Charlie Chaplin

you cannot overuse the word Historic to classify a neighborhood. When you have neighbors like Gloria Swanson, Charlie Chaplin, Carole Lombard, Bette Davis, Jean Harlow and Rudolph Valentino you cannot overuse the word Historic to classify a neighborhood. Before Beverly Hills, Whitley Heights housed some of Hollywood’s most famed actors, producers and moguls.

As Hollywood’s first National Historic District (1900) it was also Hollywood’s first Star colony. It could be said that this was where much of Hollywood’s elite spent their exciting days and nights.

Perhaps because it was close to the Lasky De Mille Studio on Sunset & Selma or the United Studios on Melrose & Van Ness later to be known as Paramount where most of the silent movies were being filmed as the fledgling industry began. Or maybe because in later years it was only a brisk walk to The Brown Derby on Hollywood and Cherokee or Trader Vics near Las Palmas for Happy Hour.

Easier to sleep off that hangover and get to work in the morning if you don’t have to commute all the way from Downtown or Wilshire. A larger quotient of stars and starlet residents may attribute to Whitley Heights having the most entertaining and scandalous history of all the hillside communities.

Several stars made headlines with their shocking rendezvous and partying. Lots of drinking and drug experimenting and Too much to go into here. Read Kenneth Angers Hollywood Babylon One and Two. With definitely more Juliette balconies than in Granada, Spain this lovely burrough teems with Gothic Italiante Mediterranean homes of every sort and size.

Estates are perched high on promontories fastened to the hillsides. Fashioned after the great Gothic estates of Europe, these homes were mainly built by Charles Toberman and John De Lario who had made a name for himself in other hillside communities.