Monday, April 14, 2014

Welcome Brockmont Park: Glendale’s Newest Historic District!

Valley View Road in the Brockmont Park Historic District.
Glendale City Council recently voted to designate the city’s sixth historic district - Brockmont Park.  This beautiful neighborhood in Northwest Glendale is notable not only for its excellent architecture, but also for its interesting history.

The area’s 59 homes are located north of Kenneth Road and roughly bounded by Merriman Drive on the west, Valley View Road on the east, and Cumberland Road and Arbor Drive at the north. Most of the houses were built between the late 1920s and middle 1950s and almost every major architectural style of those decades is represented. The neighborhood’s streets are distinctive for their mature trees, with entire blocks lined with either white pines, Canary pines, or fan palms.

The Brockman Clock Tower.
The new district is located on part of the former 140-acre estate of John Brockman, a self-made millionaire who struck it rich in the gold and silver mines of New Mexico and Arizona. Eventually settling in Los Angeles, he invested in real estate and became important in the growth and development of downtown – the Brockman Building at 7th and Grand still bears his name. In 1909, he bought land at the foot of the Verdugo Mountains to build his retirement home, which he called “Brockmont.” Along with the grand mansion, he built a four-story clock tower and created extensively landscaped grounds that included a lake with an island and a deer park. The house and the tower are both listed on the Glendale Register of Historic Resources and now look out over the new historic district. The district consists of the southern portion of the estate, which was laid out and developed as “Brockmont Park” by the Home Realty Company shortly after Brockman’s death in 1925. Promotional literature hailed the tract as “The Ideal Home Community” – a sentiment that local residents continue to share!

Brockmont Park joins the city’s five other historic districts, which help manage change in designated districts by making sure that alterations and additions visible from the street keep the historic character that makes Glendale’s older neighborhoods so desirable.

Please visit the Community Development Department's webpage for more information about historic preservation in Glendale.

Friday, April 11, 2014

Poster Contest Winner Announced

Over 400 students, parents and school officials gathered at the Glendale Civic Auditorium on April 9th to find out who the next  “I Love My Neighborhood” Poster Contest winner would be. 

Sixty-five finalists were selected from a pool of over 4,500 entries and were honored at the 21st annual poster contest awards ceremony where they each received a trophy. Posters were judged on technical merit, use of color and space and adherence to the contest theme,  “Me+Recycling=My Glendale.” This year participants were encouraged to think about how taking care of the environment would make a positive and lasting impact on the quality of life in the City of Glendale. The poster contest, yielded many creative and unusual posters. Participants let their imaginations soar as they depicted themselves as Glendale’s environmental stewards.

A countdown of the top ten posters culminated with the unveiling of Alexandra Schwalbach's grand prize winning poster. Alexandra, a 5th grader from Mountain Avenue Elementary School, will become a civic pride ambassador and will be invited to make appearances at various community functions.

The “I Love My Neighborhood” Poster Contest was developed in 1993 by the Committee for a Clean & Beautiful Glendale and City of Glendale staff to educate students and their families about civic responsibility and neighborhood pride. Standards aligned lessons and activities are provided in a teacher’s guide where students learn about the sources of litter and pollution prevention.


Click here to view the Awards Ceremony photo gallery.

Grand prize winning poster by Alexandra Schwalbach.
For more information about the “I Love My Neighborhood” Poster Contest, please contact Program Coordinator, Sandra Rodriguez at (818) 937-8333.