Mutual Plans
Original Mutual Housing Association Home Plans.
These are the original MHA home plans given to homebuyers to help them with their model decision. The artist sketches give a good indication of what the original vision for Crestwood Hills would have looked like if fully realized. A few of the models in the catalog were eliminated.
Large format details for each model can be downloaded.
CA Modern article “LOVING THE HIGHLIFE”
LOVING THE HIGHLIFE
Cooperative housing pioneer to landmark honors –
Crestwood Hills savors its affection for modernism
From the pages of CA-Modern magazine
By Dave Weinstein
Few neighborhoods have gotten underway with grander plans than Crestwood Hills. Imagine a place where hardworking musicians, teachers, and writers can live together, close to the city yet surrounded by nature, with cooperatively owned schools, stores, medical services — and even a bus to take them to their jobs in Los Angeles.
Such was the dream. And some of it came true.
“It was very exciting, I have to say,” says Nora Weckler, who joined the Mutual Housing Association, which in the late 1940s developed the site in the then-remote Santa Monica Mountains high above Sunset Boulevard.
continue at: http://www.eichlernetwork.com/article/loving-highlife-crestwood-hills-los-angeles
2007 FIRE SAFETY
— by Tom Freeman & Wendy-Sue Rosen
Courtesy of: The Upper Mandeville Canyon Property Owners’ Association uppermandeville.org
1961 Bel Air – Brentwood Fire (photos via: lafire.com)
The risk of wildfire in Mandeville Canyon is a reality. Fire Officials are particularly concerned given the drought conditions over the past year. We have just completed one of the driest “rainy” seasons on record, with only 3.21 inches of rain — almost a foot below the normal level. As a result, “fire season” has begun early, as indicated by the large brush fires in Griffith Park and Catalina Island, as well as smaller fires in Los Feliz and Beverly Hills. Some firefighters, with many years of experience, have noted with concern that the hills are drier than they have ever seen. We can expect that conditions will worsen with extreme heat, low humidity and dry winds.
Historic-Cultural Monuments in Crestwood Hills
Over the past decade 16 Homes in Crestwood Hills have been declared Historic-Cultural Monuments.
Crestwood Hills, An Architect’s View
MUTUAL HOUSING ASSOCIATION, 1947-1950
Cory Buckner, Architect
Hamma House construction
After the war, in 1946, four musicians formed the Cooperative Housing Group. The housing shortage for returning servicemen and the excitement of creating a model community through cooperative methods was forefront in the minds of the original founders. After being discharged from the Army, Ray Siegel was reunited with two musicians formerly with the Indianapolis Symphony, Leonard Krupnick and Jules Sulkan. With a fourth person, Gene Komer, a meeting was held in May of 1946 to discuss the possibilities of purchasing land together.
