Columbia Pictures, with limited space at its Hollywood headquarters at Sunset and Gower, had been forced to rent neighboring movie studios'
backlots for outdoor shooting. By the end of 1934, this problem was solved when studio head
Harry Cohn acquired a lot in
Burbank at the corner of Hollywood Way and Oak Street. The site was an ideal
movie ranch as it was rural enough at the time to be landscaped as the studio wished. Columbia Pictures used the ranch as a backdrop for almost all of its outdoor scenes. Many television and film serials, such as
Batman,
Captain Midnight,
Blondie and
The Three Stooges, were filmed on the lot. In the 1960s, Columbia's television division
Screen Gems used the Ranch to film numerous shows. Most interiors were shot at Columbia's main studio at Sunset and Gower, and sometimes other locations or studios. The streets were constructed and arranged to allow shooting at multiple angles to create the illusion of a much larger area, which was quite significant for the small studio at the time. Some of the sets on New York Street and Western Streets had actual interiors, called 'Practical Sets' which allowed for a single camera movement from outside to inside, or vice versa. In 1970, a catastrophic fire destroyed a quarter of the lot. Half of the Western set, the Colonial/European set and parts of the
Blondie street burned, including the
Blondie house (which was also used as the
Father Knows Best home). Although the sets were quickly rebuilt, two additional fires destroyed much of the original features of the ranch, including New York Street, Modern Street and half of the Boston townhouses. In 1972, Columbia and
Warner Bros., both in financial trouble, entered into a joint venture to form
The Burbank Studios on the site of the massive Warner lot, one mile south of the ranch. In 1990, Columbia moved its production facilities to the historic
MGM studios in
Culver City. As a result, Warner gained ownership of the lot and renamed Warner Bros. Ranch. The fountain in the park, built around 1935, was seen in the opening credits of
Friends, as well as in
Hocus Pocus,
1776,
Bewitched, and various other Screen Gems television shows from the 1960s. The Ranch lot had served as the headquarters of
Warner Bros. Animation from 2007 to 2023. ==Sale of ranch, redevelopment, and lease back==