The area was originally founded to care for soldiers of the
Civil War and the
Indian Wars.
Development Westwood was developed on the lands of the historic Wolfskill Ranch, a parcel that
Arthur Letts, the successful founder of
the Broadway and
Bullock's department stores, purchased in 1919. Upon Arthur Letts' death, his son-in-law, Harold Janss, vice president of
Janss Investment Company, inherited the land. He began to develop the area and started to advertise for new homes in 1922. The
Los Angeles Times on October 29, 1922 reported the news: "Westwood, the subdivision of the Wolfskill Ranch, 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."
University of California, Los Angeles 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 $1 million ($ million in dollars), 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 construction. Thus the University of California at Los Angeles was established in Westwood; ground was broken on September 12, 1927, and the campus opened for regular classes on September 20, 1929.
Westwood Village Westwood Village, a planned, immediately south of the UCLA campus, was only the second such district on this scale ever to be built worldwide, preceded only by
Country Club Plaza (1922–23) in
Kansas City. It with was created by the
Janss Investment Company, run by Harold and Edwin Janss and their father, Peter, in the late 1920s as a shopping district and headquarters of the Janss Company. Its boom was complemented by the boom of UCLA which opened in 1929 and served not only faculty, staff and students but also affluent shoppers from the surrounding upscale single-family-home neighborhoods. ), built in 1940 Opening in 1929, the design was considered one of the nation's best-planned and beautifully laid out commercial areas. Harold Janss had hired major architects and instructed them to follow a
Mediterranean theme, with clay tile roofs, decorative Spanish tile, paseos, patios and courtyards. Buildings at strategic points, including theaters, used towers to serve as beacons for drivers on
Wilshire Boulevard. Janss picked the first slate of businesses and determined their location in the neighborhood; the area opened with 34 businesses, and, despite the
Great Depression, had 452 businesses in 1939, including
Bullock's (
Parkinson & Parkinson),
Desmond's (
Percy Parke Lewis) and
Sears department stores, and a
Ralphs grocery (
Stiles Clements).
1970s–1980s The architectural style met a turning point in 1970, when a 24-story office building now known as the Oppenheimer Tower was built in the neighborhood and the design of new buildings soon became a blend of styles. The Oppenheimer Tower was used for the primary location in the 1978 episode of
Emergency!, "The Steel Inferno".
Wilshire Boulevard through Westwood would become a major corridor of condominium towers, from Westwood Boulevard east towards the Beverly Hills city line, Westwood Village's popularity as a shopping, dining, and nighttime entertainment district continued to rise, with commercial rents peaking in 1988.
Decline of Westwood Village The Village suffered a major setback in the late 1980s, when gangs began to frequent the neighborhood and crime increased. The problems culminated in January 1988 when a gang shootout resulted in the death of a 27-year-old bystander. On January 30, 1988,
gang violence brought nationwide attention to Westwood Village when
Karen Toshima, a 27-year-old graphics artist, was killed as she crossed a Village street in a shootout between gang members. In 2016, he was again denied parole until at least 2021. This episode led to the widespread impression that even affluent Westwood was not immune to the crime wave then ravaging Los Angeles. The Los Angeles establishment reacted with horror. Newspapers and television headlined the story for days. Police patrols in Westwood tripled, and the
L.A.P.D. assigned a 30-member antigang unit to capture Toshima's killer. The neighborhood's well-known bookstores and some movie cinemas began closing with the advent of large chain stores, Amazon.com and multiplex theaters. In that quarter-century, multiple nearby districts lured customers away from the Village, such as
Westfield Century City,
The Grove, the now-closed
Westside Pavilion, and Downtown
Santa Monica with its open-air and enclosed shopping malls.
Architecture near the
UCLA campus in Westwood. Westwood Village was master-planned in the late 1920s and Janss carefully selected not only the architects, but also the style of the buildings and their juxtaposition. Towers were built as landmarks and businesses on corner lots were carefully selected for their attractiveness and as landmarks.
Table of architecturally significant buildings in Westwood Village Buildings which according to a 1985 study by
Gruen and Associates identified the following buildings of historic architectural significance: , 1929,
Gordon Kaufmann, architect ==Demographics==