Group calls for conserving 13 sites with links to Latino history

Source: NBC News

Sept. 10, 2025, 3:42 PM EDT


For decades, the Silver Platter bar has been a haven for Latino and LGBTQ people in the Los Angeles area, attracting a cross-border clientele looking for a place where they can fully be themselves. Now that haven is at imminent risk of demolition amid plans to develop the site.

“This bar is historic,” owner Margarita Xatruch said about the space, which was built in the 1920s and has been open as a bar since 1963, as well as the subject of a documentary. “Everyone knows it, everyone knows they can come here to celebrate. And it’s very important so that we can continue the Latin legacy we have here,” she added, sitting in one of the red vinyl chairs that decorate the space, which is also famous in the Westlake neighborhood for its neon sign.

Silver Platter is one of 13 sites that the Latinos in Heritage Conservation group is putting forth in a first-of-its-kind list published Tuesday, spotlighting sites of Hispanic heritage it deems worthy of preservation but that are likely to disappear. The list highlights places with a history ranging from centuries back through recent decades.

It includes the Elgin Cemetery in Texas, an early 20th century burial ground for Mexican Americans from when segregation was the norm; the historic Sacred Heart of the Church of Jesus in Ruidosa, Texas, which is made of adobe; the Barrio Chihuahita historic neighborhood in Tucson, Arizona, established in 1848; and Las Barracas in Longmont, Colorado, a former military barracks repurposed to house Mexican migrant farmworkers and a "rare surviving example of agricultural labor housing," according to Latinos in Heritage Conservation.

Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/latino-heritage-sites-conservation-hispanic-history-rcna230179