• printer friendly
• mail this article
• iPod format
• digg

    The Fox Theater in Westwood is currently under renovation.

By Linh Tat

Daily Bruin Senior Staff

From a once-budding college town to one trying to revitalize itself, after 70 years Westwood Village continues to endure growing pains.

Few, if any, merchants or residents would describe the village of yesteryear as dismal. On the contrary, many were proud to be a part of such a dynamic college atmosphere.

“The Village was adorable, so nice and pretty. You knew everyone by name. Students just sauntered around at night. It was a real college town, a wonderful place to live,” said former store owner Tom Crumplar to UCLA Magazine in fall 1989.

Though the village still hints at its former glory days, it is no longer the thriving neighborhood it once was, and it has lost some of its student-oriented focus.

A complicated web of expansion in population and new construction projects, traffic congestion and changing clientele visiting the village contributed to this change. But change doesn’t have to be bad, and many continue to marvel at Westwood’s history.

In 1820, a Spanish soldier named Don Maximo Alanis became the first property owner in the area. Later, the Mexican governor granted him 4,438 acres of land from Sepulveda Boulevard to Beverly Hills. This area came to be called San Jose de Buenos Aires.

After the land changed hands several times, the Janss brothers bought the area and settled in Westwood in April 1929. The new village and university celebrated their birthdays in Westwood the same year, for in September, UCLA moved from its original location on Vermont Avenue to its present location.

    Eurochow now occupies this historic building on Westwood Boulevard. With hopes of harmonizing the university and village through architecture, they hired Allison & Allison, the same firm that designed Royce and Kerckhoff Halls, to design their new dome-shaped office. Then, as now, the dome was decorated with blue tiles and gold leafing.

Today, the “Dome” building on Westwood Boulevard is a historical landmark occupied by Eurochow restaurant.

In fact, many of the buildings in the village, though housing modern movie theaters and restaurants, are protected as historic buildings.

Following on the heels of the university’s move to the village, Campbell’s Book Store relocated to Westwood, becoming the first retail business in Westwood.

Husband and Wife, Bob and Blanche Campbell, situated the store on Le Conte Avenue, the street closest to the university.

“They were such nice people, they would let students sign an I.O.U. for textbooks and pay later,” said Steve Sann, UCLA alumnus and Westwood historian.

According to Sann, not just the Campbell brothers, but the entire village was meant to cater to the university from the very beginning. The first male dormitory was located in Westwood, on the second floor of the Janss dome building. Meanwhile, female students were housed in Holmby Hall, now known as the Clock Tower.

Students frequented Tom Crumplar’s, a restaurant famous for its malts. Originally on Westwood Boulevard south of the village, the restaurant eventually relocated to the corner of Weyburn and Broxton Avenues where California Pizza Kitchen now stands also in a historic building.

By 1931, Hi-Ho Drive-in Cafe, one of the world’s first drive-in restaurants, came to the village at what is now the Oppenheimer building on Wilshire and Westwood Boulevards.

Today, students still like drive-throughs, and many line up at the only one in Westwood – In & Out on Gayley.

    Westwood has its share of Spanish style architecture. This is one of the buildings adjacent to California Pizza Kitchen

Also in 1931, the Fox Theater opened and immediately launched countless movie premieres, this summer hosting the opening of “Space Cowboys” and “What Lies Beneath,” among others.

Six years later, The Bruin theater opened across the street. Both movie houses are now operated by Mann Theaters and serve community residents of all ages.

Nearby the theater stood the Village Delicatessen.

“At any given moment, you could see some movie star or some sports person eating there,” said Shelley Taylor, a long-time Westwood resident who recently started a village Web site. “We used to get a kick out of calling it the ‘V-D.’”

Schlotsky’s Deli and Jerry’s Famous Deli are now located near the theaters. Celebrity spottings frequently occur at Jerry’s, where students study upstairs late into the night.

Another place that catered to students was a recreation center on Broxton Avenue, featuring a soda fountain joint, pool hall and a “Mom’s Bowling Alley.”

“That’s where the tough kids hung out and that’s where college students were,” Taylor said.

There hasn’t been a bowling alley in Westwood since the student union, which had one, was recently remodeled.

As UCLA and car usage grew, parking on and around campus became more and more of a challenge.

In the place of parking lot 32 was once the world’s only year-round ice rink, the Tropical Garden. With its 10,000 bleacher seats, it soon became the home rink for UCLA’s hockey team.

Growing up side by side, it was not surprising that Westwood Village took part in the university’s celebrations. Starting in 1933 and lasting for some time, the village hosted UCLA’s homecoming parades.

“The whole community got involved,” Taylor said. “There was a whole camaraderie with the students and family. There was the UCLA marching band. It was kind of a real emotional thing.”

But the warm relationship between merchants and residents and the younger generation started to change as tension built between ideals for a quiet community village and for an edgy, hip crowd.

Some residents say things started changing when the Mann National General Cinema, known today as the National Theater, showed “The Exorcist” in 1973. For more than a year, the movie – which features a young girl being possessed by the devil – was so controversial that no other theater showed it.

Then a series of violent incidents erupted among the younger crowd that flocked into Westwood. At nights and on weekends, pedestrians often filled the streets, and at times Broxton Avenue closed to vehicle traffic at night.

The village’s safe and quaint reputation suffered a blow during the 1984 Olympics when a reckless driver careened down Westwood Boulevard, killing one person.

Then on Jan. 30, 1988, a visitor to the village, Karen Toshima, was killed when she got caught in the crossfire of gang members on Broxton Avenue.

Westwood’s reputation quickly changed and the crowds dwindled.

An increased awareness of violence in movies and the the rampant teen cruising in the late ’80s and early ’90s made visitors more wary of the village. Then, new shopping centers in Santa Monica, Century City and elsewhere, lured many businesses out of the village, according to Sann.

In the past two decades, the village’s Business Improvement District, an organization of landowners and merchants, has tried to reverse the trend.

With storefronts closing faster than new stores are coming in to replace them, revitalization efforts are ongoing.

Officials keep a positive outlook, but whether the BID will succeed in its mission remains to be seen.

“Westwood was a college town but it was also a neighborhood village and it’s lost both of those,” Taylor said.

Comments

Post a comment