One-story ranch and Spanish Revival houses sit on curving hillside streets beside pumpjacks working the open Inglewood oil field.
What Baldwin Hills looks like
Houses on the ridge streets are mostly one-story, Ranch and Spanish Revival in stucco with red tile roofs, built mostly from the late 1930s through the 1950s. The streets curve with the hillside and carry no perimeter fences, so the lawns run together from one lot to the next.
West of the houses the hills stay bare and dry, chaparral rather than lawn. The Inglewood Oil Field works the open ground here. Pumpjacks sit on gravel pads reached by dirt access roads, with utility poles strung between the pads. No fence or building screens any of it from the street.
covers the hills' east side, its grassy slopes rising above La Cienega Boulevard where the road cuts through in a canyon. From the paths above, the view opens north toward the San Gabriel and Santa Monica mountains, with downtown Los Angeles filling the middle distance.
, a 1940s complex of low garden apartment buildings set around shared lawns, sits at the hills' northeast edge. A small shopping plaza sits on Obama Boulevard at La Brea, its parking lot and pylon sign visible from the corner.
Shot in Baldwin Hills
Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area, the park covering the hills' east side, has hosted several television productions on its lawns and trails. HBO's Insecure, Fox Kids' Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and the musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer all filmed exteriors here.
Insecure
Insecure used Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area for exterior scenes set within the show's own Los Angeles, filming among the park's lawns and paths rather than on a built set. The canyon view here, on La Cienega Boulevard, is one of several vantage points across the park's 401 acres. Street View
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Played a park, Sunnydale, California, 2001
Buffy the Vampire Slayer filmed its musical episode here in 2001, on UPN. The episode, 'Once More, with Feeling,' used the park to stand in for the fictional Sunnydale. The same 401 acre grounds border the Inglewood Oil Field along its western edge. Street View
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers
Played a park, Angel Grove, California, 1993 to 1995
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, which ran on Fox Kids from 1993 to 1995, filmed on the same grounds as an exterior stand-in for the fictional Angel Grove. The park's seven miles of trails cross grassy slopes and a stocked lake with a Japanese garden near its center. Street View
What Baldwin Hills can double for
Signal Hill in Long Beach, California
Oil wells and pumpjacks still stand on Signal Hill's own residential streets, the same mix of oil field and neighborhood found in Baldwin Hills. Wells pump on the hillside there, mixed in among the houses rather than fenced off from them. Signal Hill's surviving derricks vary more in height and design than Baldwin Hills' uniform pumpjacks, so a wide shot benefits from framing out any taller rigs to hold the period. Try searching oil pumpjacks among houses now.
Radburn in Fair Lawn, New Jersey
Village Green's shared lawns and garage courts were laid out by Clarence Stein, the same planner behind Radburn, New Jersey. Both push roads and garages to the edges and keep pedestrian courts and greens at the center. Radburn's houses are wood frame rather than Village Green's plastered walls. Its greens also run narrower between the blocks, so a wide establishing shot needs a court wide enough to match Village Green's own scale. Try searching shared lawns and courts now.
