In the sprawl that is modern Los Angeles, it is hard to imagine that there were areas within that sprawl that were separate towns once described as “60 suburbs in search of a city”. Within those suburbs, there were even smaller neighborhoods whose residents almost never left except for the men to go short distances to work while most of the women stayed home doing the majority of their shopping on a four-block area that contained everything needed to run a home. This was centered on the Manchester and Sepulveda intersection.
The earliest of the freeways reflected these two streets that could take you anywhere if you actually wanted to go somewhere. The long commutes simply didn’t exist when Westchester came to exist in the era of WW II. The Arroyo Seco Freeway (Pasadena, Harbor now 110) opened 1940 and expanded running basically east/west while the Hollywood Freeway’s (Now 101) first segments opened in 1940 basically north/south.
Two major industries occupied this area that cuddled up against The Los Angeles Airport later expanded into LAX: The first was Aircraft engineering. The north/south street names advertised this emphasis in the names of pilots and locations associated with flying: Earhart, Wiley Post, Bleriot, Croydon, De Haviland, Kittyhawk, and Will Rogers while the cross streets were all numbered in the 70s and 80s. Since my uncle was an aviation engineer, I lived in Westchester off and on after 1950, first on a section of Earhart (now swallowed by LAX) and later after at the intersection of 78th and Croydon, graduating from Westchester HS in 1961.
The other industry was motion pictures. Westchester was where the engineers, sound and video tech people so important to creating the art lived. The man across the street had an Oscar for inventing a high speed printer so I held one at an early age. The stars didn’t live in my little town, but they visited often. At the top of this page is the Loyola Theater where I held down the box office as Rock Hudson strolled by. While the building still exists, it is now a medical center. Then it was one of two first run, premiere site movie houses. The other theater was the Paradise no longer designated by that name. The interior of the Paradise displayed plaques of Academy Award winners by year. Why did two theaters only blocks apart regularly have major premieres, klieg lights and red carpets? By virtue of being at the crossroads to everywhere you wanted to go courtesy of the airport, spotting celebrities on the street was often an everyday occurrence making this small area convenient for all concerned: To and from the still rural “Valley” and studios for filming or to and from downtown and the beach or to and from the airport. Children quickly learned “California rules”. Celebrities on private time, thou shall not disturb. Celebrities on public time, fair game … but really only the tourists asked for autographs. If Donald O’Connor wanted to do a short tap dance on a tabletop at the local cafe while his car was being serviced nearby, he did it as a thank you for being allowed to eat lunch in peace.
Outside of the housewives not wearing pearls and high heels to do their vacuuming, “Leave It to Beaver” was a pretty accurate visual of the time and place. The children were blessed with excellent schools that still had cafeteria ladies doling out lunches. They lived on bicycles with little supervision from the time school let out until you had to report in for family dinner time. The main street was only a few blocks long of small businesses before the advent of huge malls. In its own way, Westchester was a fantasy island and “de Plane, de Plane” flew in and out with everyone on their way to elsewhere. In many ways, Westchester was a dividing line in US history between WW II and the massive changes following the assassinations of JFK, Malcolm X, MLK, and RFK. While still an island of houses, Westchester has now melted into the vast Los Angeles landscape and everything that made it a “little town” has gone.
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