North Hollywood occupies a liminal place in Los Angeles, separated from Hollywood by mountains and often seen as a bedroom community and waypoint for aspiring actors. The neighborhood blends historic infrastructure and suburban edges, where a train depot houses a coffee shop and downtown streets meet suburban housing. The area evolved from a late-1800s wheat center through significant infrastructure milestones such as the 1913 L.A. Aqueduct and the 2000 Metro Red Line extension. Name changes from Toluca to Lankershim to North Hollywood reflected development tied to film studios. The NoHo Arts District serves as a cultural core with theaters, boutiques, and revitalization around the Metro station that created an unusually walkable Los Angeles suburb.
In the tangled family of Hollywoods, Hollywood would be the obvious golden child, West Hollywood its ritzy older sister and East Hollywood its indie-cool younger brother. North Hollywood, however, is harder to classify. Perhaps you can call it the elusive half-sibling - sharing the family name but somewhat lacking in family resemblance. Separated from its siblings by sprawling mountains, the oft-slighted San Fernando Valley neighborhood has been described as a bedroom community and a way station for fledgling actors.
The neighborhood has even gone by a few different names: first Toluca, then Lankershim, for the real estate pioneer Isaac Lankershim, who helped catalyze the development of the San Fernando Valley. North Hollywood adopted its current moniker in 1927, as film studios poured into the area and residents at the behest of enterprising developers petitioned to rebrand their town as a Hollywood hot spot.
Today, North Hollywood is an eclectic nook with its cultural epicenter in the Noho Arts District. Dotted with petite theaters, boutiques and pie shops, the 1-square-mile patch was revitalized at the turn of the century with the northward extension of the Metro Red Line and the concurrent opening of the North Hollywood Metro Station. At a critical time for its development, the Metro made North Hollywood an anomaly: a hip and walkable L.A. suburb.
Collection
[
|
...
]