Westwood, Los Angeles

Westwood is a commercial and residential neighborhood in the northern central portion of the Westside region of Los Angeles, California. It is the home of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Bordering the campus on the south is Westwood Village, a major regional district for shopping, dining, movie theaters, and other entertainment.

Wilshire Boulevard through Westwood is a major corridor of condominium towers, on the eastern end and of Class A office towers, on the western end. Westwood also has residential areas of multifamily and single family housing, including exclusive Holmby Hills. The neighborhood was developed starting in 1919, and UCLA opened in 1929, while Westwood Village was built up starting in 1929 through the 1930s.

Geography

According to the Westwood Neighborhood Council, the Westwood Homeowners Association, and the ''Los Angeles Times'' Mapping L.A. project, Westwood is bounded by:''The Thomas Guide: Los Angeles County,'' 2004, pages 631 and 632

Sub-neighborhoods

Westwood Village is immediately south of the UCLA campus, bounded by LeConte, Gayley, Thornton (between Lindbrook and Wilshire: Glendon) and Wilshire Boulevard. Westwood Village north of Wilshire is an on-street shopping, dining and entertainment district that was planned in the 1920s - the second such district ever to be built in the nation's history. It was planned by Janss and businesses started to open in 1929. It was the Westside's busiest such district through the 1980s.

A portion of Holmby Hills, home to the Playboy Mansion, south of Sunset Blvd., east of both Beverly Glen Bl. and Comstock Av., and west of the L.A. Country Club, is within Westwood. The northern section of Holmby Hills is part of Bel Air. Together, Holmby Hills, Bel Air and Beverly Hills form the " Platinum Triangle" of Los Angeles.H. May Spitz
A grander scale of life left intact
''The Los Angeles Times'', September 5, 2004

North Westwood Village (or North Village) consists mainly of multifamily residential units where many UCLA students live, west of Gayley, north of Weyburn, and east of Veteran aves.

Tehrangeles, also known as "Little Persia", refers to the large number of Persian restaurants, grocery stores, book stores, art galleries, travel agencies, and rug stores along Westwood Boulevard that has served as a cultural hub for the Persian community in Los Angeles since the 1960s.

Climate

Westwood has a Mediterranean climate (Köppen ''Csb'') with dry summers, relatively wet winters, and mild temperatures year-round.

History

Development

Westwood was developed on the lands of the historic Wolfskill Ranch, a parcel that Arthur Letts, the successful founder of the Broadway, and Bullock's department stores, purchased in 1919. Upon Arthur Lett's death, his son-in-law, Harold Janss, vice president of Janss Investment Company, inherited the land. He began to develop the area and started to advertise for new homes in 1922.

The ''Los Angeles Times'' reported the news: "Westwood, the subdivision of the Wolfskill Ranch, of scenic territory between the city and Santa Monica, is to be opened to homeseekers and investors today by the Janss Investment Company. The tract comprises approximately 1000 residential and business lots, situated west of the Los Angeles Country Club on Santa Monica Boulevard and the Rancho Country Club on Pico Boulevard."

UCLA

Meanwhile, the Southern Branch of the University of California had been established on Vermont Avenue in Los Angeles, where enrollment expanded so rapidly that by 1925 the institution had outgrown the site. The selection of a new campus in the Westwood hills was announced on March 21, 1925. The owners of the estate, the Janss brothers, agreed to sell the property for approximately $1 million ($ million in dollars), less than one-third the land's value. Municipal bond measures passed by Los Angeles, Santa Monica, Beverly Hills and Venice provided for that amount. Proposition 10, a state bond measure passed that year, provided $3 million for construction. Thus the University of California at Los Angeles was established in Westwood; ground was broken on September 12, 1927, and the campus opened for regular classes on September 20, 1929.

The nation's second planned suburban shopping district

Westwood Village, a planned, 55-acre suburban shopping district immediately south of the UCLA campus, was only the second such district on this scale ever to be built worldwide, preceded only by Country Club Plaza (1922–23) in Kansas City. It with was created by the Janss Investment Company, run by Harold and Edwin Janss and their father, Peter, in the late 1920s as a shopping district and headquarters of the Janss Company. Its boom was complemented by the boom of UCLA which opened in 1929 and served not only faculty, staff and students but also affluent shoppers from the surrounding upscale single-family-home neighborhoods.

Opening in 1929, the design was considered one of the nation's best-planned and beautifully laid out commercial areas. Harold Janss had hired major architects and instructed them to follow a Mediterranean theme, with clay tile roofs, decorative Spanish tile, paseos, patios and courtyards. Buildings at strategic points, including theaters, used towers to serve as beacons for drivers on Wilshire Boulevard. Janss picked the first slate of businesses and determined their location in the neighborhood; the area opened with 34 businesses, and, despite the Great Depression, had 452 businesses in 1939,Martha Groves
Seeking shoppers in Westwood Village
''Los Angeles Times'', May 6, 2008, Accessed May 6, 2008. including Bullock's (Parkinson & Parkinson), Desmond's ( Percy Parke Lewis) and Sears department stores, and a Ralphs grocery (Stiles Clements