RFK Learning Center's Early Battle for Hearts and Minds

Angelenos' Journey from Resistance to Celebration of Campus not Universal

Los Angeles' New Ambassadors   

Six Schools on a Campus Like  no  Other

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Viewed in-person, this sculpture appears to be a watery ripple over Robert F. Kennedy's  sculptured-bust mural (in bronze), affixed to a marble wall.  The wall displays well known and some lesser known quotes from legendary authors, leaders and artists.

For some, the RFK Learning Center is not a great enough triumph to have justified the demolition of the old Ambassador Hotel, former home of the famed and legendary Cocoanut Grove restaurant and night club, and the place where Robert Kennedy was Assasinated.  

When the word got out that the long-dormant Ambassador Hotel would be mostly razed and replaced by a public school, many local residents and others around the nation and the world were aghast.  


"A Los Angeles Unified School District school campus?  --On the practically hallowed ground of the Ambassador?  No museum?  Not a restoration of the mythical sprawl where not only sat the grand old hotel where the second Kennedy brother was murdered in the middle of an historic presidential campaign, but which was also home to the mother of all nightclubs--the Cocoanut Grove, inside which lay the stage and dance floor where the likes of Harlow and Flynne; Gable and Mae West once waltzed?  Nor even a new Ambassador hotel and night-spot, with some multi-use aspect, themed around the original?   A plain ol' LAUSD school, huh?  Of course we need new schools, but here?  How uninspired.  How disrespectful."


Those may not have been the verbatim words and thoughts of yours truly at the time; but they're close.    


Here's some of what a few other prominent and ordinary people said at the time:  

I am very sad to report that we have fought the good fight, but have lost. Demolition of the Ambassador Hotel will likely begin within the coming months.   

-Roland Wiley, Los Angeles Conservancy

This is a crime.  Schools are great, but this treasure will never be replaced.  The LAUSD is robbing the people of Los Angeles.  

--Mary Hastel, 69, Wilshire District resident

However, there were similar cries from the other side of the issue, including this from Paul Schrade, who the New York Times described as having been both a "close aide" to and standing close to the late attorney general and Democratic presidential candidate when he was assassinated:


“We are under attack,” he said. “There are 400 hits on Google from people who have carried on this nonsense that it’s the Taj Mahal, the most expensive school in history.”  


In the end, however, most have come to change their minds.  Here's what Hastel, now 71, told RoLA recently:  


“The high school and the entire campus are new treasures.  The LAUSD did a good job memoralizing Kennedy and the hotel, including the [Cocoanut] Grove."  

Glitz, Glamour Find Unlikely New Home in the Wilshire District

Los Angeles' New Ambassadors   

Six Schools on a Campus Like  no  Other

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The Architecturally Acclaimed Auditorium at

Ambassador/RFK Campus' Los Angeles High School for the Arts (LAHSA): 

Witness:  A reinterpretation of the aesthetic of  the iconic nightlife venue that helped define what was probably Hollywood's most glamorous period--from the 1920s to the early 1950s, when Harlow, Hughes and Hepburn graced the Ambassador Hotel's own Cocoanut Grove night club.  

One neighbor of RFK Community Schools said the auditorium by itself is the best thing that's happened to youth in this inner-city part of Southern California in decades, and that it shows.  The woman, who lives within visual distance of the RFK campus, says she raised two of her own now grown and "very successful" children in L.A.'s pulbic school system.  She also said, after years of apathy and neglect regarding public schools in Los Angeles, she can now sees students who seem proud of where they go to school.  When walking her dog some mornings, the longtime Wilshire District resident has recently noted a new excitement in the eyes of the students she sees walking to toward the six RFK schools located at the former Ambassador Hotel site.    (Watch for video of RoLA's interview with the neighbor and others with school officials and students--all in coming installmentsot of our special series on the Ambassador/RFK site.  Meantime, here are some interior shots of the schools' auditorium inspired by, and built at the former site of the old Cocoanut Grove.)

Though not all who lamented, and still mourn, the demolition of the Ambassador in 2005 are completely satisfied with the outcome of their failed battle to completely  preserve the property, some concede that the new schools' auditorium (which actually retains much Cocoanut Grove building's construction in its last incarnation before the closure of the Ambassador for good in 1989); succeeds in some measure invoking the spirit of the original Grove.

The faculty-staff-and their-guests-only lounge at RFK Community Schools is a faithfully restored original 1950s diner designed by Paul R. Williams, a pioneering African-American architect whose work (Beverly Wilshire Hotel [major redesign]; Saks Fifth Avenue, Beverly Hills; Chasens Restaurant; Theme building at LAX (the sweeping, swoopy structure at the center of the airport's terminals area);  helped define the classical Los Angeles architecture asthetic. 



   

Ambassador Hotel's Gone, Poignancy of New School's Design Honors Kennedy

Los Angeles' New Ambassadors   

Six Schools on a Campus Like  no  Other

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Reporter Surprised by Own Emotional Response to RFK Tributes at Ambassador (video)

[PART II in a multi-post, multimedia special RoLA Series.]  

We appreciate your patience in viewing video on RoLA in small snippets, which, at the moment, are the most efficient way for us to upload and for you to enjoy, in light of the currently very modest resources available to the blog.  


That said, RoLA expects to augment our capacities before the end of 2011.  If all goes as planned, you'll be visiting a much improved site in terms of content and format.  And, as a current consumer of information on Republic Of L.A., you can expect to receive special access to enhanced content on the new RoLA, as well as to some pretty cool events planned for election year, 2012.  


In the meantime, here are the first two videos in this special series about RFK Community Schools.  We've begun the series at the Robert F. Kennedy Inspiration Park and its memorial to the late brother also-assasinated John F. Kennedy.  BTW, It's okay to snicker at how strangely and unexpectedly emotional my visit there was:  

In the next video installment of this special Republic of L.A. series about RFK Learning Center at the Ambassador Campus, hear what muralized quotes were borrowed from Rosa Parks and George Bernard Shaw for the Ambassador site.