Saint Mary's, Long Beach, CA

Saint Mary's grew up around St. Mary Medical Center on Linden Avenue, a hospital that has served Long Beach for more than a century. Housing in Saint Mary's is older and mostly multifamily. Early 1900s bungalows and courtyard apartments line the side streets, two- and three-story walk-ups fill the blocks between 4th and 10th Streets, and medical offices cluster around the hospital. Homes sit on narrow lots, and a few restored Craftsman houses stand out on the quieter streets near Orange Avenue. The Museum of Latin American Art on Alamitos Avenue is the only museum in the country focused entirely on Latin American and Latino art from the modern era forward, and its sculpture garden faces Gumbiner Park, a small green with a playground and skate area on a former traffic intersection. Black Dog Coffee Roasters on 3rd Street roasts beans tied to the owner's family farm in El Salvador, and Confidential Coffee on 4th plays up its Mexican roots with cajeta and mazapan lattes. On Broadway, long the center of the city's LGBTQ nightlife, bars and small restaurants stay busy late, and the Art Theatre on 4th Street still screens films in a building that first opened in 1924. The tradeoff is noise and parking. Ambulance traffic near the hospital, bar crowds on Broadway and busy 7th Street all add sound, and curb spaces are hard to find in the evening. Walking east on 4th Street from Alamitos Avenue, the neighborhood shifts block by block from hospital offices to taco counters to vintage racks.