- This article is about the neighborhood in Los Angeles. For the Contra Costa County town, see Brentwood, California.
Brentwood is a district in western Los Angeles, California.
Geography
Located at the base of the Santa Monica Mountains, Brentwood is bordered by Pacific Palisades on the northwest, Santa Monica on the west, West Los Angeles on the south, Bel Air on the northeast, and Sawtelle and Westwood on the east. The district is bounded by the San Diego Freeway on the east, Wilshire Boulevard on the south, the Santa Monica city limits on the west, and the ridgeline of the Santa Monica Mountains on the north. The area's ZIP code is 90049.
Transportation
Major thoroughfares include Sunset, San Vicente, and Wilshire Boulevards, Barrington and Montana Avenues, and Bundy Drive. Once linked to Los Angeles by a Pacific Electric Railway track on San Vicente, Brentwood is now a major battleground for the future of public transportation in Los Angeles. In a controversial move loudly protested by business owners, the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) has reserved the outermost lane of Wilshire Boulevard in each direction as a bus-only lane, in a possible precursor to the adoption of bus rapid transit service along the entire length of Wilshire. The difficulty of getting into and out of Brentwood by any means but private automobile (aggravated by the MTA's cancellation of several "nanny bus" lines connecting the district to poorer areas of Los Angeles) has led to widespread calls for an extension of the Wilshire Boulevard leg of MTA's Red Line subway, which currently ends at Western Avenue in Koreatown, through Brentwood to Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica; a Brentwood stop would presumably be sited in the high-rise district near Barrington Avenue.
The Neighborhood
The area that is now Brentwood was part of the Rancho San Vicente y Santa Monica, a Spanish land-grant ranch sold off in pieces to Anglos after Mexico's defeat in the Mexican-American War. An agricultural district at the time of its annexation by Los Angeles in 1916, Brentwood is now one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Los Angeles, and one of the most important districts of the Westside. It has prosperous commercial districts along each of its major east-west thoroughfares (Wilshire, San Vicente, and Sunset). Its population is largely professionals and executives, and is virtually all white and heavily Jewish.
San Vicente Boulevard, considered the "Main Street" of Brentwood, is divided by a wide median on which stand many large coral trees. The median and the trees replaced the derelict Pacific Electric track, and the trees have become a Historic-Cultural Monument (#148) for the city of Los Angeles. (Brentwood boosters have adopted the silhouette of a coral tree as a de facto town logo. Local traditions include the Maypole erected each year on the lawn of the Eastern Star Home, and the annual decoration of the coral trees with holiday lights. Inspired by the adjacent Los Angeles National Cemetery , Brentwood once regularly hosted a Memorial Day parade, complete with an elephant named Tiny; the tradition is now only sporadically practiced, perhaps owing to the district's notoriously left-wing politics. (Along with neighboring Santa Monica, and perhaps all of western Los Angeles, Brentwood has become a byword for "limousine liberalism," its representatives in Sacramento and Washington renowned for their socially liberal views.)
Housing
Important residential subdistricts include Brentwood Park, Brentwood Heights, South Brentwood and Westgate. Brentwood Park is notable for its layout, having been designed around several large traffic circles, a handful of which remain. Most Brentwood residents reside in single-family homes, with many spectacular villas and estates located in the hilly areas north of Sunset (most notably in the Mid-Century Modernist subdivision of Crestwood Hills); there are also large, modern apartment complexes located on most of district's primary and secondary thoroughfares.
Recreation
Popular recreational spots include the Brentwood Country Mart, an early farmer's market complex built in 1947; the Brentwood Village, a cozy shopping district near the intersection of Sunset and Barrington; and more recently, Brentwood Green, a "village commons" created from the playground at Brentwood Science Magnet Elementary School. The 2.7-mile-long (4.3 km) boundary of the private Brentwood Country Club is a popular local jogging route.
Education
In addition to Brentwood Elementary, the area is served by Kenter Canyon Elementary School and Canyon Elementary School, all three of which are part of Los Angeles Unified School District. Locals attending public school usually go to either Emerson Junior High or Paul Revere Junior High; the local public high schools are University High School (named for nearby UCLA, formerly Warren G. Harding High), just outside the neighborhood's boundaries and often thought to be located in Brentwood, and Pacific Palisades High School, in nearby Pacific Palisades.
As befits a neighborhood of its wealth, Brentwood is also home to several private schools, including Brentwood School, St. Martin of Tours Catholic School , and the Archer School for Girls , located in what was once the historic Eastern Star Home. The old Eastern Star Home can be seen as the setting of the "Mar Vista Rest Home" in the movie Chinatown (1974).
Notable Residents
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger lives in the hills above Brentwood, as do a variety of other entertainment industry notables, including Jim Carrey, Cindy Crawford, Phyllis Diller, Angela Lansbury, and Cloris Leachman. Past celebrity residents have included Gary Cooper, Clark Gable, Tyrone Power, Joan Crawford, Barbara Stanwyck, Harry Morgan, and Marilyn Monroe. In the 1960s and '70s, TV dads Dick Van Dyke, Don Defore and Bill Bixby made their homes in the area.
Bundy Drive in Brentwood was the site of the notorious murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, and O.J. Simpson's ensuing bizarre slow-speed freeway chase began and ended at his Brentwood mansion.
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