What We Do and Why It’s Important
To preserve is to protect, in keeping safe from injury, harm, or destruction. Historic Preservation plays a critical role in helping our historic communities to live on, by maintaining contributing architectural and cultural resources in a way that celebrates our unique history and serves to educate current and future generations. Historic Preservation is a form of civic pride.
For 40 years the Highland Park Heritage Trust has been committed to protecting the cultural and architectural heritage of Highland Park and the Arroyo Seco communities.
History and Accomplishments
Since it’s inception in the early 1980’s, the Highland Park Heritage Trust (HPHT) has gained recognition in both the City of Los Angeles and the State of California as one of the most consistently effective and productive preservation organizations. We are a pro-active and visible community-based nonprofit.
Click here to download our by-laws.
The mission of the Highland Park Heritage Trust is to preserve the heritage of Los Angeles’ Arroyo Seco communities through education, advocacy and preservation projects for the benefit of present and future generations. LA’s Arroyo Seco communities consist of Highland Park, Garvanza, Mt. Washington, Hermon, Montecito Heights and Cypress Park. We hold monthly general meetings on the second Monday of each month – see our calendar for dates, time and location!
HPHT’s community outreach and education is accomplished through walking tours, awards programs, special events and printed materials, such as our newsletter and brochures. We created a preservation project fund in 1998 called “Operation Save” after assisting in the moving and rehabilitation of two historic homes, which are Contribution Structures to the Highland Park Historic Preservation Overlay Zone (HPOZ).
Originally founded as an offshoot of an ad hoc committee of a City-funded Improvement Association, HPHT became a legal non-profit in 1982, just two years after its inception. In consort with the community, local organizations and elected officials, HPHT was instrumental in working to establish the Highland Park-Garvanza HPOZ. It is the largest historic district in the City of Los Angeles with over 2,500 Contributing Structures and the first HPOZ to include both residential and commercial properties. Since 1983, HPHT has successfully nominated over 50 Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monuments, in part making the Northeast Los Angeles area the steward of a large percentage of all historic resources listed in Los Angeles.