have flocked the neighborhood for its relatively affordable housing and alternative feel, making it one of the most diversified communties in the United States.
Local attractions include the eponymous Echo Park, and its small lake which at one time was said to contain the largest planting of lotuses outside Asia.
Source: wikipedia.org
