Van Nuys Bl. – Here in Van Nuys

This is a 1948 colorized video, most likely filmed by a movie studio for projection background footage “process shots” in automobile scenes.

It was shot in Toluca Lake and Sherman Oaks.

Toluca Lake was the most comely, gracious and affluent neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley, handily nearby Warner Brothers, Universal and Disney studios.

Driving along Valley Spring Lane, Navajo and Forman, near the Lakeside Golf Club, the viewer sees an endless procession of estates, tree lined streets, gardeners, people on bikes, thin women in below the knee skirts. There is some open land, still undeveloped.

The architecture was eclectic, freely borrowing from Spain, France, England into a hybrid Southern California style set along enormous lawns, with flowers, trellises, window boxes, picket or ranch fencing. Cars are few and parked in driveways, occasionally on the street.

No house is gruesome, ostentatious, unbalanced, grotesque, hostile or ugly. They fit into their surroundings. And even when a Tudor house is next to a Spanish casita both houses seem proper and well-mannered. There are no steel gates, no concrete front yards, no Home Depot vinyl windows sliced into stucco.

The Sherman Oaks section of the video begins at 4:45 at the corner of Hazeltine and Greenleaf. The footage proceeds west through Beverly Glen, Van Nuys Bl. and Cedros.

Greenleaf St. in 1948 was a street of small houses, some older Spanish or Mission, some newer ranches. They were embellished with shutters, trellises, neat lawns, shade trees, classical street lights on concrete posts.

I used Google Maps Street View to try and pick out the homes which were there in 1948. Sadly, most of the houses have been torn down or obliterated with the fads of 60s and 70s, and the gigantism and massiveness that characterize modern Los Angeles.

Here is my timeline to watch the video:

Toluca Lake:

2:27 Valley Spring Ln and Navajo St.

West on Navajo St.

Turn left on Forman

3:30 Valley Spring Ln and Forman

Turn right, head west on Valley Spring Ln.

3:54 Ledge Av at Valley Spring Ln.

4:31 10451 Valley Spring Ln. Spanish house with second floor balcony and rounded tower.

4:33 Strohm Av at Valley Spring Ln. Corner house is still there but Tudor style wood on facade is gone.

4:39 10515 Valley Spring Ln. Spanish house with arched front window and arched entrance.

Sherman Oaks:

4:45 14100 Greenleaf St. at Hazeltine, 4204 Hazeltine background house with shutters and window box.

4:51 4203 Hazeltine. Back of house and wooden garage, both still existing in 2022.

4:58 14101 Greenleaf St. Newly built home. (2/24/48 building permit taken out.)

5:04. 14115 Greenleaf St.

5:12 Stansbury Av and Greenleaf St. heading west.

5:15 4205 Stansbury Av.

5:32 14223 Greenleaf St

5:39. 14244 Greenleaf St.

5:52 14273 Greenleaf St. heading west

5:55 14279 Greenleaf St.

6:16 14345 Greenleaf St at Beverly Glen

6:20 14403 Greenleaf St. at Beverly Glen old mission style house with wide overhangs and trellis.

6:48 14479 Greenleaf St. corner of Van Nuys Bl.

6:58 14507 Greenleaf St

7:02 14519 Greenleaf St

7:04 14525 Greenleaf St.

7:05 14529 Greenleaf St trellis over driveway

7:20. 14567 Greenleaf St

7:26. 14579 Greenleaf St cor Cedros Av.

The center of Van Nuys is the Civic Center. The raison d’etre of this pedestrian mall: nobody comes here unless they are forced to.

Here is where you come to file small claims, to appear before a judge, to file plans for a room addition, to borrow a book, to speak to your Councilwoman, to talk to a cop, to ask for an extension of probation.

You can also push your shopping cart full of belongings here, plop on a bench, open a bottle of vodka and drink yourself silly without interference. There are guards, guns, and security cameras, but they are aimed at the general public, not intoxicated people covered in four weeks of dirt.

There is one glorious structure, built in 1933, the Valley Municipal Building. And then there is everything around it, including the “new” library (1964), the “new” LAPD (1965), the Marvin Braude Center (1994), the Van Nuys Courthouse East (1965), the Van Nuys Courthouse West (1990), the James C Corman Federal Building (1973) and the double decker County Parking Facility at 6170 Sylmar Ave. an $850,000 symphony of concrete opened in 1968. Also vast and comprehensive: the LAPD Motor Transport Facility at 6170 Tyrone Ave. where cop cars are prettied up behind fences.

If you want to register a new business you can come to the Los Angeles County Registrar at 14340 Sylvan St. and make your way past half a dozen aggressive hucksters passing out business cards in which they offer, for a fee, to transact your business for you.

If Van Nuys were a 1962 film by Michaelangelo Antonioni, its stark, barren, nuclear winter surroundings would make for an immensely powerful setting showing the alienation of man from urban environment.

There is so much concrete here, the place is awash in it. It is sculptured, sliced, stacked, plated, affixed, drilled, and molded into so many walls, sidewalks, plazas, and decorative designs. Never before and not since 1964-70, has concrete been so worshipped, so valued, so esteemed, not just for freeways but for art itself.

Come here if you can, just to see the concrete.

Tag: Van Nuys Bl.

Toluca Lake and Sherman Oaks in 1948

A Stark Place.

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