Westwood, Los Angeles, California
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High-rise buildings line Wilshire Boulevard through the Westwood area |
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Another view of the Westwood skyline |
Westwood is a district 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 eastern portions of the district are often thought of as a distinctly different neighborhood,
Holmby Hills. 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.
Westwood, CA is a
census-designated place (CDP) in Northern California's
Lassen County. The city of Westwood, not the Westwood district of Los Angeles, is officially addressed "
Westwood, California", proven by its assignment of
ZIP code 96137 by the
United States Postal Service, the Westwood district is addressed as Los Angeles, CA 90024. In general, all districts of Los Angeles located south of the San Fernando Valley (with one or two exceptions) are addressed Los Angeles, CA.
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, and
Sawtelle on the south and southwest. The district's boundaries are generally considered to be
Olympic Blvd. (or Pico Blvd. and, by some, Santa Monica Blvd.) on the southeast, the city limits of Beverly Hills on the northeast, and
Sunset Boulevard on the north; its southwestern boundary is the
San Diego Freeway between Santa Monica and
Wilshire boulevards, and Veteran Avenue between Wilshire and Sunset.
Transportation
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The In N Out Burger at the corner of Gayley and Le Conte in Westwood where UCLA students congregate. |
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.
The Metro and
Caltrans have also begun a project to widen the San Diego Freeway between the interchanges with the
Marina Freeway (
CA/SR-90) in
Culver City and the
Ventura Freeway (
U.S. Route 101) in
Sherman Oaks; the project, which will finally add a northbound
carpool lane to the congested route, is not scheduled for completion until 2007 at the earliest.
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. 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
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. Even with the opening of numerous municipal parking structures in the 1990s and 2000s, finding a parking spot in Westwood Village is still a notoriously difficult task. With the proximity of Westwood's towering business area to its shops that line the streets around UCLA, parking and traffic issues dominate local planning debates.
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.
Some residents hold to a conspiracy theory that Westwood's '90s doldrums were a consequence of local developers intentionally depressing local businesses in hopes forcing them to sell out so that they could overtake whole blocks and implement plans for large
mixed use complexes.
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. Recently, it has been notoriously difficult for new stores to stay in business.
Mormon Temple
The
Los Angeles California Temple, the second-largest temple operated by
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is on Santa Monica Boulevard in Westwood. The temple complex also includes a Visitors Center open to the public and the headquarters for the church's missionary efforts in Southern California. The church purchased the land for the temple from
silent film star
Harold Lloyd in 1937, but did not open the temple until 1956.
Many of the area's permanent residents are of European and Persian ancestry and generally affluent, living in high-rise apartment buildings and, in
Holmby Hills, some of the most luxurious single-family houses in Los Angeles. An
NPR report in fact recently put the Persian population of nearby
Beverly Hills as high as 20% of the total population.[
1]
Single-family homes tend to be east and southeast of UCLA, particularly in the areas behind the LDS 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 sobriquet
Little Persia.
2000 Census
As of the census of 2000, it is estimated that there were 47,844 people residing in the Westwood neighborhood. The ethnic or racial makeup was 62.53% non-hispanic White, 2.10% Black or African-American, 0.15% Native American, 23.06% Asian, 0.15% Pacific Islander, 3.19% from other races, and 5.46% from two or more races. 7.13% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.
The median income for a household was $60,752, and for a family was $89,946. The per capita income was $47,428.
The Millionaire's Mile
The winding two-mile section of Wilshire Boulevard to the east of Westwood Village is dominated by residential high-rises, and is variously known as the
Millionaire's Mile, the
Golden Mile or the
Wilshire Corridor.
Penthouse apartments in the corridor's high-rise
condominiums routinely sell for amounts in excess of $20 million. Countless celebrities maintain an address on Wilshire Boulevard in Westwood.
*
Tehrangeles*
Beverly Hills*
A directory of businesses in Westwood Village*
Birds of Westwood - A guide to birds found on and near the UCLA campus
*
Los Angeles Times, Real Estate section, Neighborly Advice column: "[Wilshire Corridor: "Mini-Manhattan, just west of Los Angeles" (14 Nov 2004)]
*
Los Angeles Times, Real Estate section, Neighborly Advice column: "[Westwood: That Westside college town" (7 Sept 2003)]
