Getting to know Westwood

Westwood is a community in western Los Angeles, California, not to be confused with Westwood, California. Westwood is best known as the home of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). The northeastern portions of the district are often thought of as a distinctly different neighborhood, Little Holmby. Westwood was carved from the old Wolfskill Farm, a 3,000-plus-acre tract that was purchased in 1919 by wealthy retailer Arthur Letts. Letts' son-in-law, Harold Janss, was vice president of Janss Investment Co., which developed the area and started advertising new homes in 1922.

Because there is a census-designated place (CDP) in Northern California's Lassen County named Westwood, California, the United States Postal Service has declared that all mail addressed to the Westwood district of Los Angeles must be labeled "Los Angeles, CA" instead of "Westwood, CA".

Geography

Located in the northern central portion of Los Angeles' West Side, Westwood is bordered by Brentwood on the west, Bel-Air on the north, Century City and Beverly Hills on the east, West Los Angeles on the southwest, Rancho Park on the southeast. The district's boundaries are generally considered to be Olympic Blvd. (or Pico Blvd. and by some, Santa Monica Blvd.) on the south, the city limits of Beverly Hills on the east, and Sunset Boulevard on the north.

Transportation

Westwood's major thoroughfares include Santa Monica, Sepulveda, Beverly Glen, Wilshire, Westwood, and Sunset Boulevards. The district is served by the San Diego Freeway. Numerous bus lines serve the area, and recently instituted bus rapid transit service runs along Wilshire.

The area's notorious traffic has led to calls for the extension of the Wilshire leg of the Los Angeles Metro's Red Line subway to Westwood from its current endpoint at Western Avenue in Koreatown.

Attractions

A center of movie-going on the Westside and the site of many movie premieres, Westwood is home to several vintage movie theaters, including the Art Deco Crest, the Mann Village (once called the Fox Theatre) and the Mann Bruin.

Westwood is also home to the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery, the last resting place of many of Hollywood's biggest stars including Marilyn Monroe. A museum named for and endowed by activist and philanthropist Armand Hammer, longtime head of Occidental Petroleum (which maintains its headquarters on Wilshire Boulevard), has become one of Los Angeles' trendiest cultural attractions since UCLA assumed its management in the 1990s. The Hammer, as it is commonly known, is particularly notable for its collection of Impressionist art and cutting-edge modern art exhibitions.

Westwood Village
Westwood Village was built by the Janss family and wildly successful from its earliest stages, the Westwood Village shopping district successfully retained its cozy village atmosphere even as the San Diego Freeway came through the area in the 1950s and high-rise office towers went up around it in the following decades. However, much of this construction was planned around the never-built Beverly Hills Freeway; in combination with a severe parking shortage at UCLA, high-density development in Westwood has created some of the worst traffic congestion in Los Angeles.

Recent history
Many local observers contend that Westwood Village's heyday was between the 1960s and the mid-1980s, when some of the streets were so crowded with pedestrians that they were closed to vehicular traffic. The murder of innocent bystander Karen Toshima, during a gun battle between rival gangs on January 30, 1988, gained nationwide notoriety and led to the widespread impression that even affluent Westwood was not immune to the crime wave then ravaging Los Angeles. It would take more than a decade for this perception to fade.

Today, while Westwood is again regarded as one of the safest neighborhoods in the city, its retail sector has been slow to recover in the face of increased competition from Century City, the newly revitalized Culver City, the very popular Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, and mid-city attractions like Park La Brea's The Grove, as well as Downtown Los Angeles which itself is going through a renaissance.

Housing and Demographics
Many of the area's permanent residents are of European and Iranian ancestry and generally affluent, living in high-rise apartment buildings and, in Little Holmby, some of the most luxurious single-family houses in Los Angeles. An NPR report in fact recently put the Iranian population of nearby Beverly Hills as high as 20% of the total population.

Single-family homes tend to be east and southeast of UCLA, particularly in the areas behind the Latter-Day Saints (formerly, the Mormon) Temple. Housing in the portion of the district bounded by Sepulveda, Santa Monica, Westwood, and Wilshire Boulevards is mostly low- or medium-rise apartment buildings catering to upscale young professionals, as well as some UCLA students. Most UCLA students in Westwood, however, live in the hilly area of low-rise apartments between Veteran Avenue and the campus' western boundary.

Because of consistently high demand and the district's proximity to so many Westside attractions and businesses, rental housing in Westwood is very expensive relative to most areas of Los Angeles. For all but the wealthiest UCLA students, living off-campus in a Westwood apartment necessitates sharing a room. As a result, many UCLA students live 5 miles south of campus in Culver City and the Los Angeles districts of Mar Vista and Palms, both in private housing and in large UCLA-owned apartment complexes. Significant numbers of UCLA students also live in the San Fernando Valley, but heavy traffic congestion through the Sepulveda Pass and Beverly Glen can wreak havoc on commutes between the Valley and Westwood. Businesses owned or operated by the Iranian community are clustered along Westwood Blvd., earning it the name 'Little Persia'.

The Wilshire Corridor
The winding 1.1 mile section of Wilshire Boulevard to the east of Westwood Village is dominated by residential high-rises and is variously known as the Wilshire Corridor, the Golden Mile or the Millionaire's Mile. Penthouse homes in the Corridor's high-rise condos routinely sell for amounts in excess of $20 million. Countless celebrities maintain an address on this famous corridor.

Source: Wikipedia

GETTING TO KNOW CENTURY CITY

Century City is a 176-acre neighborhood and business district in Los Angeles' Westside. Outside Downtown Los Angeles, Century City is one of the metropolitan area's most prominent employment centers and its skyscrapers form a distinctive skyline on the Westside. The district was developed on the former backlot of film studio 20th Century Fox, and its first building was opened in 1963. There are two private schools, but no public schools in the neighborhood. Important to the economy is the Westfield Century City shopping center, business towers, and Fox Studios.

Geography

Century City is generally bounded by Santa Monica Boulevard to the north, Moreno Drive and Heath Avenue to the east, Pico Boulevard to the south and Century Park West to the west. Some consider the eastern side of Beverly Glen Boulevard to be the western boundary. Neighboring Century City are Beverly Hills to the east, Cheviot Hills to the south and Westwood to the west.

History

The land of Century City belonged to cowboy actor Tom Mix (1880-1940), who used it as a ranch.It later became a backlot of 20th Century Fox, which still has its headquarters just to the southwest. The area is named for the 20th Century Fox's Century Property.

In 1956, Spyros Skouras (1893-1971), who served as the President of 20th Century Fox from 1942–62, and his nephew-in-law Edmond Herrscher (died 1983), an attorney sometimes known as "the father of Century City", decided to repurpose the land for real estate development. The following year, in 1957, they commissioned a master-plan development from Welton Becket Associates, which was unveiled at a major press event on the "western" backlot later that year.

In 1961, after Fox suffered a string of expensive flops, culminating with the financial strain put on the studio by the very expensive production of Cleopatra, the film studio sold about 180 acres to developer William Zeckendorf and Aluminum Co. of America, also known as Alcoa, for US$300 million.

The new owners conceived Century City as "a city within a city". In 1963, the first building, Gateway West Building, was completed. The next year, in 1964, Minoru Yamasaki designed the 750-room Century Plaza Hotel which opened on June 1, 1966.

Planned Communities

Century City is currently home to nine exclusive, private and/or planned communities:

Century Hill - 280 Low-Rise Condos/Townhomes built in 1980

Century Park East Condominiums - 176 Condos in two Towers built in 1979

Century Towers - 331 Condos in two Hi-Rise Towers built in 1964

Century Woods - 83 Low-Rise Condos/Townhomes built in 1983

The Century - 143 Condos/Townhomes built in 2010

Fairmont Century Plaza - a 19-story 394-room Hotel in addition to 63 private residences under development and set to open soon

Le Parc - 176 Low-Rise French Normandy styled Condos/Townhomes built in 1979

Park Place - 416 Low-Rise Condos/Townhomes in six clusters built in 1988

Two Eleven Elm - 143 Condos comprise the 44-story project behind the Fairmont Century Plaza which opened in 2020

Source: Wikipedia