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The concrete statue stood sentinel over the lake in Echo Park from the depths of the Depression through the ravaging rise of street gangs.
By the time the 14-foot woman was taken down in 1986, she was cracked and marred by graffiti, her fingers were broken and her upraised hands seemed more fitting to a stick-up than to her mythical vigil over one of the oldest communities in Los Angeles.
Now, the Lady of the Lake is back.
After a three-year campaign by preservationists, the city has taken her out of a maintenance yard, fixed her hands and coated her with an anti-graffiti sealant. The Art Deco statue, originally called La Reina de Los Angeles, will be officially unveiled today at 5 p.m.
"It reminds us of how the neighborhood used to be," said Marsha Perloff, a co-founder of the Echo Park Historical Society.
To Perloff and many others, the statue is a sign of renewal, both a cause to look back and to celebrate new improvements in an area known for its clapboard flats and teetering hillside bungalows.
Crime is down, the streets are cleaner and more professionals are moving into the area to take advantage of low housing prices and a central location just north of the downtown skyscrapers, between Silver Lake and Chavez Ravine.
But although Echo Park is clearly changing, most say it is staying true to a live-and-let-live spirit that has been at its core since it began growing out of the arroyos and vineyards last century. Once called Red Gulch for its communist sympathies, the area has been a haven for artists, immigrants and blacklisted filmmakers.
It grew organically, without a plan, rambling up hills so steep that the city built stairways in some places...