Whitewashed Adobe: The Rise of Los Angeles

From 1850 to 1950, El pueblo de la Reina de Los Angeles was transformed from a small frontier outpost in the distant Mexican territory of Alta California into a sprawling and storied American city called Los Angeles – its economic and cultural influence extending across the nation and the world. How did this remarkable achievement happen? What were the unique circumstances that provided Los Angeles with a way to greatness, and the remarkable and diverse people who envisioned and built this urban phenomenon? Whitewashed Adobe: The Rise of Los Angeles – a four-part television series and multi-platform project seeks to answer these questions…

Astonishingly, the saga of how Los Angeles rapidly ascended has never received a comprehensive treatment in television and digital media… until now. In four one-hour television documentary episodes and companion multi-platform project, Whitewashed Adobe: The Rise of Los Angeles tells the compelling story of the remarkable and often painful transformation of Los Angeles through an innovative multi-ethnic and multi-racial prism. It reveals a city that from its Native American, Spanish and Mexican beginnings and throughout the takeover by Anglo Americans was racially and ethnically diverse, and its people creative and determined. Where despite continuing segregation, discrimination, ethnic tensions and even sometimes violence, Los Angeles’ predominant Anglos and its Mexican and other minorities found ways to collaborate and fashion one of the most magnetic and important cities of the world.