Coming Full Circle in Van Nuys

History came full circle Monday as residents, street workers and Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski celebrated the rebirth of a round, long-abandoned traffic median in Van Nuys.

For decades, the crossing of Katherine Avenue and Archwood Street was nothing more than an unusually large intersection in the middle of a neighborhood of modest, 1920s-era homes.

Over time, it became a magnet for trucks from wide roads nearby that rumbled down the quiet, shady street belching diesel fumes to use as a turnaround.

But resident Penny Meyer said when a longtime neighbor moved to Oregon a few years back, the neighbor gave Meyer a collection of neighborhood photographs from the 1940s and 1950s.

Several of them showed a traffic circle at the intersection landscaped with flowers and greenery.

So when Meyers and her husband heard the city planned to resurface local streets for the first time in 77 years, they made a call to Miscikowski’s office to see if the paved-over traffic median could be rebuilt.

On Monday, three months after that first call, neighbors gathered in the early morning shade to admire the new traffic circle, now planted with three sycamore trees, nandina shrubs, African lilies, verbena flowers and pink trailing geraniums.

“This is true neighborhood empowerment,” Miscikowski said.

To applause, Meyer took her grandfather’s upholstery shears and cut the ribbon, being careful not to tread on the new plantings.

“After being a resident of this neighborhood and this one house for 30 years, it is so exciting to see this neighborhood experience a rebirth,” said Carolyn Ferrito, who lives in a pink, Spanish-style house on one corner. “It could have just as easily gone into decline.”

The project was paid for out of the regular street repaving budget, and no extra funds were used, city officials said.

The Bureau of Street Services began by calling an engineer, but when they heard it would take three months to design a curb, they turned to one of their own.

“Mr. Bill White [of Street Services] came out with a tape measure and a ball of string and said, ‘Let me show you how to design a curb,’ ” said Greg Scott, director of Street Services.

Then Dennis Wake, a city landscaping supervisor, brought some leftover plantings from other city projects. And curb crews from the street services molded a median.

City traffic officials said it is unusual to find traffic circles among San Fernando Valley’s street grids. Jack Reynolds, an engineer with the city Department of Transportation, said he did not know why a traffic circle was built at the intersection.

“It’s a special circumstance,” he said. “It was out in a rural area when it was put in. It wasn’t heavily congested or developed at that time.”

No one knows when the original circle disappeared. Meyer said she believed it was taken out after transients and local teenagers began loitering there.

The new traffic circle has already sparked visible neighborhood improvements. One house has a fresh coat of pink paint. Another has a bed of new impatiens at the base of a tree.

“It got everyone motivated,” said Andre Page, who lives half a block up Archwood. “There has been a general sprucing up. It put a little pride back into the neighborhood.”