Inglewood's Architecture & Historic Sites
The story of Inglewood begins with the Centinela Springs located in Edward Vincent, Jr. Park. The naturally occurring water was what enabled the area to become an agricultural area specializing in barley, then eggs, and even chinchillas. One of the few original farmhouses is the Centinela Adobe which now houses a large collection of historical artifacts and a museum run by the Centinela Valley Historical Society.
From a historical perspective, the Inglewood Cemetery casts a wide net as 400,000 people are buried there, many originally from Inglewood, many from the LA Basin.
The single family house is often considered the iconic building type in Los Angeles. The City has been on the forefront of cutting edge house design since the turn of the century when Frank Lloyd Wright headed west to design the Hollyhock House. Rudolph Schindler came to LA from Vienna, initially to work with Wright. He built many houses throughout the city including three in Inglewood which though small, reflect some of the ideas percolating in the architectural community: the relationship between inside and outside, small spaces with low ceilings, total design by architects, simple materials such as plywood. One of the houses was renovated by Steven Ehrlich, a Culver City Architect whose firm won the AIA National Firm Award in 2015.
Another architect who built some of his major works in Los Angeles in Inglewood was Charles Luckman. He had an extraordinary impact on the city as the designer of the Forum which was just renovated and reopened in 2014 and the Civic Center.
Other architects of note who have designed innovative buildings in Inglewood include S. Charles Lee (Adademy and Fox Theaters), Martin Stern, Jr (Cafetales Restaurant), and Welton Becket (Centinela Valley Community Hospital). Another building, the Animo Leadership High School is slightly outside Inglewood's borders; however its architect Brooks + Scarpa won the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award in Architecture for 2014.