Silver Lake is a residential and commercial neighborhood in central 📝Los Angeles, CA, named for the reservoir at its center and known for its modernist hillside architecture and its place in LGBT history.
The neighborhood borders Los Feliz to the northwest, Atwater Village and Elysian Valley to the northeast, Echo Park to the southeast, Westlake to the southwest, and East Hollywood to the west. Its official name is two words; "Silverlake" is a common informal spelling. The Silver Lake Reservoir was built by the Los Angeles Water Department in 1907 and named for water commissioner Herman Silver, who helped secure its approval and funding.
Film arrived early. William Selig opened what may have been the first permanent film studio in Los Angeles in the adjacent Edendale district in 1909, and Walt Disney's first studio stood at the corner of Griffith Park Boulevard and Hyperion Avenue. From the 1930s, modernist architects including Richard Neutra, Rudolph Schindler, John Lautner, and Craig Ellwood built extensively in its hills, leaving one of the densest concentrations of architecturally significant homes in the city.
Silver Lake is also a landmark in LGBT history. Harry Hay lived there when the Mattachine Society began in 1950, and a 1967 police raid on the Black Cat Tavern predated the Stonewall riots by two years.