COUNTRY  CLUB  PARK  COMMEMORATES  ITS HISTORY  AND DIVERSITY

By Holly Eubanks

Just a scant two miles south of Larchmont Village, tucked away amid its graceful cedar trees and sweeping lawns, lies historic Country Club Park.  Association President Edmon Rodman describes the community as being “like an island.  The area is surrounded by four major commercial streets.  Even so, Country Club Park has a unique history, identity, personality, and charm that is the result of its ethnic and economic diversity.”  Inside its borders are distinctive estate homes and Craftsmans, cottages and bungalows, and multi-family units that reflect the time period when the area was developed.

To commemorate the community’s centennial, Country Club Park Neighborhood Association hosted its first-time-ever outdoor street festival in August of 2006.  Event planning chairperson Virginia Longmuir spoke enthusiastically about “Saturday in the Park:”  “This fun-filled occasion took place right in the heart of Country Club Park, and was an opportunity to celebrate with our neighbors, business owners and friends of the community.”  

For the most part, Country Club Park was developed between the 1910’s through the 1930’s.  Although initially segregated, barriers to the community fell as celebrated and affluent African Americans from professional, judicial, legal, medical, religious, and entertainment fields discovered the area.  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—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.  Legal icon Crispus Wright, who endowed his law school at USC with 2 million dollars to establish a scholarship fund, was a neighbor, as was Victor Nickerson, whose family founded the first black-owned insurance company.  

Other Country Club Park notables include restaurateur Alex Perino, celebrated for his Wilshire Boulevard hot spot for Hollywood celebs of the ‘30’s through the ‘50’s, “Memory Professor” Arthur Bornstein, founder of the highly successful school of Memory Training, and Borden Milk Company executive Isaac Milbank.

Today, Country Club Park is a vibrant multi-ethnic community whose residents have preservation in mind.  The neighborhood was approved in 2002 for Historical Preservation Overlay Zone, and is moving forward with the historical designation process.