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The informality and openness of this building is markedly different than how we build today. We are much more security conscious than in the late 1950s.
In those days, women still wore white gloves and men were capped in fedoras, yet the architecture of California was relaxed, innovative and whimsical.
People who moved to California back then entered a state with the nation’s finest school system, brand new freeways and progressive thinking in government, education and transportation.
Walking along Valleyheart Drive in Studio City, another thought came to mind: these buildings are no better architecturally or structurally than those slum apartments on Kester and Vanowen in Van Nuys.
Almost the entire Valley, and for that matter post-war Los Angeles, is full of these two and three story apartments. But Studio City, with its nearby shops and walkable streets and pedestrian life along Ventura Blvd. is far more livable and inviting than the sprawl of Reseda, Van Nuys and Northridge.
LA City Planner Gail Goldberg defines a neighborhood as a place where one can walk to a coffeehouse, a bookstore and a movie theater. How about walking to school, or walking to the doctor, to a house of worship?
Here in Van Nuys 
It is discouraging that even if people had the will to improve this city it takes so long for anything to get done here. Think of how many years it takes to build a short metro line.
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