Van Nuys
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Neighborhoods of CD12
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City Hall Office
200 N. Spring St., Room 405
Los Angeles, CA 90012
Phone: (213) 473-7012
Fax: (213) 473-6925
Email:
Councilmember.Englander@
Community Service Center
9207 Oakdale Ave.
Chatsworth, CA 91311
Phone: (818) 882-1212
Fax: (818) 701-5254
Monday, Sep 13, 2010
The community of Van Nuys is bounded by the neighboring communities of Lake Balboa, North Hills, Northridge, Panorama City, Sepulveda Basin, Sherman Oaks, Sun Valley and Valley Glen. Van Nuys had a population of 103,770 in 2000, according to the U.S. Census and 110,747 in 2008, based on L.A. Department of City Planning estimates. It covers 8.99 square miles and its 11,542 people per square mile give it a density about average for the city of Los Angeles but among the highest for L.A. County. Van Nuys is served by the Van Nuys Neighborhood Council / and Van Nuys Chamber of Commerce www.2chambers.com/vannuys.htm.
History
Van Nuys shares its early Native American and Spanish Colonial history with much of the San Fernando Valley. In 1911, lot sales began at the new town of Van Nuys. The area is named after Isaac Van Nuys, who was of Dutch descent and participant in a ranching enterprise called the San Fernando Homestead Association, a group that purchased most of the southern San Fernando Valley (south of present-day Roscoe Blvd) in 1869 to grow grain and run sheep. Van Nuys split this huge acreage with his senior partner, Issac Lankershim, getting the east area (present-day Lankershim Blvd. crossed his section). Van Nuys also built the first wood frame house in the San Fernando Valley in 1872. But it was never Isaac Van Nuys's town - land speculators borrowed the name of his holding, the Van Nuys Ranch. The City of Los Angeles, and William Mulholland were building the Owens River aqueduct, starting in 1905 and to be finished in 1913. The San Fernando Valley was where the water was headed first and speculators were out to buy the Van Nuys Ranch and subdivide it into 3 cities, Van Nuys, Marian (now Reseda), and Owensmouth (now Canoga Park) and start land sales just as the aqueduct was finished. Issac Van Nuys took his money—left his name on the town—and returned to his Los Angeles elite—with an office building remaining downtown with his name.
The speculators, organized into the Los Angeles Suburban Home Association, including Harry Chandler and Harrison Gray Otis of the Los Angeles Times, Moses Sherman, a streetcar line owner, and Hobart Johnstone Whitley, a real estate promoter with ties as far back as the "Land Run of 1889" (the Great Oklahoma Land Rush), bought Van Nuys out, and prepared to sell the San Fernando Valley. From the grand opening and barbecue, Washington's Birthday, 1911, Van Nuys was sold as "The Town That Started Right," plotted with set-asides for a high school and commitments to build important buildings "first", including the Bank of Van Nuys, changed but still standing on the southwest corner of Van Nuys Blvd and Sylvan Street, to give a sense that the vacant lots sold, with little more than stakes and ribbons flapping in the breeze, would bloom into a city.
A major artery—double wide street—with a Pacific Electric "Red Car" line between the traffic—was built all the way from Hollywood, over Cahuenga Pass, through Lankershim (now North Hollywood) out Chandler Bl, turning right into Van Nuys on Van Nuys Bl, and then turning to the west on Sherman Way to extend to the other "new cities" on the Van Nuys Ranch, Marian (now Reseda) and Owensmouth (now Canoga Park). Big selling points in 1911—H.J. Whitley's idea—built by partner and builder Moses Sherman, take the Pacific Electric interurban and be downtown in an hour, or drive the paved road alongside--("no speed limit" if your Model A could go 35 mph) all season. The abundant water from the Owens River aqueduct allowed oranges, orchards, and sugar beets to be availble when the young Van Nuys voted to join the greater City of Los Angeles in 1915. But the so-called "The Town That Started Right" was built on Tyrone Wash, two blocks east of Van Nuys Blvd, and would flood at the drop of a hat.
Two pioneers are to be noted: Hobart Johnstone Whitley, promoter extraordinare, one of the "Boomers" who built towns in a day after the 1889 "Oklahoma Land Rush", who drew the designs for some 150 towns with a stick in the dust, including the San Fernando Valley cities of Van Nuys, Reseda and Canoga Park, and founder of Hollywood, just over the hill. Whitley also had a huge home along his ceremonial boulevard, the "first house" you saw as you turned from Chandler Blvd unto Van Nuys Bl. As well, William P.Whitsett, who bought a half-interest in the Van Nuys townsite, and remained as real estate salesman and town booster, and whose influence grew till he was Chairman of the Metropolitan Water District, where he helped oversee the second great aqueduct that boosted Los Angeles' position, the Colorado River Aqueduct to Los Angeles in the 1930s. Written accounts in the 1910s and 1920s gave much of the credit to H.J. Whitley, but Whitsett's long residence in town has given him more "historical credit" for the San Fernando Valley's progress. Van Nuys developed slowly: currently remaining is a fine collection of 1920s and 1930s churches and California-style bungalows, which now make up a "historic preservation overlay zone" (2004) generally east of the 1914 Van Nuys High School. By the end of World War II, when the GI's were demobilized, and many came West, Van Nuys and the San Fernando Valley lived through a tremendous boom.
Many call the San Fernando Valley (and Van Nuys) in this period "America's Suburb", as in the book by Kevin Roderick. Dr. Seuss even opined on what made the typical Van Nuys resident in a bit of poetry parodying "The Organization Man" of the 1950s. "If you cross all your T's and dot all your I's, you can get a job in "IT" (information technology) and you can live in Van Nuys." Van Nuys is in the heart of the San Fernando Valley and home to about 100,000 people; the main thoroughfare, Van Nuys Boulevard, is noted for its car dealerships, its "Auto Row". It also functions similar to a "county seat" for the Valley, with its Government Center (Erwin Street Mall) containing a branch of the Los Angeles County Superior Court, Van Nuys police station, the Van Nuys offices for Los Angeles City Hall, Van Nuys State Office Building and a branch of the Los Angeles Public Library. The 1945 General Motors Van Nuys Assembly Plant, a major manufacturing facility for General Motors' Chevrolet division along with aerospace and defense plants in neighboring cities led to a prosperity which inspired many to call the San Fernando Valley "America's suburb." Neighboring Panorama City sprung up: a thousand tract homes and 1950's mall, all on the promise of GM's new factory. But General Motors left, aerospace declined, and when the GM plant was dismantled in 1998, all that remains is a "big box store mall" called The Plant.
Like many central San Fernando Valley neighborhoods, Van Nuys was a middle-class neighborhood as late as the 1970s, but the demographics of some neighborhoods in Van Nuys have changed considerably since then. In late 2004, the San Fernando Valley's first historic preservation overlay district was established in an area of early 20th-century bungalows east of Van Nuys High (founded 1914). According to the November 23, 2004, Los Angeles Times, "The neighborhood has become a melting pot of ethnic groups and home styles. Nearby stand such historic buildings as Van Nuys High School (1914), the Spanish colonial "old Van Nuys library (1927), the WPA-funded Van Nuys City Hall (a miniature 1/3 size copy of the downtown landmark City Hall).
Posted at 11:57 AM
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