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From the moment of its inception, Hollywoodland defined the
lifestyle known as "living in the Hollywood Hills." With a steady stream
of publicity, it acquired and retained the adjective "famed." A lot of
this is due to the huge metal sign crowning the tract, the neighborhood
landmark. Originally it read "Hollywoodland," but missing its last four
letters, what started as a real estate promotional stunt has become the
international symbol for the Hollywood film industry. On any day,
tourists stand smack in the middle of Beachwood Drive, having their
pictures taken with it.
It's hard to figure a giant flashing
electric sign as a classy touch, but in the twenties, the developers
attracted the sophisticated and artistic crowd they intended.
"Hollywoodland, one of the show places of the world" is how they saw
their 500 acre subdivision. To their credit, they sensitively laid out
Hollywoodland. A charming small town feeling has presided for close to
seventy years.
The draw of the place? A lot has to do with
location. Longtime resident Irene Wyman remembers these hills and
canyons back to 1915, before Hollywoodland appeared. "It was so lovely
with the oak trees, holly bushes, greasewood, and poppies. Ferns grew
under the trees and by the little stream beds. Up in Ledgewood Canyon,
we found two natural springs with overhanging rocks. We would crawl back
to the small basins where the springs dripped down to pools and drink
the cool water."
For all of us kids growing up here in the
fifties and sixties, the undeveloped area of Hollywoodland opened our
imaginations. We explored the canyons like real frontier, building forts
on unfinished tract roads and mining for quartz in a canyon filled with
rocks spilled over from the grading of Mt. Lee.
Jannette K.
Mathewson, living here as a little girl in 1924, loved the foxes" and
their almost nightly playtime on our porch. The great cowboy artist,
Charles M. Russell, was also enthralled watching them." Coyotes and
cottontails, deer, squirrels, possums, raccoons, lizards, tarantulas
still make their homes with us. Unfortunately, the foxes have
disappeared. According to some natural scientists, the coyotes ate them.
No wild animal living here can escape this area with Mt. Lee and
neighboring Griffith Park now completely surrounded by city and
freeways.
Another draw to Hollywoodland, expressed in the
developer's phrase "freedom of the hills" applies to residents of
Hollywoodland lucky enough to live and work within the canyon. An
artist, writer, or musician can hole up with creative work yet remain
close to the rest of the world. When our father, Dino, moved us here in
the fifties, our neighborhood included painter Edward Biberman who lived
across the street, painting scenes of Southern California and writer
Aldous Huxley who lived and worked down the hill from us. (Mr. Huxley's
long, thoughtful walks at that time often included my four year old
sister.) My grandfather, Alex Williams, had been here since the
beginning of the tract with ownership of the commercial property at the
west gate. At one time or other, every one in the family got to live and
work in the canyon, dispensing with a daily commute. It is a treat.
Undoubtedly,
Hollywoodland's strongest appeal lies in the original homes of the
tract. Part "kitsch," part beauty, they range from a vine-covered
cottage you know houses seven dwarves to Normandy castles fit for
royalty. That the original Hollywoodland homes offer suitable settings
for Hollywood period movies seems appropriate. Most retain an elegant
aesthetic to them, how they are situated on the hillsides, how they
present themselves to us, the spectators. They were laid out by
thoughtful, artistic people who, it seems, wanted to create an
environment of beauty , not tract housing as we know it today.
Much
has changed as new houses have appeared in the neighborhood over the
decades. Architectural restrictions were lifted when the developers
bowed out in the forties and since then, people build houses to suit
their own tastes. Some houses are great, some are awful. When land was
cheap in the sixties, platform homes perched on steel stilts became the
architectural rage. It was an inexpensive way of construction which is
no longer allowed by the Los Angeles building code. The eighties trend
of "mansionization," building large homes that fill their lots, seems
like a half-hearted attempt to recapture some of Hollywoodland's past
glory. As the new houses go up, the spaciousness that marked the
development disappears.
Still a sense of community remains. The
commitment from seventy-five years of homeowners blesses the
neighborhood with its own vitality and character. The future is secure
as people discover charms originally voiced by the developers in 1923.
As Los Angeles congests, the uniqueness of this area becomes more
pronounced, where you can still hear the hooting owl or the howling
coyote, where you can step outside your door and witness a beautiful
sunset.
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