Where Cypress Park Sits, and Why It Was Settled First
Cypress Park sits in the valley where the Los Angeles River meets the Arroyo Seco, surrounded by hills on three sides: Mount Washington to the northeast, Elysian Park to the southwest, Ernest E. Debs Park to the southeast. The land was part of Rancho San Rafael, granted in 1784, and became the first of the Arroyo Seco communities to subdivide into a residential neighborhood in 1882, according to the neighborhood’s Wikipedia entry.
How big is Cypress Park? Estimates range widely: the Census Bureau’s 2019-2023 American Community Survey 5-year estimate puts it at 5,645, per Point2Homes’ relay of Census data, while the 2000 Census counted 9,764 in the same 0.72-square-mile area. The gap likely traces to different Census products and neighborhood-boundary definitions used by each source, not a real population drop of that size, but no single figure here should be treated as settled.
What a Home Costs Here Right Now
| Metric | Value | Change | Data month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Median sale price | $921,000 | +10.3% YoY | January 2026 |
| Median price per sq ft | $571 | -5.9% YoY | reported alongside the above |
| Median days on market | 100 | up from 57 a year earlier | trailing period to Nov 2025 |
| Properties with major heat exposure | 100% | 21 days above 95°F projected in 30 years, up from 6 this year | current |
All four figures come from Redfin’s Cypress Park housing-market page, which sources its climate figures from First Street. Flood exposure is minor (11% of properties over 30 years) and wildfire exposure is moderate (7%), both from the same page. No independently sourced per-bedroom rental figure exists for this neighborhood specifically; city-wide Los Angeles rent by unit size is not a substitute for a neighborhood number and is not used here as one.
Getting Around: Trains, Buses, Freeways
| Feature | Detail |
|---|---|
| Nearest rail station | Lincoln/Cypress, A Line, opened July 26, 2003 |
| Peak headway | Every 8 minutes, Monday to Friday |
| Midday/weekend headway | Every 10 minutes, 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. |
| Night headway | About every 20 minutes |
| Service span | Roughly 4:30 a.m. to 11:45 p.m. daily |
| Run time to Union Station | About 5 minutes |
| Local bus routes | 81, 90, 94, 182, 251 |
| Freeway access | I-5 (Golden State Fwy), SR-110 (Arroyo Seco Pkwy) |
The headway and station details come from Wikipedia’s Lincoln/Cypress station entry; the Union Station run time from a live A Line schedule. The train ride to Union Station is short; what it doesn’t tell you is peak-hour car time on the 5 or the 110, and no independently sourced figure for that was found within scope, so it isn’t stated here as a number.
How far is Cypress Park from Downtown LA? By rail, about 5 minutes to Union Station from Lincoln/Cypress station. A sourced, dated peak-hour driving time was not available and isn’t estimated here.
Safety: What the City’s Own Reporting Does and Doesn’t Show
The LAPD’s Northeast Community Police Station covers 15 communities as one patrol area, Cypress Park among them, and its public crime-mapping and COMPSTAT reporting is structured at that Area level, not broken into individual neighborhoods. That means a real-estate page’s “above average crime” line for Cypress Park specifically is not something the department’s own published data can currently confirm or deny, since Cypress Park’s numbers are folded into a district that also includes far more affluent Los Feliz and far more industrial stretches of Glassell Park.
Is Cypress Park safe? The LAPD does not publish a Cypress Park-only crime rate; its Northeast Division report covers 15 neighborhoods together. Anyone weighing safety here should use the department’s non-emergency line (877-ASK-LAPD) or its CrimeMapping tool filtered to the immediate address, not a neighborhood-wide adjective from a listing site.
Who Cypress Park Fits, and Who Should Look Elsewhere
- Fits a shorter commute over a lower price: the A Line puts Union Station about 5 minutes away, and the entry price is roughly $270,000 under Highland Park’s.
- Fits someone comfortable doing their own safety research: since neighborhood-level crime data isn’t published, a buyer or renter who will check LAPD’s address-level tools, or walk the specific block at different hours, is better positioned than one relying on a single adjective.
- Reconsider if elementary school quality is a hard requirement in this exact ZIP: GreatSchools rates one nearby LAUSD elementary at 3/10 and another at 9/10, so “the schools here” is not one answer.
- Reconsider if heat exposure matters for daily life: First Street data shows 100% of properties carry a major heat factor, with a projected jump to 21 days a year above 95°F within three decades.
How the Price Compares to Highland Park, Glassell Park, Lincoln Heights, and Eagle Rock
| Neighborhood | Median sale price | YoY change | Data month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cypress Park | $921,000 | +10.3% | January 2026 |
| Lincoln Heights | $844,500 | not separately dated on the source page | May 2026 snapshot |
| Glassell Park | $979,670 | -15.9% | May 2026 |
| Highland Park | $1,190,100 | -1.1% | May 2026 |
| Eagle Rock | $1,395,000 | not separately dated on the source page | May 2026 snapshot |
Figures come from Redfin’s Highland Park page and Redfin’s Glassell Park page. Cypress Park and Lincoln Heights sit closest together in price, both well under Highland Park and Eagle Rock; Glassell Park’s steep year-over-year drop is the single most volatile figure in this set and worth rechecking before treating it as a floor.
What Is Verifiably Changing Here
The one dated, sourced development this search could confirm is civic, not market-rate: Council District 1 broke ground in 2025 on a 16-unit expansion of the Northeast New Beginnings interim housing site, adding to 95 existing modular units on a city-owned lot, with the expansion set to open in summer 2026. The neighborhood also carries its own Community Design Overlay from LA City Planning, a real regulatory layer that affects what can be built here.
A specific, current market-rate apartment or condo project with a permit number was not found within this search’s scope and is not invented here.
A Confirmed Place for a Drink
Footsie’s, a dive bar at 2640 N Figueroa St, has stayed open through 2026 (Yelp lists it updated that June), and Eater LA’s editors were still recommending it in February 2025 as a stop after tacos in the neighborhood. Beyond this one confirmed spot, a current, verified list of two or three additional open restaurants or shops was not established within scope, so none is listed here as fact.
Two LAUSD Elementaries, Two Very Different Records
Aragon Avenue Elementary, at 1118 Aragon Ave, carries a GreatSchools rating of 3 out of 10, with 17% of students proficient in math and 32% in reading. Solano Avenue Elementary, also LAUSD, carries a GreatSchools rating of 9 out of 10, with math and reading proficiency both well above Aragon’s. Both serve the same general Cypress Park area, so how the schools are depends entirely on which one a specific address feeds into.
Is Cypress Park good for families? It depends heavily on which elementary school a specific address feeds into: GreatSchools rates one nearby LAUSD school at 3/10 and another at 9/10. A family should check the exact school assignment for an address before assuming either number applies.
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