Lake Hollywood Real Estate

About the Neighborhood

The Neighborhoods Around the Reservoir

Lake Hollywood is the shorthand for the residential pockets on the eastern shoulder of the Hollywood Hills, above the Cahuenga Pass. The pass itself is the lowest crossing of the Santa Monica Mountains at roughly 745 feet, on the route Portola's party used around 1769 and the line of El Camino Real; by the 1870s the Eight Mile House was working as a toll station and roadhouse at the summit, and Pacific Electric cars reached over the ridge in 1911. Above the freeway sit Lake Hollywood Estates and Hollywood Knolls on the reservoir, with the Hollywood Dell dropping in below Franklin Avenue. Buyers researching Lake Hollywood real estate are usually weighing view, quiet and freeway distance together.

The Mulholland Dam gives the neighborhood its shape and its name. Construction began in August 1923 and the dam was completed in December 1924, the first curved concrete gravity dam built by the city's Bureau of Water Works and Supply, with William Mulholland as chief engineer and H.L. Jacques as construction engineer according to the 1924 dedication marker. It was designed to impound about 7,900 acre-feet. After the St. Francis Dam failure in March 1928, Mulholland ordered the Hollywood reservoir drawn down, and between 1933 and 1934 roughly 330,000 cubic yards of earth were placed against the downstream face, buttressing the structure and screening it behind planted slope. The dam is Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument No. 421.

The loop is the amenity that sells the area. A paved path of about 3.5 miles circles the Hollywood Reservoir with very little elevation change, crossing the dam crest itself; gates on Lake Hollywood Drive and at Weidlake open early and close around sunset, seasonally adjusted, and dogs are not permitted on the reservoir path. Lake Hollywood Park, at 3160 Canyon Lake Drive, is separate and considerably more social: a children's play area, picnic tables, sunrise-to-sunset hours and one of the most direct sightlines to the Hollywood Sign in the city, which brings visitors and parked cars onto residential streets on clear weekends.

The housing runs to 1920s and 1930s Spanish Colonial Revival and Mediterranean, hillside midcentury on the view lots, and later contemporary infill. Above the water stands Castillo del Lago, built in 1926 to designs by John DeLario for Patrick Longden, a Spanish and Mediterranean Revival pile that was found eligible for historic designation at national, state and local levels in 2011. Below, the Hollywood Dell was continuous with Whitley Heights until the freeway cut between them. The Cahuenga Pass Parkway opened in two phases in June and December 1940, roughly three miles for about 1.7 million dollars under engineers Merrill Butler and Lloyd Aldrich, with Pacific Electric tracks running down the median until the Red Cars stopped in December 1952.

Diligence here is mostly about sound, access and fire. Freeway noise varies sharply block to block and by time of day, so listen at rush hour and again at night rather than at noon on a Sunday. Nearly all of these slopes fall in a Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone, which brings brush-clearance duties, ignition-resistant construction standards for new work and insurance underwriting that should be settled inside the contingency period. Streets are narrow and some are posted for Red Flag parking restrictions; Sign-related tourist traffic has produced access restrictions on Lake Hollywood Drive at times. Confirm LAUSD assignment by parcel, and pull the LADBS permit history before pricing any addition.