Whitley Heights Historic District

About this property

Whitley Heights is a residential neighborhood and historic preservation overlay zone in the Hollywood Hills neighborhood of Central Los Angeles, California. Known as a residential area for actors and other people in the motion-picture industry, it is divided between a hillside single-family district and an apartment area. It is notable for an attempt by its homeowners' group and the city to close off public streets to outside traffic, an effort that was ruled illegal by the courts. The preservation zone is split into two parts by the Hollywood Freeway (U.S. Highway 101) running through the Cahuenga Pass. Streets within the zone's northern part are a one-block portion of Cahuenga Boulevard, Iris Drive, and some of Whitley Avenue; it consists almost exclusively of multi-family apartment buildings. The southern zone, about 80% of the original plot, embraces Fairfield Avenue, Wedgewood Place, Whitley Avenue, Cerritos Place, Hollyhill Terrace, Grace Avenue, Emmet Terrace, Las Palmas Avenue, and Milner Road, and is almost exclusively zoned for single-family homes. It is within walking distance of the Hollywood Bowl, and Hollywood Boulevard is nearby. Hobart J. Whitley bought the hillside area in 1901 and 1903, and hired architect Arthur Barnes to build houses in a Mediterranean style he thought would suit Southern California's climate. Five years later, Whitley Heights was seen as a "magnificent hill of forty acres situated in the very center of Hollywood and overlooking the entire city." On June 30, 1907, a fire kindled by a resident at the foot of the hill swept over the land, which was covered by a heavy growth of wild mustard and barley, and destroyed "many rare and valuable trees and shrubs" Whitley had planted. It threatened a large reservoir owned by the United Hollywood Water Company atop the rise and burned several tons of hay. The fire was quenched the same day by the volunteer Hollywood fire department headed by E. Fossler. As a contemporary account noted, "This hill has been one of the show places of Hollywood for some time. Here. Mr. Whitley intends erecting a handsome home at some future date, and toward this end, he has cultivated and beautified the grounds, laying them out in winding roads and planting a great variety of rare trees and shrubs, some of which were imported from the Hawaiian Islands and Mexico." Whitley had sold some of his land for one dollar to the water company for the reservoir about 1904 and bought it back 16 years later at a cost of $30,000. In 1918, Whitley commissioned architect A.S. Barnes to design Whitley Heights as a Mediterranean village on the steep hillsides above Hollywood Boulevard. Whitley sent Barnes to tour the Mediterranean area to study its architecture and landscaping of Italy's historic hill towns before returning to the Southland, where he designed most of the Whitley Heights houses between 1918 and 1928. The development grew during the 1920s, and it became the first Hollywood celebrity community. The streets in the development were dedicated to public use in 1920 and 1921, and they were improved by the city between 1924 and 1927. Most of them had no sidewalks, with stairways built from level to level to encourage walking.

Location

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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