Israeli government requests extension on outpost demolition

Published on June 25, 2012

Israel's government has asked the country's Supreme Court to postpone the demolition of a West Bank outpost for several months.

Boyle Heights JCC

By Tom Tugend
Published on March 9, 2006

Someone has demolished a part of Los Angeles Jewish history and at this point no one in the Jewish community or even the city's building department seems to know who did it and why. The architecturally significant Soto-Michigan Jewish Community Center, the focal point of Jewish social and political community life in Boyle Heights from the early 1930s to the late 1950s, has disappeared under the wrecking ball.

Another Jewish Landmark Faces Demolition

By Idan Ivri
Published on May 12, 2005

Men slowly arrange scattered clothes into a makeshift tent on the front steps of 126 N. St. Louis St. A few windows in the building's powder-blue facade are broken; an old chimney stains a sliver of the north wall black.

Today, the anonymous building is one among thousands that dot the Los Angeles cityscape, but in the 1930s and 1940s, the Vladeck Center was the secular heart of Jewish Boyle Heights. The building was a base for the Workmen's Circle and the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, as well as the founding location of the Jewish Labor Committee (JLC).

The Vladek Center's history was unearthed last year, half a century after most of Los Angeles' Jewish community moved west, when the city began moving forward with plans to demolish the building for an expanded Hollenbeck Police Station. Getting the city to alter course seems a tall order, but the planned demolition has attracted critical attention.