Lincoln Heights Jail
- Year
- 1931
- City
- Los Angeles, CA
Lincoln Heights Jail is a former jail complex beside the Los Angeles River in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood, built starting in 1927 at a cost of $5 million and opened in 1931. The five-story original building held 625 prisoners and was expanded in the early 1950s to hold 2,800, serving as one of the city's primary jails until it was decommissioned in 1965.
the building
Notable detainees. The jail held Al Capone among its prisoners, along with people arrested during the Zoot Suit Riots and the Watts riots, tying the building to some of the city's most significant civil unrest and criminal history.
Bloody Christmas, 1951. In 1951, LAPD officers beat seven prisoners inside the jail in an unprovoked attack that became known as 'Bloody Christmas,' a scandal that shadowed the department for years afterward.
the style
The jail's original late-1920s building was noted for its Art Deco style, an unusual choice of ornament for a civic detention facility of its era.
significance
Lincoln Heights Jail was designated a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument on November 30, 1993, marking its place in the city's law-enforcement history well after its 1965 decommissioning.
nearby
- Lincoln Heights Branch Library
- Richard Henry Dana Branch
- Mount Pleasant House
- Terminal Annex
- Los Angeles Union Station
- Pico House