Westwood, Los Angeles facts for kids

Kids Encyclopedia Facts

This page is about the neighborhood in the City of Los Angeles. For the community in Lassen County, see Westwood, California.

Quick facts for kids Westwood
Neighborhood of Los Angeles
Top: Westwood Boulevard; Fox Bruin Theater; bottom: Sheats Apartments; Kelton Apartments.
Westwood neighborhood as delineated by the Los Angeles Times. LDS (Mormon) Temple in red.
Westwood Location in Western Los Angeles
Country	United States
State	California
County	Los Angeles
City	Los Angeles
Elevation	338 ft (103 m)
Population (2018)	50,288
	Population of ZIP Code 90024, grossly corresponding to Westwood, American Community Survey, U.S. Census Bureau, 2018
Time zone	UTC−8 (PST)
• Summer (DST)	UTC−7 (PDT)
ZIP Codes	90024, 90025, 90049
Area code(s)	310/424

Late afternoon aerial photograph of Westwood (center), with Century City at the far right and the Santa Monica Mountains and San Fernando Valley in the background

Fox Village Theatre with iconic tower

Bruin Theater

Vincent van Gogh. Hospital at Saint-Rémy, 1889. Oil on canvas. 365⁄16 × 287⁄8 in. (92.2 × 73.4 cm). The Armand Hammer Collection, Gift of the Armand Hammer Foundation. Hammer Museum, Los Angeles.

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Los Angeles Temple, 2004

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
History
- Development
- UCLA
Demographics
Entertainment and cultural facilities
Parks and recreation
Education
Notable residents
See also

Geography

According to the Westwood Neighborhood Council, the Westwood Homeowners Association, and the Los Angeles Times' Mapping L.A. project, Westwood's street and other boundaries are north, Sunset Boulevard; east, Beverly Hills city limits (to include the Los Angeles Country Club); south, Santa Monica Boulevard; and west, the San Diego Freeway (excluding the federal Veterans Administration grounds).

Westwood is flanked on the north by Beverly Crest, on the east by Beverly Hills, on the southeast by Century City, on the south by West Los Angeles, on the west by Veterans Administration and Brentwood and on the northwest by Bel-Air. The southern portion of Holmby Hills is also part of the Westwood district.

History

Development

Westwood was developed on the lands of the historic Wolfskill Ranch, a 3,000-acre (12 km²) parcel that was purchased by Arthur Letts, the successful founder of the Broadway, and Bullock's department stores, in 1919. Upon Arthur Lett's death, his son-in-law, Harold Janss, vice president of Janss Investment Company, inherited the land and developed the area and started advertising for new homes in 1922.

The Los Angeles Times reported the news: "Westwood, the subdivision of the Wolfskill Ranch, 3,300 acres (13 km²) 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, 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 new campus construction. Thus the predecessor of the University of California, Los Angeles, was established in Westwood and opened in 1926.

Demographics

In 2018, about 50,288 people lived in the 90024 ZIP code, which grossly corresponds to Westwood, according to the Census Bureau's American Community Survey. The 2000 U.S. census counted 47,916 residents in the 3.68-square-mile Westwood neighborhood—or 13,036 people per square mile, an average population density for the city. In 2008, the city estimated that the population had increased to 52,041. The median age for residents was 27, considered young for the city; the percentages of residents aged 19 to 34 was among the county's highest.

The neighborhood was considered moderately diverse ethnically, with a high percentage of Asians and of whites. The breakdown was whites, 62.9%; Asians, 23.1%; Latinos, 7.0%; blacks, 2.0%; and others, 4.9%. Iran (23.5%) and Taiwan (7.3%) were the most common places of birth for the 31.3% of the residents who were born abroad—about the same percentage as in the city at large.

The median yearly household income in 2008 dollars was $68,716, a high figure for Los Angeles. The percentages of households that earned $125,000 yearly and higher or that earned $20,000 or less were high for Los Angeles County. The average household size of two people was low for Los Angeles. Renters occupied 64.1% of the housing stock and house-or-apartment owners held 35.9%. The percentages of never-married men and women were among the county's highest. In 2000 there were 309 families headed by single parents, a low percentage for the city. Five percent of the population had served in the military, a low figure for both the city and the county.

Entertainment and cultural facilities

Besides the many facilities of UCLA itself, cultural and entertainment facilities include:

Historic cinemas

The Village has two historic movie theaters Fox Village Theater (opened 1931, architect Percy Parke Lewis and the Bruin Theater (S. Charles Lee, 1937), which hosted many Hollywood premieres over past decades.

Hammer Museum

The Hammer Museum, which is affiliated with UCLA, is an art museum and cultural center known for its artist-centric and progressive array of exhibitions and public programs. Founded in 1990 by the entrepreneur-industrialist Armand Hammer to house his personal art collection, the museum has since expanded its scope to become "the hippest and most culturally relevant institution in town." Particularly important among the museum's critically acclaimed exhibitions are presentations of both historically overlooked and emerging contemporary artists. The Hammer Museum also hosts over 300 programs throughout the year, from lectures, symposia, and readings to concerts and film screenings. As of February 2014, the museum's collections, exhibitions, and programs are completely free to all visitors.

Geffen Playhouse Theater

The Geffen Playhouse Theater was built in 1929 at 10886 LeConte Avenue as the Masonic Affiliates Club, or the MAC, for students and alumni at UCLA. One of the first dozen structures built in Westwood Village, it was designed by architect Stiles O. Clements.

LDS (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 grounds also includes a Visitors' Center open to the public and the headquarters for the Church's missionary efforts in Los Angeles. The church purchased the land for the temple from silent film star Harold Lloyd in 1937, but did not open the temple until 1956.

The temple grounds are also home to the Los Angeles Regional Family History Center (LARFHC), which is open to the public as well. It is the second-largest branch in the Family History Library system of the LDS Church, and contains more than 100,000 microfiche and 30,000 books.

View of Westwood and surrounding areas, 2007
Aerial view of Westwood (center) and vicinity (3D computer generated image)
Hammer Museum, 2007
Westwood Park, 2012

Parks and recreation

The Westwood Recreation Center is in Westwood. The facility includes barbecue pits, a lighted baseball diamond, lighted outdoor basketball courts, racquetball courts, a children's play area, a community room, an indoor gymnasium with weights, and a picnic table. The center also has Aidan's Place, which opened on December 5, 2001. The place, named after wheelchair-bound Aidan James, is a playground developed for joint use by handicapped and non-handicapped children.

Holmby Park is also in Westwood.

Education

Sixty-six percent of Westwood residents aged 25 and older had earned a four-year degree by 2000, a high figure for both the city and the county. The percentages of residents of that age with a master's degree or higher was the third-highest in the county.

Westwood is home to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

The Los Angeles Unified School District operates public schools. Schools in Westwood are

Fairburn Avenue Elementary School, LAUSD, 1403 Fairburn Avenue
Warner Avenue Elementary School, LAUSD, 615 Holmby Avenue
Westwood Charter Elementary School, LAUSD, 2050 Selby Avenue
Sinai Akiba Academy, private elementary, 10400 Wilshire Boulevard
Saint Paul the Apostle, private elementary, 1536 Selby Avenue
Ralph Waldo Emerson Middle School, LAUSD, 1660 Selby Avenue

The zoned senior high school is University High School in West Los Angeles.

UCLA Lab School Corinne A. Seeds Campus, formerly the Corinne A. Seeds University Elementary School and renamed in 2009, is the University of California, Los Angeles laboratory school.