Issue
Los Angeles Women’s Landmarks Project
The National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Where Women Made History initiative and the L.A. Conservancy are working to address the significant underrepresentation of women and their contributions to Los Angeles landmarks.
In 2024, the Los Angeles Conservancy, together with the Where Women Made History initiative of the National Trust for Historic Places, launched the Los Angeles Women’s Landmarks project. This ambitious, multi-year effort addresses the inherent biases that have historically skewed the landmark designation process.
Of the 1,300 places in Los Angeles designated as Historic-Cultural Monuments, only about two percent represent women’s history.
Working with the L.A. City Office of Historic Resources, the University of Southern California, and many others, the project makes Los Angeles a laboratory to create a new national model for a more gender-equitable historic designation process, looking at both the existing HCMs to add diverse women’s history that was omitted, as well as sites of women’s achievement that should be designated as new HCMs.
The project will also generate new public-facing interpretive and student educational programs that communicate the critical role that women have played in shaping Los Angeles.
In the summer of 2024, the Conservancy took a major step forward. Thanks to a grant from the National Trust’s Where Women Made History initiative, we were thrilled to welcome Arabella Delgado, an intern from USC, who studied forty-three Historic-Cultural Monuments (HCMs) in Los Angeles. Her goal? To understand how HCM sites represent women’s heritage and to find ways to better acknowledge women’s contributions to the city’s history.
In 2025, a team of graduate students from the USC School of Heritage Conservation reviewed 40 Historic-Cultural Monument nominations with a more detailed review of 11 to see how those applications could be amended as part of an effort to draft a new HCM ordinance for the City.
Photo credits: “Sisterhood is Beautiful.” Alcoholism Center for Women, circa 1974. Courtesy Carolyn Weathers private collection; The Woman’s Building, 2017. Source: Laura Dominguez/L.A. Conservancy, Sumi (Sakai) Kozawa at Tokio Florist, February 14, 1999. Photo courtesy of Giovanni Jance. International Institute, Los Angeles Times, August 1, 1937; Marilyn Monroe Residence, Photo by Mercer/Vine.
WATCH & READ MORE
We’re telling the FULL story of landmarks around Los Angeles. Check out videos and articles on the L.A. Women’s Landmarks Project to learn more about this new initiative.
How You Can Help
Make a tax-deductible donation today and join us in recognizing and preserving women’s heritage in Los Angeles and beyond. The Los Angeles Women’s Landmarks project is creating a new model for gender equitable designation that can be replicated throughout the country.
Your gift today will make a big difference in ensuring women’s history gets the recognition and respect it deserves.
Want to offer significant support that can help for years to come? Consider a multi-year transformative gift to the Los Angeles Women’s Landmarks Project. For more information, contact director of development Liz Leshin at lleshin@laconservancy.org.
