Boyle Heights has long been shaped by movement, aspiration, and openness. In the late 19th century, the area east of the Los Angeles River was known as Brooklyn Heights, a name in use as early as 1877 that reflected both its elevated geography and the ambitions of a rapidly growing city.

Brooklyn Avenue, today’s Cesar Chavez Avenue, served as the neighborhood’s primary spine, linking the Eastside to downtown and establishing Boyle Heights as a gateway community within Los Angeles.

As the city expanded, Boyle Heights became one of Los Angeles’ most ethnically and culturally diverse neighborhoods, shaped by successive waves of immigrants and working families. Jewish residents built businesses and institutions along Brooklyn Avenue, including the original Canter’s Delicatessen, while a large Japanese American community took root prior to World War II, contributing churches, temples, and everyday street life that defined the neighborhood.

Midcentury change brought displacement as Mexican American families were forced from Chávez Ravine during the development of Dodger Stadium. Many resettled in Boyle Heights, deepening its role as a center of Chicano life and reinforcing its identity as a place of arrival and resilience.

Today, synagogues, Buddhist temples, churches, and storefronts remain woven into the neighborhood’s fabric, physical markers of the Latino, Jewish, Japanese, Russian, African American, and other communities that have called Boyle Heights home.

Originally part of the low-lying Paredón Blanco floodplain, the site began as agricultural land supporting nearby rail operations in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Following the channelization of the Los Angeles River in 1938, stabilized land gave rise to more warehouses and distribution facilities that would define the area’s industrial character.

By 1926, a distribution and administration building had taken shape at 4th and Anderson Streets. In the 1950s, John Anderson acquired the exclusive Los Angeles rights to distribute Budweiser and founded Ace Beverage Co, establishing the family’s headquarters on the property for more than six decades.

In 2019, the warehouses were reimagined as Ace ✳ Mission Studios, and in 2025 the site entered its next chapter as Our Campus, a destination for production, events, and large-scale public engagement.