LA County wants Los Angeles General Hospital listed as a nationally recognized historic site

Nicknamed “The Great Stone Mother,” the towering Art Deco-style building in Boyle Heights is hard to miss. The Los Angeles General Hospital towers above the 10 and 5 freeways and is a fixture of east L.A.’s skyline. The L.A. County Board of Supervisors wants to keep it that way.

On Tuesday, supervisors voted to begin the application process to list the campus on the National Register of Historic Places.

Officials said the designation could be a game-changer in the county’s efforts to rehabilitate the hospital, which is in the early stages of redevelopment.

“Today is the culmination of nearly a decade of work driven by and in partnership with our community,” L.A. County Supervisor Hilda Solis said. “It ties together several major and critical projects to realize a long-promised dream, the creation of what we call a Healthy Village at the L.A. General Medical Center campus.”

What we know about Health Village

The plan was approved in 2023 to reimagine the general hospital as a community-focused space, called the Health Village. It outlined plans to include affordable housing, medical offices and retail shops, as well as connecting people to health services.

L.A. General Hospital has been mostly shuttered since 2008.

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Luis Sinco

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Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

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The move to apply for historic designation was part of the board’s decision to move into the next planning phase of the project’s master plan, which includes technical and environmental studies, site surveys and outlining possible community benefits.

More on the project

Renovations are in their very early stages, according to county documents.

About $3.3 million was set aside to fund the planning phase approved on Tuesday. The project to convert the 25-acre site is expected to cost nearly $1 billion, and the county has already dedicated $134 million from local, state and federal funding sources. The county will also look to tax credits, public subsidies and private financing to fully fund the project.

The planning phase is expected to wrap up late next year.

The historic designation would mean that as work continues, developers will have to keep the building’s Art Deco character, preserving the iconic cement sculptures at the building’s entrance or the ceiling murals that depict the Greek god of medicine and his sons.

A historic designation would mean the building's character, including its ceiling murals would be preserved.

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Luis Sinco

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Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

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“I've heard clearly from many of my residents that it's important we preserve this institution … and that it absolutely must not be torn down,” Solis said. “Through unique public-private partnership, we have leveraged state and federal dollars to transform this iconic building into up to potentially 700 units of housing.”

It could also allow the county to earn tax credits that would support rehabilitation services.

Great Stone Mother’s history

The hospital was built in 1933 following the Great Depression.

The Los Angeles General Hospital in 1937.

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L.A. Public Library

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In 1978, the hospital was at the center of a civil rights class action lawsuit filed by 10 Mexican American women who said they were forced to undergo sterilization procedures.

The court ruled against the women, saying the sterilizations were the result of language barriers. The case influenced statewide changes to sterilization procedures and providing bilingual information.

Then, in 1994, the Northridge earthquake did significant damage to the building. The hospital has been mostly shuttered since 2008, replaced by a 600-bed hospital that opened the same year.

“This not only addresses our existing needs, but corrects historical actions taken that reduced housing in the community when the last county-built hospital, the new 600-bed medical center, was built over a decade ago,” Solis said.