Sign In

1927 -- The (Re-)Birth of North Hollywood

Fine promotional broadsheet map of North Hollywood Park, with letterhead for Larry Wood, Community Builder, on the verso.

The view is oriented with south ath top, looking out over Burbank toward North Hollywood, with the Hollywood Hills and Greater  Los Angeles across the top.  at the south end of the San Fernando Valley, Universal Studios, Universal City, and silent film studio Lasky Ranch are shown, along with a Tunnel into the Hollywood Hills.

The map includes a letter on the verso, with a letter from Larry Wood to J.A. Ramey, who had just purchased a lot in November 1927.

North Hollywood

North Hollywood was once part of the vast landholdings of the Mission San Fernando Rey de España. A group of investors assembled as the San Fernando Farm Homestead Association purchased the southern half of the Rancho Ex-Mission San Fernando.  In 1873, Isaac Lankershim's son and future son-in-law, James Boon Lankershim and Isaac Newton Van Nuys, moved to the San Fernando Valley and took over management of the property. Van Nuys thought the property could profitably grow wheat. In time, under the name the Los Angeles Farming and Milling Company,it  would become the world's largest wheat-growing empire. 

In October 1887, J.B. Lankershim and eight other developers organized the Lankershim Ranch Land and Water Company, purchasing 12,000 acres and established a townsite which the residents named Toluca along the old road from Cahuenga Pass to San Fernando. On April 1, 1888, they offered ready-made small farms for sale, already planted with deep-rooted deciduous fruit and nut trees. 

The land boom of the 1880s went bust by the 1890s, but despite another brutal drought cycle in the late 1890s, the fruit and nut farmers remained solvent.  In 1895, the Southern Pacific opened a branch line slanting northwest across the Valley to Chatsworth. By 1903, the area was known as "The Home of the Peach". In 1912, the area's major employer, the Bonner Fruit Company, was canning over a million tons of peaches, apricots, and other fruits. When the Los Angeles Aqueduct opened in 1913, Valley farmers offered to buy the surplus water, but the federal legislation that enabled the construction of the aqueduct prohibited Los Angeles from selling the water outside of the city limits.

West Lankershim (more or less today's Valley Village) agreed to be annexed to the City of Los Angeles in 1919. Lankershim proper joined in 1923. By the late 1920s a massive effort was underway to market the area to prospective home owners throughout the country. As part of this effort, in 1927, in an effort to capitalize on the glamor and proximity of Hollywood, Lankershim was renamed "North Hollywood". The result was a massive development of housing which transformed the area into a suburban development of Los Angeles.

Rarity

The present map is unrecorded.