The City Council on Tuesday approved the installation of five signs designating the hillside Hollywood Heights area, reports Patch LA, giving the secluded enclave high in the hills and bounded by the Hollywood Bowl and Franklin Avenue official status as a Los Angeles neighborhood.
“Obtaining naming recognition is long overdue, and we are excited to finally have signage installed defining our historic community,” resident and president of the Hollywood Heights Association Todd Henricks told the outlet. The Association leaned on the city to approve the signs, with the motion introduced to the council by Councilmember Nithya Raman.
The Department of Transportation will now produce the signs and erect them at the corners of Highland Avenue and Camrose Drive; Hillcrest Road and Franklin Avenue; Franklin and Orchid Avenue; Sycamore Avenue and Franklin; and La Presa Drive and Camrose, according to MyNewsLA.
The historic area-turned-neighborhood has a number of unique features: one is a network of walkways and staircases built in the 1900s, along with a Bolognese-style, five-story single open cab elevator known as the High Tower, so many residents could get to their cliffside homes, as the roads were not wide enough for cars, according to the Hollywood Heights Association. This added to the neighborhoods’ feeling of being pleasantly shut off from the rest of the city.
There are several mid-century Frank Lloyd Wright-designed properties in the neighborhood, the most well-known being the Samuel Freeman House; this dwelling is noteworthy as one of the four textile block houses Wright built in the L.A. area.
Movies shot in Hollywood Heights include the Elliot Gould-starring Raymond Chandler mystery The Long Goodbye (1973) and Dead Again (1991) a neo-noir starring Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson.
Notable residents throughout the years include Adriana Caselotti, who voiced the title character in the 1937 animated Disney classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, Bette Davis, Francis Ford Coppola, comedian Richard Pryor, Linda Ronstadt and Jackson Browne, according to the Hollywood Heights Association.
Stay on top of the latest in L.A. news, food, and culture. Sign up for our newsletters today.
