Garage Conversion Brentwood, California

Geography

Boundaries

The district is located at the base of the Santa Monica Mountains, bounded by the San Diego Freeway on the east, Wilshire Boulevard upon the south, the Santa Monica city limits upon the southwest, Sullivan Canyon/Westridge Trail upon the west and Mulholland Drive on the north.

Environment

Brentwood, like manageable Santa Monica, has a ascetic climate influenced by marine breezes off the Pacific Ocean. Residents frequently wake to a “marine layer”, a cover of clouds brought in at night which burns off by mid-morning. The topography is generally split into two characters, broadly separated by Sunset Boulevard: the Place north of Sunset is defined by ridges and canyons of the Santa Monica Mountains and is located in a Cal-Fire designated Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone; south of Sunset the Place is mostly flat. The Place South of San Vicente features an underground spring which bubbles going on into a little creek along “the Gully” near the Brentwood Country Club.

History

General

Modern progress began after the instigation of the 600-acre (2.4 km) Pacific Branch of the National Home for Disabled Soldiers and Sailors in the 1880s. A small community sprang stirring outside that facility’s west gate, taking upon the name Westgate. Annexed by the City of Los Angeles on June 14, 1916, Westgate’s 49 sq mi (130 km²) included large parts of what is now the Pacific Palisades and a little portion of today’s Bel-Air. Westgate Avenue is one of the last reminders of that namesake.

Local traditions affix a Maypole erected each year on the lawn of the Archer School for Girls, carrying on that set by the Eastern Star Home back housed there. This building was the exterior establishing shot for the “Mar Vista Rest Home” that provided a key scene in the 1974 film Chinatown.

Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone designation

The State Cal-Fire Authority officially designated Brentwood, from Mulholland all along to Sunset Boulevard a Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone, due to the long, uninterrupted attach of urban-wildlife interface in the hillsides that has resulted in multiple fires over many years, destroying entire neighborhoods and requiring numerous evacuations. For this reason, the Brentwood community has been strongly like-minded of halting all further enhance in the hillside and canyon areas.

On November 6, 1961, a construction crew enthusiastic in Sherman Oaks in the San Fernando Valley north of Brentwood on the far and wide side of the Santa Monica Mountains noticed smoke and flames in a to hand pile of rubbish. Within minutes, Santa Ana winds gusting stirring to 60 mph (100 km/h) sent on fire brush aloft and higher than the ridge into Brentwood.

More than 300 police officers helped evacuate 3,500 residents during the 12-hour fire, and some 2,500 firefighters battled the blaze, pumping water from neighborhood swimming pools to douse flames. Pockets of the flare smoldered for several days. Even as firefighters battled what was to become a Bel Air disaster, another flare erupted in Santa Ynez Canyon to the west. That blaze was contained the next-door day after consuming nearly 10,000 acres (40 km) and nine structures and burning to within a mile of Bel Air and Brentwood. The fires were the fifth-worst conflagration in the nation’s records at the time, burning 16,090 acres (65 km²), destroying greater than 484 homes and 190 additional structures and causing an estimated $30 million in damage.

O. J. Simpson murder case

Brentwood was the site of the 1994 stabbing deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, outside Nicole Brown Simpson’s Bundy Drive townhouse. Nicole’s ex-husband, football player and actor O. J. Simpson, was acquitted of the murders, but was cutting edge found responsible for the deaths in a civil trial. O. J. Simpson’s Brentwood house was following sold. The supplementary owners demolished Simpson’s home and built a extra residence.