Historic West Adams is a Los Angeles, California, residential and commercial area along the route of the Rosa Parks Freeway, paralleling the east-west Adams Boulevard. With variously described boundaries, the area was an exclusive residential district In the late 19th and early 20th centuries for many wealthy and influential people. It underwent a period of deterioration, but many of its stately old buildings have been and are being rehabilitated and preserved. The constituent neighborhoods have a wide range of income levels and lifestyles.
Although there are no official boundaries for Historic West Adams, it is marked by signs on the Interstate 10 Freeway that inform the motorist "Historic West Adams Next Six Exits."
The Automobile Club of Southern California delineates no boundaries for the area, but centers it south of the Rosa Parks Freeway on the West Adams Alternative School, which lies between Seventh and Fourth avenues (west and east) and Adams Boulevard and 25th Street (north and south).
Mapping L.A. project leader Doug Smith of the Los Angeles Times reported that, in response by the public to advance posting of the proposed maps, "Among the bitter rifts we encountered were the competing claims to the name West Adams."
Historical purists would reserve the designation West Adams for the once-upper-crust district of Victorian mansions now falling in the shadow of USC. But residents farther west have appropriated the name for that hard-to-define area between the 10 Freeway and Baldwin Hills. To bolster their case, the area's Neighborhood Empowerment Zone bears that name. The discussion has taken on powerful emotional content in recent years as part of a larger debate over gentrification and changing demographics in that part of the city. We resolved the argument as best we could, using the West Adams label for the region west of Crenshaw Boulevard and including the old mansions east of Vermont Avenue as part of University Park.