Panoramic photograph showing the future site of the Estrada Courts Housing Project in the Boyle Heights area of Los Angeles, and the 125 homes that would soon be razed for its construction.

Toward the end of WWII, Los Angeles was in the midst of a housing shortage due to the rapid growth of wartime industries. Despite a 1941 federal ban on nonessential construction, public housing projects in key defense areas were greenlit (albeit with modified specifications that limited the use of metal). Estrada Courts was one of nine such projects, and originally consisted of 30 buildings, with 214 units set aside for defense housing. Defense workers living in poor conditions received priority placement, followed by low-income families. After the war, there was a continued need for low-income housing, due in part to the influx of servicemen returning to the area as well as farm laborers guaranteed adequate housing through the Bracero Program (a series of laws and diplomatic agreements initiated when the United States signed the Farm Labor Agreement with Mexico). In 1954, architect Paul Robinson Hunter designed an extension of the site in collaboration with landscape architect Fred Barlow, Jr. Because of the large-scale artworks completed there in the 1970s, Estrada Court is considered the birth site of the Chicano Mural Art Movement.

We have located other photographs from the same series, which were commissioned by the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles and taken by Luckhaus Studio, a prominent commercial firm.