Why you should experience Westwood Boulevard in Los Angeles, California.
Westwood Boulevard is a storied corridor where Westwood's university-centered character meets Mediterranean Revival architecture, Persian cultural life and a commercial spine shaped by Los Angeles's twentieth-century expansion toward the Pacific.
Running through Westwood between UCLA and Palms, the neighborhood corridor follows a long north-south line from the university toward National Boulevard, crossing Wilshire Boulevard, Santa Monica Boulevard and Olympic Boulevard before continuing into the lower-density Westside. Northern blocks pass directly through Westwood Village, where tiled roofs, corner towers, arcaded façades and closely spaced storefronts preserve the architectural scale established around UCLA during the late 1920s. Traveling south across Wilshire brings taller offices into the streetscape before the boulevard settles into a narrower commercial strip lined by restaurants, markets, neighborhood businesses and apartment buildings. The roadway changes again below Santa Monica Boulevard as longer blocks, lower buildings and broader intersections carry the route toward Palms. The result is a corridor whose university gateway, architectural concentration, successive commercial districts and changing urban scale reveal several distinct stages of Westside development along one continuous street.
What you should know about Westwood Boulevard.
Westwood Boulevard is best known for forming the principal commercial axis of Westwood Village, the shopping district created by the Janss Investment Company beside UCLA during the Westside building boom of the 1920s. Arthur Letts purchased 3,296 acres of ranchland for $2 million in 1919 and engaged Edwin and Harold Janss to develop the property, which extended across territory once belonging to Rancho San JosΓ© de Buenos Ayres. The University of California Regents selected 385 acres within the Janss holdings for a new Los Angeles campus on May 21, 1925, giving the brothers a powerful catalyst for development across the surrounding acreage. Harland Bartholomew and L. Deming Tilton prepared the commercial district's master plan around angled streets, irregular blocks and Mediterranean architecture, with prominent corner buildings conceived as visual anchors. UCLA broke ground in September 1927, and Westwood Boulevard initially continued north through the future campus toward Sunset Boulevard with parking areas flanking part of its alignment. The university opened the Westwood campus on September 23, 1929 with 5,500 students, placing a substantial population immediately beside the new shopping district. Ralphs opened at Westwood Boulevard and Lindbrook Drive that November inside a grand commercial building whose tower, rotunda and sidewalk colonnades gave the intersection one of the village's strongest architectural compositions. The Janss Investment Company headquarters followed nearby in 1930, and the Fox Theatre opened in 1931 as the district rapidly accumulated shops, entertainment venues and professional buildings. Westwood Boulevard consequently became the organizing commercial street of a district conceived in direct relationship with UCLA, carrying the university's southern approach through an architectural ensemble developed almost simultaneously with the campus itself.
Iranian immigration gave the boulevard a second cultural history during the final quarter of the twentieth century. Los Angeles's first Persian business opened at Westwood Boulevard and Wilkins Avenue in 1974, five years before the Iranian Revolution accelerated migration to Southern California. Businesses serving the growing community concentrated along Westwood Boulevard between Wilshire Boulevard and Ohio Avenue, creating a district of restaurants, markets, bookstores and professional offices through which Persian language and cultural traditions acquired a visible Westside center. The concentration became widely associated with Tehrangeles as Iranian families dispersed through Westwood, Beverly Hills and neighboring communities yet continued returning to the boulevard for commerce and social gathering. Los Angeles formally designated the intersection of Westwood Boulevard and Wilkins Avenue as Persian Square, attaching municipal recognition to the corner where the first Persian business had opened decades earlier. California lawmakers subsequently cited the district when marking NowrΕ«z in 2015, specifically recognizing the concentration of Persian-owned businesses along the boulevard. Westwood Boulevard consequently developed a cultural importance independent of the university district at its northern end, becoming one of the principal public centers of Iranian American life in Southern California.
How to fold Westwood Boulevard into your trip.
Westwood Boulevard works as the anchor for a Westwood sequence tracing the district from a pioneering Spanish Colonial Revival supermarket through one of its great movie palaces and into a cemetery whose compact grounds contain an extraordinary concentration of twentieth-century cultural figures.
Begin at Ralphs Westwood, completed in 1929 at Lindbrook Drive as one of the original architectural anchors of Westwood Village. Architect Russell Collins and structural engineer Norbert B. Schindler developed a vast Spanish Colonial Revival composition around a prominent corner tower, glass-sided cupola, classical entrance pediment and colonnaded storefront wings. The market opened in November as UCLA completed its first academic term in Westwood, binding the commercial district to the new campus from their earliest months of simultaneous operation. Refrigeration systems for meat and dairy products placed the building at the forefront of contemporary supermarket technology, and photographer Ansel Adams photographed the complex in 1940 with its tower dominating a long perspective toward UCLA. Ralphs left during the mid-1960s, yet the building survived successive commercial uses and received Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument status in 1988 before entering the National Register of Historic Places in 1992. Continue to Fox Theater Westwood Village, opened in 1931 as Westwood's university population and surrounding residential development were turning the young village into a major entertainment district. Its tower joined the vertical markers already punctuating the Janss plan, making cinema architecture part of the coordinated commercial environment developed south of campus. The theater became closely associated with Hollywood premieres during subsequent decades, extending Westwood's relationship with the film industry far past its original role as a neighborhood movie house. Its survival beside UCLA preserves the period when elaborate theaters formed central social institutions within Los Angeles commercial districts. Conclude at Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park & Mortuary, established in 1905 on land that remained pastoral decades before high-rise Westwood surrounded its small cemetery grounds. Marilyn Monroe was interred there in 1962, and subsequent burials created an extraordinary concentration of figures connected with American film, television, literature and music. Natalie Wood, Dean Martin, Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Billy Wilder, Truman Capote, Rodney Dangerfield and Farrah Fawcett are among the cultural figures buried within the compact property, giving a secluded block amid Westwood towers an unexpected relationship with twentieth-century entertainment history. The progression moves from the Janss district's automobile-age commercial architecture through a movie palace built during Westwood's first expansion and culminates in a cemetery associated with generations of cultural figures, connecting retail design, cinema and Hollywood history within the neighborhood organized around Westwood Boulevard.
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