Curved 1920s streets circle a private lake beside Bob's Big Boy's 1949 diner strip on Riverside Drive.
What Toluca Lake looks like
Curved streets circle a private six acre lake at the neighborhood's center, sealed with asphalt and kept level by a homeowners association. Detached houses sit behind lawns and mature street trees. Lots run from about 6,000 square feet in Village to 11,000 square feet or a full acre in Hidden Village. Facades mix Spanish colonial, English and ranch styles built mostly in the 1920s and 1930s, curving with the streets around the water. , on the lake's far side, keeps the same mix of colonial and ranch houses behind clipped lawns.
A few blocks in from the water, small stucco apartment buildings with Spanish tile roofs and open ground floor parking sit among the houses, along with a two storey courtyard building reached by an outdoor wood staircase. Toluca Lake Avenue runs past , a single storey modernist house built in 1948 with a flat roof and a long garage door set into its stucco front. Warner Bros and Universal's studio lots sit a few minutes' drive away, across Cahuenga Boulevard and Barham Boulevard.
Shops and restaurants line Riverside Drive under mature trees and street lamps. 's orange and cream coffee shop building and boomerang sign, designed by Wayne McAllister and dating from 1949, sits at the curb with patio tables under yellow umbrellas. steakhouse has stood on Lakeside Drive since 1949. The 's pyramid shingle roof and lit marquee sit further along the same strip, low hills rising behind the rooftops.
Shot in Toluca Lake
Toluca Lake's own storefronts and houses have stood in for other places on screen. Ghostbusters II used the former Val's Restaurant at 10130 Riverside Drive, now a Trader Joe's, as Armand's Restaurant in Manhattan. Ed Wood filmed a church scene at Toluca Lake United Methodist Church, 4301 Cahuenga Boulevard. Dirty John's second season, The Betty Broderick Story, used a house on Woodbridge Street as Dan's house in the episode No Fault.
Columbo, 1973
Moorpark Way between Strohm Avenue and Ledge Avenue is where Columbo gets pulled over in the episode Candidate for Crime, which aired on NBC in the 1973 to 1974 season. The street's two storey houses still stand behind clipped hedges. Street View
What Toluca Lake can double for
Encanto-Palmcroft in Phoenix, Arizona
Encanto-Palmcroft's curving streets carry the same Spanish colonial and English revival houses from the 1920s and 1930s, set behind lawns the same way Toluca Lake's are. Encanto Drive bends around a park the way Toluca Lake's streets bend around its own lake. Phoenix has no lake to frame out of a wide shot. Its desert light is harder than the San Fernando Valley's, so tighter street level shots hold the match best. Try searching curving streets and Spanish houses now.
Sunset Hill in Kansas City, Missouri
Sunset Hill's curving streets in Kansas City's Country Club District carry the same mix of Spanish colonial, English and ranch houses on generous lots, laid out by a private developer in the 1920s the same way Toluca Lake's own subdivisions were. Mature trees and repeated lawn setbacks give the blocks a similar scale. Kansas City's brick facades and steeper roof pitches show a different climate in a wide shot. Tighter frames on lawns and driveways hold the match best. Try searching curving streets and English houses now.
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