Photo by Martha Benedict
Martha Benedict, who snapped the above photo, was curious about the history of the large Mediterranean-style building on the 2600 block of Griffin Avenue that currently serves as the Lincoln Heights home of the Los Angeles Leadership Academy. “I met a woman in Echo Park who told me it was once a refuge for wayward girls,” said Benedict. “She knew that because she was one of them and stayed there until her child was born some time in the 1960s.”
In fact, the Griffin Avenue compound once known as the Booth Maternity Group Home for Unwed Mothers served as a refuge for teenage and unwed mothers more than 90 years.
The group home started after a “wealthy benefactor” donated a house to the Salvation Army for “fallen women,” according to the Booth Memorial Center Facebook page. The Booth Memorial Center, as it was later known, underwent a major expansion in the 1960s that allowed it to shelter 150 pregnant teens and their babies, according to the L.A. Times. In addition to housing, the center also included a small maternity hospital and school. But as government funding dried up and more pregnant teens ended up in foster homes, the Salvation Army was forced to close the home in early 1993.
Photo by Martha Benedict
Why were only the women considered “fallen”? What were the men considered? Glad we still have some beautiful buildings from those days….and not the same outdated ideals (for the most part anyway).
It’s a nice old building. I drive by it each morning. The kids do recreation on a stilt court that hangs over the hill just above. Well fenced in, but if you loose a ball, it’s gone I imagine.
There’s a fenced in parking lot below the basketball court and they have put in another fence below the school farm so I can’t imagine it’s that bad. Unless it lands on the roof, lol.
Everyone in Lincoln Heights knows the history of that building. Kids always said “that’s where the bad girls go.”
The girls, actually, used to go for walks in groups with their babies in strollers all the time.
This is actually a charter school now. Also, it wasn’t always Mediterranean style. It used to be a beautiful, all red brick building. I’ve looked for pictures forever, but can’t find any. I live on the same block as this building, and can verify, this used to be a bad girls home. “Unwed mothers” is a nice way to put it, but we used to get gang members, suicide cases, and lots of runaways, girls getting picked up by their boyfriends while trying to sneak out/escape.
It was really crazy growing up with that thing on my block. Too bad they stucco’d it. It used to be look really cool.
Wow. Just wow. All these coments about a building I knew nothing about. Makes me wish I knew all these folks. Great neighborhood.
I started the Facebook page after I discovered last Christmas that I was born there. I had tracked down my birthmother in 2010 but learned the name and location after some Googling. I visited in January, was given an impromptu tour by the pastor of the chapel on the site, took pictures, and started the page to share them with my birthmom (who recognized her room and where she was when her water broke). Next thing I know women start finding the site and posting they were residents there and gave birth, then others posted they had been born there. Since many adoptions prior to the 80s were closed, my hope is that mothers and their birth children might find each other at the site.
I was in this home when I was 17 back in 1975, the neighborhood was so pretty and yes, we did take our babies and go for walks. We had curfew and had to be in the building by 7:00 if I remember correctly. Also, I was not a “fallen women” just a messed up kid from a messed up home….
I was at Booth Memorial 2670 Griffin Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90031 in 1973, my cousin was at Florence Crittenton Home which was less then a mile away at 234 E Ave 33, Los Angeles, CA 90031 … Sorry to say this picture is not of Booth Memorial but of the Florence Crittenton Home. I walked from Booth Memorial to the Florence Crittenton Home to visit my cousin. Booth, Ctrittenton and St. Annie’s were all a help to girls in need, back in those days!
These photos are of the Florence Crittenton Center, not Boothe. Both are within walking distance of one another and housed pregnant and parenting teens. I worked at Florence Crittenton Center for three years in the early nineties.
I was born at Booth memorial in the ’60s and my mum kept me and she is definately not wayward , only fallen on hard times when she was pregnant and couldnt afford medical. She praises the Salvation army x
I was born at the Booth Memorial Home in 1956…My mother was not wayward…she made a mistake and got pregnant…are there any other adults out there born same place, same year?