While famous for its mansions and world-class shopping venues, Beverly Hills has emerged as an internationally recognized address for the headquarters of many leading companies, particularly in the field of entertainment, including Creative Artists Agency, William Morris Agency, ICM and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Science.
In 1900, Burton Green, along with several partners, purchased the land that was to become Beverly Hills for the Amalgamated Oil Company and commissioned a new round of oil exploration. After drilling many unproductive wells, they reorganized as the Rodeo Land and Water Company in 1906. Green and his wife renamed the land Beverly Hills after Beverly Farms, Massachusetts.
Green hired the landscape architect Wilbur D. Cook who, influenced by landscape designer Frederick Law Olmstead, created wide curving streets that hugged the hills. The City''s first streets: Rodeo, Canon, Crescent, Carmelita, Elevado and Lomitas were constructed in 1907. Cook also created an emerald necklace for his garden city, with a three-block greensward called Santa Monica Park. To further stimulate development, the Beverly Hills Hotel was constructed in 1912 at the site of the Gathering of the Waters.
Attracted to an elegant lifestyle made possible by the hotel, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford led the wave of movie stars here when they built their mansion, Pickfair, in 1919. Gloria Swanson, Will Rogers, Thomas Ince, Charlie Chaplin, Tom Mix, Carl Laemmle, Ronald Coleman, King Vidor, John Barrymore, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Jack Warner, Clara Bow, Marion Davies, Harry Cohn and Rudolph Valentino soon followed and built stylish mansions.
Beverly Hills continued to grow. Promotional materials from the period touted the young metropolis as "center of the next million." Fortunately, human-scale public improvements helped soften the effects of growth. In the 1930s, Santa Monica Park was renamed Beverly Gardens and was extended to span the length of the City. The famous Electric Fountain was installed. A finely modeled sculpture atop the fountain shows a Tongva in prayer, homage to Beverly Hills' heritage as a wellspring of fertility and abundance.
In the post World War II years, Beverly Hills continued to develop as one of the most glamorous places in the world to live, eat, play and, especially, shop. The Golden Triangle, with Rodeo Drive at its center, was built and marketed to the rest of the world as the shopping destination of a lifetime. Many other glamorous hotels opened, notably the Beverly Wilshire, attracting visitors from all over the world. The City''s iconic image was enhanced with the spread of television shows and movies set in Beverly Hills, among them The Jack Benny Show in the 1950s, The Beverly Hillbillies in the 1960s and, more recently, Beverly Hills Cop in the 1980s and Beverly Hills 90210 in the 1990s.
By the 1950''s, few vacant lots remained and developers cropped whole mountains to ease the housing shortage. Today, such excessive development has stopped and the population is around 34,000 and growing slowly. But the mystique of Beverly Hills as a place of wealth and beauty continues to grow.
Important Numbers
Beverly Hills Chamber of Commerce
239 S. Beverly Drive
Beverly Hills CA 90212
(310) 248-1000 www.beverlyhillschamber.com
Beverly Hills Unified School District
255 South Lasky Drive
Beverly Hills CA 90212
(310) 551-5100 www.beverlyhills.k12.ca.us
City Hall
455 N. Rexford Drive
Beverly Hills CA 90210
310) 285-1000 www.beverlyhills.org
Size: 5.7 sq. mi.
Population: 33,784
Median Age: 41.3
Gender
Male: 45.5%
Female: 54.5%
Race
White: 85.1%
Asian: 7.1%
Multi-racial: 4.5%
African-American: 1.8%
Other: 1.5%
Hispanic*: 4.6% *(Note: Census Bureau asked whether someone was Hispanic separately)
Number of Households
Family Households: 8,263
Non-Family Households: 6,772
Total Households: 15,035
Average Household Size: 2.24 persons
1990 - 2000 change in population +5.7%
1980 - 2000 change in population +4.4%
1970 - 2000 change in population +1.1%
Housing
Median housing price: $1,240,000 (Source: DataQuick)
Total housing units: 15,856
Total occupied housing units: 15,035
Owner occupied housing units: 6,518
Renter occupied housing units: 8,517
Mean household income (1989): $121,396
Median household income (1989: $54,348
Information from the 1990 U.S. Census of Population & Housing
Population under age 20: 18.9%
Population aged 65 or older: 20.3%
Number of households:14,564
Number of family households: 8,024
Average number of persons per household: 2.19
Single-person households: 38%
Households of three or more persons: 30%
While famous for its mansions and world-class shopping venues, Beverly Hills has emerged as an internationally recognized address for the headquarters of many leading companies, particularly in the field of entertainment, including Creative Artists Agency, William Morris Agency, ICM and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Science.