Adams Hill

This partly hillside neighborhood is perhaps one of Glendale’s most beautiful and, if it were north of the Ventura Freeway near Brand Park, would probably reflect it uniformly throughout the entire neighborhood in both income and home prices. Indeed, along the hill itself, the homes perched along winding lanes named after Yale, Princeton, Berkeley and Stanford present outstanding views north up into Glendale and sometimes west to Griffith Park and Los Angeles. These hillside beauties have road side garages and then drop down some three stories, with multiple balconies over the cliff side.

This is definitely the most expensive area of the neighborhood. As the streets straighten into a gentle slop to west, the home prices drop and the neighborhood—strictly from a examination of average wages—would seem to turn into a middle class neighborhood. If you look at the well kept older homes in this area—the polished Mission style homes and occasional high roofed Tudors—you would have little clue however that this was not just as expensive a neighborhood as any in Beverly Hills.

The reason for the drop in prices has to do with the proximity to Los Angeles County and the gang problems just over the border. Fears about crime and urban creep scare off many prospective homebuyers who sense the Forest Lawn Cemetary is not much of a buffer for the bigger problems to the south. In fact, on New Year’s Day, 2008, the neighborhood awoke to the news a gang murder in the cemetery during the wee hours of the morning.

Despite these fears, Glendale itself remains one of the safer neighborhoods in LA County, with only a handful of murders in the last three years despite having a population of over 200,000. Despite this, if one maps the murders one finds that they tend to accumulate south of the Ventura Freeway and closer to the LA border than elsewhere in the neighborhood. Some may fear that south Glendale may return to the gang violence of 2005 when murders spiked to 19 in one year. Since then, however, the city has not seen anywhere near this level of violence with never more than 4 in a year since then. (Although burglaries have continued steady throughout the decade.)

Overall, however, these fear may mean some good deals for young couples or for those who don’t mind taking a bit of risk in order to reap a great reward.

Alot of the Glendale area in California has really cleaned up since the late 90’s. I grew up in the Adams Hill area of Glendale which was one of the better area of Glendale. The neighborhood has a rich history that goes back to the mid 1800’s and can be seen today in the large Victorian houses that dot many of the streets. In recent years different varieties of ethnic groups have called the Adams Hill area home including a large number of Armenians. The area has seen recent business construction as well as residential construction with affordable and nice apartments. Some of the older Victorian styled houses are being preserved to keep the historical integrity of the area. This is a great area to view to enjoy the history of the city and an even greater area for young couples that are looking for a semi-decent place to live with affordable rates.