The History of Los Angeles' Country Club Park

Our latest listing, 1201 S St Andrews Place, is located in one of the city’s most interesting and historically rich neighborhoods. Read all about it…

Country Club Park was developed between the 1910s through the 1930s. Although initially segregated, barriers to the community fell after a Supreme Court case struck down racial exclusionary covenants, making Country Club Park one of the first affluent neighborhoods in Los Angeles to allow African Americans to purchase homes. Since then, celebrated and affluent African Americans from professional, judicial, legal, medical, religious, and entertainment fields called Country Club Park their home. Among the music industry icons who once resided here were gospel great Mahalia Jackson, Lou Rawls, Lena Horne, Cindy Birdsong of the Supremes, and Hattie McDaniel, who was also known for her role as Mammy in Gone with the Wind. Religious leader Thomas Kilgore, who helped organize the March on Washington, was also an esteemed and influential force in the Civil Rights movement—made Country Club Park his home, as did Civil Rights leader and Tuskegee Airman Celes King. Only a neighborhood this special could entertain a legal icon like Crispus Wright, who gave USC $2 million to establish a scholarship fund for underserved students, Victor Nickerson, whose family started the first black-owned insurance company, and Ken Jones, LA’s first African American news anchor.

Today, Country Club Park is a vibrant, multi-ethnic community whose residents have preservation in mind. The Country Club Park Neighborhood Association was founded in 1985 and the neighborhood was approved in 2010 as a Historical Preservation Overlay Zone. The neighborhood has since installed gates along Pico, making it a partially gated community.