Topside Views and an Easy Commute : Mt. Washington: Close to downtown, the hills have attracted residents who like the reasonable prices, the outdoors feeling and their privacy.
It has been called “The Poor Man’s Bel-Air,” a stand of rolling verdant hills less than five miles from downtown Los Angeles.
Over the last 80 years it has played host to silent screen stars and their bosses; been glorified by such as Times columnist Jack Smith, and most recently has provided a haven for those hoping to find something other than a billboard outside their picture windows.
“It” is Mt. Washington, home these days to a population that is a blend of young first-time homeowners, grizzled veterans of city living, racially mixed couples and a slowly growing gay population. It all adds up to an urban melting pot hanging as much as 1,000 feet above the downtown smog.
The “Mountain” features narrow canyon streets that host the Jaguars and Chevrolets of a varied middle class and the skateboards of their children.
The hills provide growth for trees and chaparral, possums and sparrows, a diminishing number of hawks (because of a shrinking of the wooded lots) and enough squirrels to have kept Davy Crockett in stew for several lifetimes.
The other side of that shiny coin is a high residential burglary rate (most of the folk of Mt. Washington work and are not at home during the day) and a propensity for brush fires common to hillside areas.
At the top of the hills are the upscale view houses, and down below--in Highland Park--are the California bungalows.
Adjacent to those smaller homes in the lowlands have sprung up liquor stores, Laundromats and shoddy auto repair shops--many of them plagued by gang activity.
Lucille Lemmon has lived on Mt. Washington since 1954 in an Elyria Drive house that cost $13,500--”the price of a compact car today,” she said. Her architect told her at the time not to spend more than $17,000 on improvements because the place “would never be worth more than $40,000.” Today her home is worth about $250,000.
Lemmon, a past president of the Mt. Washington Assn., a fiercely active group that looks on the hills as a sacred trust, most recently led a drive that forced a developer to reduce a proposed 180-condominium development downward to 32 units with 75% guaranteed open space.
“People move here because they love the rural nature of the land and because of the sense of community,” she said. “Developers want to take advantage of those features but then want to destroy them.”
Even Lemmon and other old-timers aren’t old enough to remember the lavish Mt. Washington Hotel, frequented by movie stars when films were made on the streets of Los Angeles and actors often lived at the Alexandria Hotel downtown.
At that time, in the early 1900s, only a few quail and rabbits inhabited Mt. Washington, and they were disturbed--if at all--only by weekend hikers.
But in 1909, the Los Angeles and Mt. Washington Incline (cable) Railway began, running from the base of the hills upward 940 feet.
The hotel became a gathering spot for the stars, and following them were the land developers who sold lots on which rose fairly small individual homes, many of them little more than expanded mountain cabins.
But the movies soon moved west to Hollywood, and for years the hills lay fallow of folk. The hotel closed in 1916 and the railway followed.
Today the hotel site is the international headquarters of the Self-Realization Fellowship, which through its open houses and fastidious upkeep of its sprawling complex has become a good neighbor to the urban sprawl that has increasingly typified the area over the past two decades.
Michelle Harnsberger, manager of Harnsberger & The Winners, a real estate firm that in one form or another has been doing business in the Highland Park area for more than six decades, calls Mt. Washington a highly desirable area of four hills where prices vary according to view.
Those views range from spectacular scenes of the city of Los Angeles to the south, northward to the Verdugo Hills and San Gabriel Mountains above Glendale.
“A range of $225,000 upward to $400,000” is how she appraises the current Mt. Washington market, despite a downturn in prices that has reduced homes by the tens of thousands of dollars.
“It’s leveling off now,” she said of home prices. “And the newer sections,” north of the oldest hill that stretches upward from Museum Drive, “seem the most desirable.”
But one family occupying one of the oldest homes in one of the oldest sections might dispute that judgment.
Eleana and Greg Williams moved into a home on Sea View Lane just six months ago after having lived at a lower level in the hills for 17 years. In its day their new home must have seemed a mansion. Built in 1910, its original hardwood floors and 10-foot ceilings attest to the style of the time, while its many windows offer a spectacular view of the Verdugos.
From their front lawn--weather permitting--you can see the Pacific Ocean, a flat spot of blue amid the sloping green of hills and trees.
She and her husband, a communications consultant, raised two children in Mt. Washington and praise the elementary school there, but are less kind to the area junior high schools.
A former schoolteacher, Eleana Williams calls them “just too rough,” with “gang problems.”
“And the test scores in those schools are not up to the (comparative) level of the scores at Mt. Washington Elementary.”
A couple who sent two children through area schools two generations earlier, remain in Mt. Washington, now occupying the fourth home (on Nob Hill Drive) they’ve built there.
Ervin Frauenhoff, a retired estimator and his wife, Anna, sent a son and daughter to Toland Way and Aldama elementary schools and then on to Franklin High School more than 30 years ago, but remain in the area despite their daughter’s urging to join her in the eastern San Gabriel Valley.
“Mt. Washington has changed,” said Ervin Frauenhoff, now nearing 80, who built his first Mt. Washington home on Nordice Drive in 1939 and over the next 50 years commuted to jobs in Burbank, Inglewood, downtown Los Angeles and Whittier.
“But it’s still the peaceful, pleasant place it was even if we don’t know everyone on the hill the way we used to, and we can’t leave the doors unlocked when we leave.”
“Besides, I told my wife I’m not moving unless I can build another house.”
Halfway around the circular street that is first Nob Hill and then Oneonta Drive is a newer homeowner. John Clifton, a 42-year-old restaurant supervisor, discovered Mt. Washington three years ago.
It was his first home purchase and he too opted for the seclusion and the quiet in a three-level, wooden home that hangs over a hillside and offers a spectacular sunset.
After dusk comes a flickering of what at first glance might seem fast-moving fireflies but in reality are the hundreds of jetliners that land and take off from Los Angeles International Airport.
“I told realtors when I was looking that my price range topped out at about $150,000,” Clifton said. “When I told realtors in the Valley that that was all I wanted to spend, they looked at me very strangely, like they didn’t even want to talk to me.
“Here, I got the house I wanted, the dog and the view, all for just a little more than I wanted to spend.”
But Clifton also acknowledges that the verdant splendor may be a thing of the past. “We’ll always have the greenbelts, but I can see the housing boom escalate, particularly in the past year and a half.”
But even as the home boom continues around him and his investment grows as green as the scenery, he says “I’m going to stay.”
It will never be the hills as they once were, where the vacant land was dotted only irregularly by a house or two. But the lure generally remains for those old and new who remain content with the central location and the rural atmosphere.
So it’s a community sans a lengthy commute. A rustic panorama with a mix of humanity.
And what else?
Let’s give columnist Smith, who raised two sons in a house he and his wife, Denny, purchased for $8,425 in 1950, the final word:
“I can’t imagine living anywhere else, not even the beach. We’re close to everything we like, and it’s 10 minutes from downtown but it’s still rustic.
“When we came here it was an artist’s colony. Now most of the artists have gone but we still have lots of professionals and creative people. Several of my colleagues from The Times live here. We have neighbors who like their privacy. Lots of people are building on leftover lots but the character of the hill hasn’t changed much . . . we don’t feel crowded yet.
“One thing we can’t do,” he adds, “is walk to the store. It’s too steep.”
AT A GLANCE Population
1990 estimate: 45,593
1980-90 change: 14.5%
Median age: 30.8 years
Annual income
Per capita: 11,413
Median household: 31,468
Household distribution
Less than $15,000: 21.1%
$15,000 - $30,000: 25.4%
$30,000 - $50,000: 26.6%
$50,000 - $75,000: 16.0%
$75,000 + 10.8%