Why Olive Avenue matters.
Olive Avenue is a foundational corridor where Burbank's media-city character meets the original town center, early street railway history and a diagonal route climbing from the Los Angeles River basin toward the Verdugo foothills.
Running through Burbank between Toluca Lake and the Verdugo foothills, the metropolitan corridor follows a long diagonal line from the Warner Bros. studio district through Downtown Burbank before ascending toward Sunset Canyon Drive. Western stretches cross a low basin of studio properties, office buildings and residential blocks before the roadway passes beneath the Ventura Freeway and approaches the historic commercial center around San Fernando Boulevard. Traveling northeast carries the avenue across the railroad corridor and into rising terrain, where civic buildings, older houses and mature street trees replace the larger parcels farther west. The grade becomes increasingly apparent beyond Glenoaks Boulevard as the roadway climbs toward hillside neighborhoods beneath the Verdugo Mountains, preserving the topographic challenge that shaped transportation along the avenue during Burbank's earliest years. The result is a corridor whose diagonal alignment, pronounced elevation change, shifting development scale and passage between studio district, downtown core and foothill neighborhoods make Burbank's physical geography unusually legible.
What defines Olive Avenue.
Olive Avenue is best known for functioning as the main street of Burbank from the town's founding and carrying its first local street railway across terrain that demanded an unusual solution to the steep eastern grade. David Burbank sold 9,000 acres of his Rancho Providencia and Rancho San Rafael holdings to the Providencia Land, Water and Development Company in 1886, and the company platted the new town the following year. Contractor W. B. Andrews laid out and graded its streets in April 1887 with 120 Chinese laborers and 200 mules, creating roadways ranging from 60 to 100 feet wide. Engineer and geologist Frederick C. Finkle simultaneously developed the early water system and two reservoirs along elevated portions of the settlement. Olive became the town's principal street and received a 1.5-mile horse-drawn railway running between the Southern Pacific line and 8th Street, now Kenneth Road. The slope made ordinary traction inadequate on the climb, requiring eight horses to pull the car uphill. David Burbank and his son-in-law John W. Griffin also built the three-story Queen Anne Burbank Villa beside Olive during 1887, placing a $30,000 hotel beside the transportation spine of a town created during Southern California's great land boom.
Rail transportation returned to Olive Avenue in a more consequential form after Burbank incorporated in 1911. Pacific Electric extended its Red Car service into the city on September 6 of that year, connecting Burbank with Los Angeles and prompting local boosters to advertise the community as 45 minutes from Broadway; service continued until 1956. Another transportation technology then reshaped the avenue's western reaches through motion pictures. First National Pictures developed a large studio property along Olive in 1926 on former Rancho Providencia land, completing an early complex containing office buildings and four tall sound-stage structures with ample acreage for later expansion. Warner Bros. acquired a controlling interest in First National during 1928 as synchronized sound was overturning film production, and the Burbank property expanded into the company's principal production center during the following decade. A December 1934 fire destroyed 15 acres of the lot, accelerating Warner's movement away from its older Sunset Boulevard property, and the Burbank studio became the company's headquarters by 1937. Olive Avenue had moved through three distinct transportation eras within half a century, beginning as the axis of an 1887 horse railway, joining the Pacific Electric network in 1911 and becoming the frontage of a studio complex built for an industry increasingly dependent on controlled sound-stage production.
How Olive Avenue fits.
Olive Avenue works as the anchor for an outing connecting Burbank's surviving 1887 domestic architecture, a civic headquarters built during the wartime industrial boom and a hillside amphitheater created during the city's postwar expansion.
Begin at Gordon R. Howard Museum, where the Burbank Historical Society maintains a 20,000-square-foot collection alongside the Mentzer House, among the scarce surviving residences from the town's founding year. Mary Jane Strickland organized the Burbank Historical Society in 1973 after pursuing the history of her father's service as police chief, and Gordon R. Howard subsequently became the benefactor whose name marks the principal museum building. The adjoining Mentzer House was built in 1887 by the Providencia Land, Water and Development Company as one of a planned group of 30 houses, only six of which have confirmed completion. Its redwood construction combines Eastlake form with Queen Anne ornament, and its original sale price stood near $500. The house moved from the Palm Avenue and 6th Street area to East Orange Grove 1920, then reached its present Olive Avenue site in 1977 after the city transferred it to the historical society; that final relocation cost $10,000. Continue to Burbank City Hall, conceived after municipal leaders selected vacant land on the west side of Olive between 3rd Street and San Fernando Boulevard in 1940. Architects William Allen and George Lutzi received the commission, muralist Hugo Ballin created paintings for the foyer and council chambers and federal assistance supplied $9,234 toward labor. The $400,000 building was dedicated on February 12, 1943, during the period when wartime aircraft production was driving explosive growth across Burbank. Lockheed and its Vega subsidiary held orders exceeding $340 million by the winter of 1941 and employed 44,839 people the following year, giving the civic project an extraordinary industrial backdrop. An annex followed in 1964, later restoration returned Ballin's murals and principal interior spaces to prominence, and City Hall entered the National Register of Historic Places in 1996. Conclude at Starlight Bowl, the outdoor amphitheater that opened in 1951 with an original capacity of 2,500, extending Burbank's civic building campaign into the Verdugo foothills. Its hillside location converted the elevated terrain above the city into a dedicated performance setting during the same postwar period that brought rapid residential growth and institutional expansion across Burbank. The venue later entered a new planning phase when the city began studying long-term improvements in 2011, selected Lehrer Architects for a feasibility study in 2013 and returned to design work after renewed interest in outdoor performance spaces during 2021. The progression moves from an 1887 house surviving the town's founding campaign through a wartime civic headquarters built amid Burbank's aircraft boom and culminates in a postwar amphitheater occupying the foothills above the city, tracing successive periods in which Burbank converted growth into enduring architecture and public institutions.
Where your story begins.
Foresyte Travel reveals places that feel extraordinary long before you arrive.
Enjoy editorial crafted for luxury travelers.
Foresyte may earn a commission when you book.
