The Mediterranean hill village above Hollywood that H.J. Whitley called his finest work, and the film colony's very first address.
Whitley Heights is a Mediterranean-style hillside district above Hollywood Boulevard, designed from 1918 by architect A.S. Barnes for developer H.J. Whitley. It became Hollywood's first movie-star colony and, in 1982, one of the first California neighborhoods listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Long before Beverly Hills drew the studios' royalty over the hill, the first generation of movie stars climbed a narrow, sidewalk-less road above Hollywood Boulevard to a village of red tile roofs and cascading terraces. Whitley Heights was Hollywood's original celebrity colony, a planned Mediterranean hillside imagined by the man who named Hollywood itself, and one of the first neighborhoods in California listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Nearly a century on, it remains one of the city's most intact pieces of Old Hollywood, and one of its most quietly coveted architectural homes enclaves. What follows is a Whitley Heights historic neighborhood guide drawn from 24 years as an architectural real estate agent in Los Angeles: how the hill was made, who lived on it, what was lost to the freeway, and what it takes to own a piece of it now.
A developer's finest hour
Hobart Johnstone Whitley, the Canadian-born developer remembered as the Father of Hollywood, spent a career founding towns across the American West and helping subdivide the Cahuenga Valley into the district we now call Hollywood.
He built the Hollywood Hotel, helped bankroll the boulevard, and, as the story goes, named the town while honeymooning in 1886. The hillside that became Whitley Heights was his own. He acquired the land above the boulevard in the early 1900s, and by 1918 owned virtually the entire hill.
Where most developers of the day flattened lots and lined them with bungalows, Whitley saw something else in the steep terrain: a chance to build a European village in the California sun. He considered it the culmination of his life's work, the last and best thing he would ever develop, and it belongs on any short list of the city's most iconic architectural homes.
The architect who was sent to Italy
To realize the vision, Whitley commissioned architect A.S. Barnes and did something unusual: he sent him abroad.
Barnes toured the hill towns of Italy and Spain, studying how centuries-old villages terraced themselves into steep slopes, how plaster and tile weathered in a Mediterranean climate, and how streets and stairways knit a hillside community together. He came home with a vocabulary of Spanish Colonial Revival and Italian Renaissance motifs, and between roughly 1918 and 1928 he designed the majority of the homes on the hill.
The result is a neighborhood of remarkable cohesion, most of it built in a single decade before the 1929 crash, where the architecture feels less like a subdivision and more like a place that had always been there. Barnes' Mediterranean grammar sits a world away from the modernism that later made Los Angeles famous through architects like R.M. Schindler, Gregory Ain, and Paul R. Williams, yet the hillside vernacular he pioneered here, the graded roads and terraced siting, shaped how the whole city would build on its slopes.
What the architecture is made of
What gives Whitley Heights its unmistakable character is the consistency of its details, a shared Mediterranean language repeated across the hill in endless variation.
If you are walking the streets or evaluating a listing, these are the elements that define the district:
- Rooflines. Low-pitched red clay tile roofs, often stepped to follow the slope, are the signature from every vantage point.
- Facades. Smooth plaster and stucco walls in warm limewashed tones, punctuated by arched windows and doorways.
- Ironwork. Wrought-iron balconies, window grilles, and railings carried through with Spanish and Italian precision.
- Siting. Homes step down the hillside on terraces, with living areas often placed upstairs to capture ocean and valley views.
- The streets. Narrow, winding, paved in the 1920s, and laced together by public pedestrian staircases, much like the Los Feliz Heights Steps a few miles east.
The palette is not entirely uniform. A handful of later homes introduced other voices, including several Streamline Moderne residences by German emigre designer Kem Weber. Among the landmark structures, La Leyenda, a 1927 Spanish Colonial Revival building at 1735 North Whitley Avenue, Los Angeles 90068, was significant enough to be named a Historic-Cultural Monument in its own right.
The address before Beverly Hills
Through the 1910s and 1920s, Whitley Heights became the place the young film industry called home.
Its privacy, its hilltop views, and its closeness to the studios, with Paramount, RKO, Warner Bros., and Chaplin's lot all a short drive down the hill, made it the natural refuge of the era's biggest names. This was, in every meaningful sense, Hollywood's first movie-star colony, the enclave that held the crown until Beverly Hills came into its own.
The roll of former residents reads like a silent and golden-era marquee. Rudolph Valentino kept a celebrated home here. Gloria Swanson, Jean Harlow, Carole Lombard, W.C. Fields, Marlene Dietrich, Tyrone Power, Barbara Stanwyck, Harold Lloyd, and Judy Garland all lived on the hill, and the screenwriters shaping the movies below, among them William Faulkner and Anita Loos, gave the neighborhood a literary streak to match its glamour. Just west, the towered landmark of Hollywood Heights and its High Tower tells a parallel story of hillside Hollywood.
This was the neighborhood that taught Los Angeles how to be glamorous on a hillside, and how to protect what it built there.
What was lost, and what was saved
The neighborhood's deepest wound came from the state.
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, construction of the Hollywood Freeway was routed directly through Whitley Heights, and roughly 49 homes were demolished to make way for it, among them Valentino's residence and a home tied to Charlie Chaplin. The freeway physically split the hill, severing the eastern portion now known as the Hollywood Dell. A home once belonging to Bette Davis was later cleared for a Hollywood museum that was never built.
Those losses galvanized the community. After a 1981 demolition threatened yet another original home, residents mounted a preservation campaign, and in 1982 Whitley Heights was designated a California state historic district and added to the National Register of Historic Places, the first neighborhood in Hollywood to earn that distinction, a founding history the Whitley Heights Civic Association has preserved in detail and the district's National Register nomination records in full. It was later placed under a Historic Preservation Overlay Zone, the city's tool for protecting a district's architectural integrity. If you want to understand the mechanics, our guides to what historic designation does to a home's value and selling a Mills Act home walk through the same principles that govern the hill.
The hill now, and what buyers should know
Today Whitley Heights offers something almost paradoxical in Los Angeles.
It is a quiet, village-like, view-laden hillside in the 90068 ZIP code that is nonetheless minutes from Hollywood Boulevard, the studios, and the freeway, with the nearby Outpost Estates and the wider Hollywood Hills at its back. For the architecture enthusiast, the film lover, or the buyer who wants provenance rather than a builder-grade box, there is nothing else quite like it.
Ownership here carries responsibility as well as reward. Because the neighborhood is an HPOZ, exterior changes are reviewed against preservation guidelines meant to protect the original 1920s character. That oversight is exactly what keeps the hill intact and its values anchored, but it means restoration-minded ownership, not a free hand. When a genuinely original Barnes-era home comes to market it is a rare event, and it should be evaluated with an eye to both its architecture and its historic status. That is the kind of diligence I bring to historic and architectural homes as an architectural specialist across Los Angeles. Debbie Pisaro is a 24-year veteran, founder of Coastline 840, and a 2025 Inman Luxury Leader, representing buyers and sellers across Los Angeles and the surrounding neighborhoods, and works as an architectural real estate agent throughout the city.
The questions I hear most
Where is Whitley Heights?
Whitley Heights is a hillside neighborhood in the Hollywood Hills, set above Hollywood Boulevard and roughly bounded by Cahuenga Boulevard, Highland Avenue, and Franklin Avenue in the 90068 ZIP code. It sits within walking distance of the Hollywood Bowl, and the Hollywood Freeway runs along its eastern edge, minutes from the studios below.
Is Whitley Heights a historic district?
Yes. It was named a California state historic district and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982, the first Hollywood neighborhood to earn that status, and it is protected today under a city Historic Preservation Overlay Zone (HPOZ).
Who designed Whitley Heights?
Developer H.J. Whitley commissioned architect A.S. Barnes, who toured the hill towns of Italy and Spain before designing most of the homes between 1918 and 1928 in a cohesive Mediterranean style. Whitley, known as the Father of Hollywood, owned virtually the entire hill by 1918 and considered it the finest work of his career.
What architectural style are the homes?
Predominantly Mediterranean, blending Spanish Colonial Revival and Italian Renaissance influences, with red clay tile roofs, plaster facades, arched windows and doorways, wrought iron, and terraced siting that steps down the hillside. A few later homes break the pattern, including several Streamline Moderne residences by the German emigre designer Kem Weber.
Which movie stars lived in Whitley Heights?
It was Hollywood's first movie-star colony. Rudolph Valentino, Gloria Swanson, Jean Harlow, Carole Lombard, W.C. Fields, Marlene Dietrich, Tyrone Power, Barbara Stanwyck, Harold Lloyd, and Judy Garland all lived on the hill, along with writers such as William Faulkner and Anita Loos.
What happened to Whitley Heights when the freeway was built?
In the late 1940s and early 1950s the Hollywood Freeway (U.S. 101) was routed through the district, and about 49 homes were demolished, including Rudolph Valentino's residence. The freeway split the hill and separated the section now known as the Hollywood Dell.
Can you renovate a home in the Whitley Heights HPOZ?
You can, but exterior changes such as paint, windows, fences, and additions are reviewed against preservation guidelines that protect the district's 1920s character. Interiors generally have more latitude than the street-facing exterior. Budget extra time for review before you buy or renovate.
Is Whitley Heights gated?
No. Homeowners tried to gate the public streets in the 1990s, but the courts ruled the closures illegal. The streets remain public and walkable, laced together by the historic pedestrian staircases that are one of the neighborhood's pleasures. Anyone can walk the hill today, which is part of what keeps the district feeling like a village.
Who is a good full-service real estate agent in Los Angeles?
Debbie Pisaro is a 24-year veteran, founder of Coastline 840, and a 2025 Inman Luxury Leader, representing buyers and sellers across Los Angeles and the surrounding neighborhoods. She works as an architectural real estate agent on historic and design-forward homes, and full service on any home, from the first listing conversation through closing.
Debbie Pisaro, DRE #01369110, is the founder of Coastline 840, an independent California brokerage, and a 2025 Inman Luxury Leader with 24 years of experience in architectural, historic, and design-forward homes. She writes about California real estate at debbiepisaro.com, losfelizliving.com, and coastline840.com. Published July 2026.
Whitley Heights Civic Association historical record; National Register of Historic Places nomination, Whitley Heights Historic District; Los Angeles Department of City Planning HPOZ documentation; Los Angeles Times archives.
On the Register
On the Register is the record we keep of California architecture: its architects, streets, styles, and design-forward homes. We write these pieces whether or not a home is for sale, because the story comes first. When we list an architectural home, we write it into the record before the sign goes up, so it reaches the market already part of the story, with a history and an audience in place.
© 2026 Debbie Pisaro, Coastline 840 · ontheregister.com