The Eaton Fire was merciless when it came to Altadena's celebrated green spaces, destroying or damaging most of the leafy trees that lined the streets in many neighborhoods. Local advocates are scrambling to restore what was lost and save what's still standing.
Relics of L.A.'s agricultural past, when the city was more renowned as a producer of lima beans than of movie stars, these outposts provide direct links to the days when the region was knit together by a network of dusty bridle paths that have long since been paved to make way for our latest beast of burden, the car.
Boyle Heights was at the core of Jewish life in Los Angeles during the late 1800s and early 1900s, and the Fairfax District could claim that title until the 1980s. But the spiritual heartland of the Jewish community is now in Pico-Robertson.
In its scope, scale and ambition, Panorama City outstripped Greater L.A.'s prewar attempts at creating master-planned neighborhoods. It was the brainchild of Henry Kaiser, a shipbuilder keen to put his formidable industrial might, which had manufactured the famous Liberty cargo ships that transported U.S. goods around the world during World War II, to equally lucrative peacetime uses.
I think it's probably the only one of its kind you'll ever see. Subsidized housing is usually in low-income areas. It would be like bringing Compton and Beverly Hills together in one block.
This dramatic natural formation inspired the name of the town that would grow to fill that isolated valley, which in the early 1900s was 10 rugged miles of axle-breaking country road away from the thronging crowds and bright lights of downtown Los Angeles. Eagle Rock was a farming community at first, but the trolley soon snaked its way up from Los Angeles, with a line that ran along Eagle Rock Boulevard.
Located just upstream from where the Arroyo Seco and Los Angeles River merge, Mount Washington has been home base to a former mayor, a world-famous yogi and the official witch of Los Angeles County. The Arroyo Seco - which, after all, begins near a place called Devil's' Gate - has always been a location known for the offbeat, a neighborhood that was keeping it weird before Portland, Ore., or Austin, Texas, ever was.
I'm proud to live in Canoga Park. What's wrong with it? Perhaps it's not as elegant as Woodland Hills or Sherman Oaks, but I've produced two wonderful children from Canoga Park. The markets have fed my family. The shops have clothed my children. It will always be Canoga Park to me.
The single-story house was last sold in 1988 by Van Halen rock band brothers Eddie and Alex for $450,000. During the eight years the brothers owned the 3,367-square-foot home, purchased in 1980 for $221,000, they produced such hit tunes as the Grammy-nominated "Jump" (you knew where this was heading), "Dreams" and "Love Walks In."
Ganesha Hills is a neighborhood of some 500 homes described by one resident as 'the San Gabriel Valley's best-kept secret.' Named for the elephant-headed Hindu god of good fortune, Ganesha Hills is situated in the rolling hills north of the San Bernardino Freeway (10), just east of the Orange (57) Freeway. The community of single-family homes in a variety of architectural styles set amid chaparral and oaks is in the northwestern section of Pomona bordering La Verne and San Dimas.
Smathers' style is evidenced by high ceilings, terrace balconies and formal areas designed for small and large-scale entertaining. Hedged privacy walls and eucalyptus trees, landscaped grounds feature a brick-lined patio, an outdoor dining room, a swimming pool and formal gardens.
In a widely cited (and likely apocryphal) exchange the bewildered conductor cried, 'But there's nothing here!' Alighting the stopped train, one of the Standard Oil men is said to have replied: 'No, but there will be.' Nothing is precisely what they were looking for. They needed a blank space along the coast on which to build a refinery to complement the company's existing facility nearly 400 miles to the north in Richmond.
Formal groundbreaking for the Ahmanson Ranch project, a town-style development on 2,800 acres in the Simi Hills in southeastern Ventura County, will not take place until 2001. However, the project has already achieved historic status for the size of the private-to-public land transfer it produced and for reviving a design concept that marks a major departure from the car-dependent suburban enclave typical of the postwar era.
Architects including Wallace Neff and Lloyd Wright built in a variety of styles while preserving the essential character of the neighborhood - an upscale charm that survives to this day. Every popular style of the 1920s can be found in Hancock Park, which makes it one of those magical L.A. places where movies that are set around the world can be filmed, all without leaving the 30-mile zone.
Updated for modern living, this remodeled home in Highland Park has stayed true to its 1930s Spanish Revival beginnings. The open living and dining room features a brick fireplace and the original hardwood floors. A courtyard sits off the master bedroom.
Every day I ask myself, how did I go from a successful divorce lawyer to knowing 80 varieties of palm trees? If you had told me four years ago that I would be quitting a 12-year career as a lawyer to install and design gardens, I would have laughed.
In 2021, during the peak of the pandemic housing market that saw L.A. home prices skyrocket, The Times compiled a list of the newest neighborhoods to join the proverbial "million-dollar club," where the typical single-family home value is above $1 million. Five years later, plenty more have made the cut. Whereas the previous group featured trendy L.A. neighborhoods (Echo Park, Highland Park), South L.A. enclaves (Crenshaw, Leimert Park) and slices of the San Fernando Valley (Porter Ranch, Woodland Hills),