For the final blog post for 2025, I thought it would be fitting to feature a brief, but historically significant, newspaper article describing the dedication festivities for the newly constructed building that housed the former Cooperative Center, which opened 100 years ago this year, at 2708 Brooklyn Avenue in Boyle Heights.
Established by local Yiddish Communists, the two-story building (a third floor was added a short time later) served as a multi-purpose center for the Eastside’s militant labor unionists and political leftists. This event took place at a time when the Eastside’s working-class, predominantly Russian-born Jewish residents started to earnestly establish their roots in Boyle Heights during the 1920s. For example, while the Cooperative Center, and later the Vladeck Center on St. Louis Street, were the hub for the area’s secular, or non-religious Jews, the historic, 1923-built Congregation Talmud Torah, or the Breed Street Shul (“the Queen of the Shuls”), located only a few blocks away, served as the religious and cultural center.
After opening in early 1925, the Cooperative quickly became one of the city’s most important centers for organizing downtown rallies and protests during the great depression. But this socialist-centered enterprise was also seen, and amplified by the Los Angeles Times, as a threat by the city’s business and political leaders, who were staunch open-shop proponents. The demands by protesters were often centered around wages, labor reforms, government relief for the poor, and the right to engage in free speech and open assembly without hard-charging police harassment. Demands often included the immediate release of prisoners charged under the state’s vaguely defined Criminal Syndicalism Act.
Until the late 1930s, the second-floor ballroom was also a popular venue for hosting crucial fundraising drives (dances and “masquerade balls” were popular events), as well as a must-stop for noted radical speakers on the national lecture circuit. But for most of its history, the building was commonly known as the long-running Paramount Ballroom. This transition started in the mid-1930s when new building owners began hosting live bands and dancing in the upstairs ballroom, with a bar and nightclub downstairs.
For a very brief period in the early 1980s, the ballroom was the location for The Vex, a venue that hosted concerts by punk bands from all over the city, but it also served as an important showcase for Eastside punk bands. It was refurbished several years ago and is now called The Paramount, a popular showcase for alternative music, often featuring cutting-edge, up-and-coming bands.
On February 17, 1925, the Daily Worker, the official national newspaper for the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), published an article on page four under the headline, “Radicals of Los Angeles Make Merry,” describing “Los Angeles labor” as “celebrating the dedication of the newly erected co-operative center.”
Concluding this blog post below is the 1925 Daily Worker article in its entirety, focusing on the dedication festivities for the new Cooperative Center in Boyle Heights.
