Palatial Period Revival houses in Tudor, Spanish Colonial and Mediterranean styles sit behind fifty foot lawns along wide, tree lined streets.
What Hancock Park looks like
Houses here sit fifty feet back from the sidewalk, with no fence at the property line. A side driveway usually runs through a porte cochere to a garage behind the house, so the front lawn stays open. Wide parkways lined with mature trees run the length of every block. Near Third Street and Mansfield Avenue, a retired air raid siren still stands on its pole above the sidewalk.
The houses are Period Revival, built mostly between 1922 and 1956. Most are Tudor, Spanish Colonial or Mediterranean, but Monterey and American Colonial fronts appear too. Stucco and brick fronts carry tile roofs, and several driveways are closed off with wrought iron gates. About ninety percent of the roughly 1,200 houses still show their original street facing facade.
runs west toward Rossmore Avenue past deep front lawns, and and carry some of the largest of the Period Revival houses. , the neighborhood's western edge, has a planted median of queen and Mexican fan palms that is its own Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument.
The , a private golf club, runs along Rossmore Avenue on the neighborhood's east side. Two storey Spanish Revival houses in white stucco with red tile roofs line and back onto its fairways.
Shot in Hancock Park
L.A. Confidential filmed Lynn Bracken's home on Wilcox Avenue, next to the Wilshire Country Club. Pretty in Pink used John Burroughs Middle School as the film's high school, and a house on June Street as Steff's party mansion.
L.A. Confidential, 1997
The Wilcox Avenue house
This 1923 Spanish Revival house on Wilcox Avenue played Lynn Bracken's home in L.A. Confidential. The production enclosed the house's open air front porch for the shoot, and its arched interior openings and wrought iron staircase appear on screen as well. Street View
Pretty in Pink, 1986
Pretty in Pink filmed interior school scenes at John Burroughs Middle School, standing in for the film's high school. The brick exterior is unusual for a Los Angeles school building, closer in style to schools built on the East Coast. Street View
What Hancock Park can double for
Beverly Hills, California
The Beverly Hills flats share Hancock Park's fifty foot setbacks and its mansions in Tudor, Spanish Colonial and Mediterranean styles. Both neighborhoods went up across the same decades, with the same porte cochere driveways and wide, tree lined parkways. Beverly Hills has more contemporary teardown and rebuild mansions mixed in, so a wide shot needs the older block faces framed carefully to keep newer construction out of frame. Try searching fifty foot setbacks now.
Forest Hills Gardens in Queens, New York City, New York
Forest Hills Gardens is a planned Tudor Revival community from the same years as Hancock Park, with curving streets, deep lawns and brick and half timbered facades on generous lots. Its clubhouse and private streets give it the same closed off, old money character. The English Garden City plan puts houses closer to curving streets than Hancock Park's straight grid, so a static frame reads more convincingly than a moving shot down the block. Try searching curving streets Tudor Revival now.
Chevy Chase, Maryland
Chevy Chase's Colonial Revival houses are set on similarly deep, tree lined lots near the nation's capital. That East Coast, old money look is what Hancock Park is often asked to cover, though the two neighborhoods share few actual architectural details beyond the setback and the lawn. Chevy Chase's brick Colonial Revival is plainer than Hancock Park's mix of Tudor and Spanish Colonial fronts, so a tight shot on one Colonial Revival house holds up better than a full block. Try searching deep tree lined lots now.
.jpg)
