This is one of five historic homes I selected for a “Trail” guide I curated for Friends of Residential Treasures: Los Angeles. Download the entire “Let’s Hit the Trail Kids!” guide for free here.

A cluster of craftsman bungalows built in the 1910s-1920s just south of the Hollywood Bowl and surrounded by mature trees. There’s nothing quite like it in Los Angeles.

Added to the National Register of Historic Places on March 16, 1989

LA is full of architectural delights hiding in plain sight. Take the Highland-Camrose Bungalow Village. It took me 39 years of driving past it before I even realized there was something to see on the other side of the vine-covered wall blocking out the street noise on the busy stretch of Highland Ave. between the Hollywood Bowl and Franklin Ave.

Highland-Camrose is an oasis of small craftsman-style houses, all one or two stories, connected by a network of walkways and short stone retaining walls made of river rock. It’s all wrapped in a big green hug by a miniature forest of mature trees. The NRHP nomination form contains a “horticultural breakdown” (sounds like an old-timey dance move, right?) that lists cypress, eugenia, acacia, mock orange and redwoods among the nearly century-old flora.

Unlike the bajillion historic bungalow courts we find in Pasadena, arranged in neat rows with a central walkway dividing them, Highland-Camrose is clustered on a hillside, fully integrated into the dirt and plantlife that surrounds it. It’s a unique vibe that you won’t find anywhere in Los Angeles, perhaps even the entire state – an informational plaque suggests it’s “the only known example of an authentic Craftsman bungalow hillside cluster development in California.”

The land was once owned by C.E. Toberman, the real estate developer who nearly literally put Hollywood on the map in the early 1900s. It was purchased in 1914 (eight years before the Hollywood Bowl officially opened) by Horace W. Field, who lived there and commissioned 14 bungalows built over the course of the next decade. They were all designed and built by local architects/contractors the Taylor Brothers and Lee Campbell.

As with pretty much every historic building in Hollywood, there are plenty of entertainers and artists said to have lived at Highland-Camrose over the years. This LA Times article from 1992 cites Laurel & Hardy, Marilyn Monroe (where did she not live?), Tyrone Power, Linda Ronstadt, JD Souther and Jackson Browne as former residents. Simple bungalows like this would have provided a more affordable, humble alternative to the more expensive single-family homes popping up in the Hollywood Hills and Whitley Heights. 

The Field family owned Highland-Camrose until the ‘60s. But by the ‘80s the buildings were falling apart and uncared for, and by the early ‘90s it had been taken over by LA County. A stabilization plan was hammered out to convert the property into a park for Hollywood Bowl picnickers – and while it turned out real nice, it also meant the demolition of seven of the original 14 houses. 

The Highland-Camrose Bungalow Park, as it’s known today, opened in 1996. Where the very earliest Highland-Camrose house once stood – a Dutch colonial revival that predated Field’s purchase of the land – there’s now a wood and steel pavilion with picnic tables and space for outdoor performances. The buildings have been rehabbed into office space, and now they house an LA County Sheriff’s Department HQ and a few organizations related to the Hollywood Bowl and the LA Philharmonic. 

Do I wish I could experience Highland-Camrose as it was in the ‘20s, with all 14 houses intact and the Cahuenga Pass trolley rumbling down Highland to take me to work? Yes. Am I content with what it’s become now, after the demolition of half the original homes? Also yes. This is a unique spot, architecturally and landscapally, and I am absolutely taking homemade sandwiches and a nice bottle of Belgian beer here next time I go to the Hollywood Bowl, instead of sitting on an uncomfortable bench inside the Bowl after shelling out $25 for lukewarm nachos.

Recommended Reading

+Highland-Camrose Bungalow Village NRHP nomination form

+Exploring Hollywood’s Historic Neighborhoods (Hollywood Heritage newsletter Volume 32, Number 2, 2013)

+The Battle of the Bungalows (LA Times, 1992)

+@CahuengaPast post (2022)