*** For the purposes of this post, I will reflecting on the difficulty of thick mapping a location when there are so many layers but not enough documentation***
I first heard of Linda Vista Community Hospital when I was researching haunted hospitals and asylums in the L.A. area in hopes that I could somehow connect a location with Chicana/o Latina/o history and incorporate it into my dissertation.
Linda Vista Community Hospital is located uphill at 610 S. St. Louis St, in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of East Los Angeles. It opened its doors in 1905 as the Santa Fe Coast Lines Hospital with the intention to serve and treat Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway employees who got injured on the job. The original building (Moorish style architecture) was designed by Charles Whittlesey but was later rebuilt (Mission Revival Style) in 1924.
I first heard of Linda Vista Community Hospital when I was researching haunted hospitals and asylums in the L.A. area in hopes that I could somehow connect a location with Chicana/o Latina/o history and incorporate it into my dissertation.
Linda Vista Community Hospital is located uphill at 610 S. St. Louis St, in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of East Los Angeles. It opened its doors in 1905 as the Santa Fe Coast Lines Hospital with the intention to serve and treat Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway employees who got injured on the job. The original building (Moorish style architecture) was designed by Charles Whittlesey but was later rebuilt (Mission Revival Style) in 1924.
Much of the “history” about the hospital is provided by non-scholarly sites. For example, the hospital’s Wikipedia page only lists 6 references. A search for Linda Vista Community Hospital on Google results in many links to people’s own personal websites –not quite offering the “fact checking” or “validity” often associated with preliminary research. However, the multiple sources of information serves what scholars Presner, Shepard, and Kawano have called “thick mapping”. This means that locations are given “thick descriptions [that] emphasize context and meaning-making through a combination of micro and macro analyses that foster a multiplicity of interpretations rather than simply reporting facts or considering maps as somehow given, objective, or complete” ( 19). While there isn’t technically a map of Linda Vista as a structure available online, the fact that the location has been used in many cultural productions has created a countermap and counternarrative of what the original hospital intended to be.
The personal websites that appear on the Google search results are associated with paranormal fans. They recount their own experiences in visiting the hospital (which, unfortunately can no longer be done) and the sights they saw and energies they felt. Moreover, different locations of the hospital have been modified for film, tv, and music video shoots that it’s hard to tell what was “originally” there and what is a prop. How does this then influence the thick mapping? How can the additives be documented, if at all? Who will remember what was there and what wasn’t? There are literally so many layers to Linda Vista Community Hospital.
The personal websites that appear on the Google search results are associated with paranormal fans. They recount their own experiences in visiting the hospital (which, unfortunately can no longer be done) and the sights they saw and energies they felt. Moreover, different locations of the hospital have been modified for film, tv, and music video shoots that it’s hard to tell what was “originally” there and what is a prop. How does this then influence the thick mapping? How can the additives be documented, if at all? Who will remember what was there and what wasn’t? There are literally so many layers to Linda Vista Community Hospital.
When I visited about three weeks ago, the hospital was fenced off and a construction crew was there doing some renovations since the hospital will be converted to affordable housing for individuals 55 years old and over. I asked one of the construction workers who seemed to be in charge if I could at least go up to the building to take a picture but he said it wasn’t allowed. Instead, he offered to take a picture of the outside for me. The small billboard in front of the hospital does not say when the project will be completed but I left wondering what new layers of stories will be added by the location’s new residents. Regardless of the stories, the real and fantasy horrors those walls have witnessed and housed, Linda Vista seems to have served the purpose of holding society’s unwanted: injured railway workers, gang members, and now, senior citizens.
Here are two different music videos that were shot at Linda Vista. The first is Garbage’s “Bleed Like Me” which definitely has a medical noir aesthetic going in. The second is Steve Aoki’s “Singularity” video that was mostly shot in what appears to be the hospital’s boiler room. The video has cyborg elements to it as well. While both videos were technically shot in the same structure, the depict it differently. It is also important to point out that neither one actually makes an explicit acknowledgment of the actual hospital or the low-income neighborhood that surrounds it. How, then, do these two pieces of cultural productions from outsiders add to the thick mapping and what do they omit simultaneously?
Here are two different music videos that were shot at Linda Vista. The first is Garbage’s “Bleed Like Me” which definitely has a medical noir aesthetic going in. The second is Steve Aoki’s “Singularity” video that was mostly shot in what appears to be the hospital’s boiler room. The video has cyborg elements to it as well. While both videos were technically shot in the same structure, the depict it differently. It is also important to point out that neither one actually makes an explicit acknowledgment of the actual hospital or the low-income neighborhood that surrounds it. How, then, do these two pieces of cultural productions from outsiders add to the thick mapping and what do they omit simultaneously?