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Glendale, California
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Glendale is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. It lies at the eastern end of the San Fernando Valley, is bisected by the Verdugo Mountains, and is a suburb in the Greater Los Angeles Area. The city is bordered to the northwest by the Tujunga neighborhood of Los Angeles; to the northeast by La Cañada Flintridge and the unincorporated area of La Crescenta; to the west by Burbank; to the east by Pasadena; to the southwest by the Atwater Village neighborhood of East Los Angeles; and to the southeast by the Eagle Rock and Glassell Park neighborhoods of East Los Angeles.
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Encyclopedia
Glendale is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. It lies at the eastern end of the San Fernando Valley, is bisected by the Verdugo Mountains, and is a suburb in the Greater Los Angeles Area. The city is bordered to the northwest by the Tujunga neighborhood of Los Angeles; to the northeast by La Cañada Flintridge and the unincorporated area of La Crescenta; to the west by Burbank; to the east by Pasadena; to the southwest by the Atwater Village neighborhood of East Los Angeles; and to the southeast by the Eagle Rock and Glassell Park neighborhoods of East Los Angeles. The Golden State, Ventura, Glendale, and Foothill freeways run through the city. The city is policed by the Glendale Police Department.
As of the 2000 census, the city population was 194,973. Since then, there have been estimates of 201,326 by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2004 and 207,007 by the California State government in 2005, making it the third largest city in Los Angeles County and the seventeenth largest city in the state of California.
Glendale is famous for having helped -- in conjunction with Burbank -- father the emerging age of aviation, with its now defunct Grand Central Airport.
Glendale's Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery contains the remains of many celebrities and local residents. It is famous as the pioneer of a new style of cemetery.
History
The area was long inhabited by the Tongva people.
José María Verdugo, a corporal in the Spanish army from Baja California, received a grant of the Rancho San Rafael in 1798, an area he had been farming since 1784. In 1860 His grandson Teodoro Verdugo built the Verdugo Adobe, which is the oldest building in Glendale. The property is the location of the Oak of Peace where early Californio leaders including Jesus Pico met in 1847 and decided to surrender to Lieutenant Colonel John C. Frémont.
Verdugo's descendants sold the ranch in various parcels, some of which are included in present-day Atwater Village, Eagle Rock, and Highland Park neighborhoods of Los Angeles.
In 1884, residents gathered to form a town and chose the name "Glendale". Residents to the southwest formed "Tropico" in 1887. The Pacific Electric Railroad brought streetcar service in 1904.
Glendale incorporated in 1906, and annexed Tropico 12 years later. An important civic booster of the era was Leslie Coombs Brand (1859-1925), who built an estate in 1904 called El Miradero featuring an eye-catching mansion whose architecture combined characteristics of Spanish, Moorish, and Indian styles, copied from the East Indian Pavilion at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition (World's Fair) held in Chicago, which he visited. Brand loved to fly, and built a private airstrip in 1919 and hosted "fly-in" parties, providing a direct link to the soon-to-be-built nearby Grand Central Airport. The grounds of El Miradero are now city-owned Brand Park and the mansion is the Brand Library, according to the terms of his will. . Brand partnered with Henry E. Huntington to bring the Pacific Electric Railway, or the "Red Cars," to the area. Today, he is memorialized by one of the city's main thoroughfares, Brand Boulevard.
The city's population rose from 13,756 in 1920 to 62,736 in 1930. The Forest Lawn Memorial Park opened in 1917. Pioneering endocrinologist and entrepreneur Dr. Henry R. Harrower opened his clinic in Glendale in 1920, which for many years was the largest business in the city. The American Green Cross, an early conservation and tree preservation society, was formed in 1926 (it disbanded three years later and the current organization of that name is unrelated). In 1964, Glendale was selected by George Lincoln Rockwell to be the West Coast headquarters of the American Nazi Party. Its offices, on Colorado Street in the downtown section of the city, remained open until the early 1980s.
Industry and development
- Grand Central Airport was a municipal airport developed from 1923 which became the largest employer in Glendale for many years, and contributed to the development of aviation in the United States in many important ways. The main terminal building still stands and includes both art deco and Spanish style architectural elements. The facility was the first official terminal for the Los Angeles area as well as the departure point for the first commercial west to east transcontinental flight flown by Charles Lindbergh. During World War II, the Grand Central Air Terminal building was camouflaged to protect it from enemy targeting. It was closed down in 1959, and made way for the Grand Central Business Park.
- The Bob's Big Boy chain of hamburger restaurants started in Glendale on East Colorado in August 1936, and the Baskin-Robbins, "31 Flavors" chain of ice cream parlors started in Adams Square in 1945.
- The Glendale Public Library on Harvard Street houses its "Special Collections" department which contains original documents and records on much of the history of Glendale. It also contains one of the largest collections of books on cats in the world, over 20,000 volumes. It was donated to the library in the 1950s by the Jewel City Cat Fanciers Club, with the understanding that it would be made into a special collection and kept permanently for club members to use and enjoy.
The city saw significant development in the 1970s.
- Redevelopment of Brand Boulevard, renovation of the 1925 Alex Theatre, and construction of the Glendale Galleria shopping mall which opened in 1976.
- Several large companies have offices in Glendale. The U.S. headquarters of the Swiss foods multinational Nestlé and International House of Pancakes are located in Glendale. The Los Angeles regional office of California's State Compensation Insurance Fund is in Glendale. Nero AG, the software company that makes Nero Burning Rom, also has its main North American subsidiary located in Glendale. Neopets, Inc., a company that created the popular virtual pet website, Neopets, is located in the city (it was sold in 2005 to Viacom).
- In 1994, Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen formed DreamWorks SKG, a diversified entertainment company. The company's animation section is located in the city's Grand Central Business Park on land formerly occupied by a helicopter landing base on the old air field. The Walt Disney Company also has a large campus located in the Grand Central Business Park that includes the headquarters for its Imagineering division, and also owns what's left of Grand Central Terminal. Part of KABC-TV has located there.
- In 2005, construction began near to the Galleria of developer Rick Caruso's "Americana at Brand", a 15.5 acre outdoor shopping and residential community. Caruso had previously designed and built The Grove at Farmers Market. The new Glendale development was opened to the public on May 2, 2008, and features 75 shops and restaurants, 238 apartments, 100 condominiums, and a Pacific Theatres 18-plex Cinema which seats 3000 people . Today, the Americana is the new shopping, dining and entertainment attraction bringing in visitors from all over Southern California, even Hollywood celebrities.
Crime
Glendale police officers took on bootleggers and airmen in the 1920s, a decade when the department had both a "liquor detail" and an "air policeman" charged with citing pilots for flying violations committed over the city. In 1944, the Glendale city manager took on Police Chief V.B. Browne over suspected officer corruption, and Browne was asked to resign for failing to control his staff. But Browne asked to stay on as a patrolman, and he walked a beat until his retirement in 1948.
Glendale lost four police officers in the line of duty. The first officer in the area killed in the line of duty was Charles Whitney Smith, marshal for the city of Tropico, later annexed by Glendale. Smith had already been told he was fired, but he wanted to finish his day. So on his last day, Jan. 9, 1915, he was shot to death when he tried to stop a robbery suspect on a street car.
Glendale police officer Leslie O. Clem was killed in a motorcycle accident in 1926 while pursuing a suspect's car. During the course of the pursuit his motorcycle struck streetcar tracks, causing Officer Clem to be thrown from the bike. He succumbed to his injuries the next day.
In 1997, Charles Lazzaretto became the first Glendale police officer in 25 years to die in the line of duty when an attempted-murder suspect, holed up in a Chatsworth warehouse, shot Lazzaretto in the head. In the ensuing gunfight, the suspect was slain and two Los Angeles police officers wounded. Glendale police officer John Isaacson was killed in an automobile accident while on duty in 1972.
In 1985, "Night Stalker" Richard Ramirez terrorized the Los Angeles area, including Glendale. He was linked to the death of Max Kneiding and his wife, Lela Ellen, who were shot to death in their Glendale home. Ramirez also was later linked to a slaying just south of Glendale's Forest Lawn Memorial Park. In an earlier case, Angelo Buono, a Glendale auto upholsterer, was convicted of sexually torturing and murdering nine women whose bodies were dumped on Los Angeles-area hillsides in 1977 and 1978.
In June 1990, an arson fire damaged or destroyed 64 homes in Glendale's San Rafael Hills and caused $40 million in damage. Evening rush-hour traffic was brought to a halt at the height of the fire as flames burned on both sides of the Glendale Freeway. The 100-acre fire, one of the worst in the city's history, resulted in flames leapfrogging from house to house, destroying some, leaving others untouched. After the devastating fire, the Glendale City Council passed a brush-clearing ordinance that called for more frequent inspection of private property by fire officials, and it allowed firefighters to cut back overgrown brush on private property and charge owners for the work.
On February 6, 1996, seven people were killed in the worst arson-murder in the city's history. The fire killed a Glendale mother, Turan Avanesian, and her six children, from ages 4 to 17. Jorjik Avanesian, who was convicted of dousing his family's one-bedroom apartment in Glendale with gasoline and setting it on fire, later killed himself in jail.
In 2005, 11 people died and about 180 were injured in a Metrolink (Southern California) train accident when a man who later claimed he was suicidal parked his sport utility vehicle on the tracks in Glendale. The driver was convicted of murder.
Gangs
Glendale was once home to more than 30 different gangs. Gang violence peaked in the 90's. Over time, the numbers have dropped significantly, and now there are only five documented gangs in the city.
Gang activity has been primarily located in the low-income area of South Glendale, bordering the Northeast Los Angeles neighborhoods of Atwater Village, Glassell Park and Eagle Rock. Historically, South Glendale has been claimed by the Mexican gang Tooner Ville Rifa. The gang's ongoing attempt to control this area has lead to turf wars between it and rival gangs from the bordering cities. Even the arrest and conviction of one of the gang's leaders has done little to stop gang activity. The problem has pushed Glendale and Los Angeles city officials to seek an injunction against the gang, covering 4.5 square-miles. This area is bordered by the Los Angeles River, the Glendale Freeway, and the streets of Broadway and Verdugo Road. In 2009, TVR was listed as one of LAPD's top 14 targeted street gangs.
Another primary source of Glendale's gang problem is the Avenues gang, which has also been listed as one of the LAPD's top 14 targeted street gangs. On June 25th, 2008, over 500 officers, including SWAT teams, participated in a take-down of the gang. A clique leader was arrested in the 900 block of East Windsor in South Glendale.
Geography
Glendale is located at (34.170939, -118.250081) at the juncture of two large valleys, the San Fernando and the San Gabriel. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of . 79.4 km² (30.6 mi²) of it is land and 0.1 km² (0.04 mi²) of it (0.07%) is water. It is bordered to the north by the foothill communities of La Canada Flintridge, La Crescenta, and Tujunga; to the south by the Atwater Village community incorporated by the city of Los Angeles; to the east by Pasadena and Eagle Rock (also incorporated within Los Angeles); and to the west by the city of Burbank.
Demographics
Statistics
Foreign-born residents accounted for 54% of the population in 2000.
As of the census of 2000, there were 194,973 people, 71,805 households, and 49,617 families residing in the city. The population density was 2,456.1/km² (6,362.2/mi²). There were 73,713 housing units at an average density of 928.6/km² (2,405.3/mi²). The racial makeup of the city was 63.6% White, 1.6% Black or African American, 0.3% Native American, 16.1% Asian American, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 8.6% from other races, and 10.1% from two or more races. 19.7% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.
There were 71,805 households out of which 32.9% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 52.3% were married couples living together, 11.8% had a female householder with no husband present, and 30.9% were non-families. 25.7% of all households were made up of individuals and 8.7% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.68 and the average family size was 3.27.
In the city the population was spread out with 22.4% under the age of 18, 8.4% from 18 to 24, 32.2% from 25 to 44, 23.1% from 45 to 64, and 13.9% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 38 years. For every 100 females there were 91.3 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 88.0 males.
The median income for a household in the city was $41,805, and the median income for a family was $47,633. Males had a median income of $39,709 versus $33,815 for females. The per capita income for the city was $22,227. About 13.6% of families and 15.5% of the population were below the poverty line, including 20.7% of those under age 18 and 11.9% of those age 65 or over.
Armenian population
Glendale is the city with the largest Armenian population in the United States. Census figures indicate that people of Armenian heritage make up 40% of the city's population, totaling some 85,000 Armenian-Americans, and 29.61% of the city's population, some 54,180 people, speak the Armenian language at home. As of 2007, two of the five members of Glendale's city council are of Armenian descent, Ara J. Najarian and Bob Yousefian. Armenian families have lived in the city since the 1920s, but the surge in immigration escalated in the 1970s and has fundamentally altered Glendale, transforming a former bastion of Anglo-Saxon, Protestant political power into a cultural melting pot. Evidence of Armenian influence pervades Glendale, and includes many restaurants, several Armenian schools, ethnic/cultural organizations, and on Armenian-language business and storefront signs. The Armenian community itself has evolved into a diverse group, with some in wealthy neighborhoods in the hills and poorer immigrants in south Glendale.
The transition has not always been smooth, as evidenced by various controversies, including:
- Dispute in late 2006 over whether laws banning outdoor-grilling should be enforced on restaurants serving Armenian ethnic food.
- Every year as many Armenian residents recognize Armenian Genocide Commemoration Day by abstaining from work or school, displaying flags on their homes and cars, and distributing leaflets and fliers, and as city officials lower the American flag to half-mast, some longtime residents feel disenfranchised regarding the attention the event receives.
- Tension grows between Armenian and Latino students in Glendale's local high schools after numerous fights and rivalries including Herbert Hoover and Glendale High School.
Education
The Glendale Unified School District operates the public schools in Glendale. The GUSD high schools include:
A number of private schools also operate in Glendale:
Glendale is also home to Glendale Community College.
Politics
The city of Glendale, along with neighboring Burbank and Pasadena, falls under California's 29th district in the United States House of Representatives. Congressman Adam Schiff has represented the district since 2000, and his vocal stances on issues regarding US-Armenia relations reflect the large Armenian presence in the district. Though the 29th district contains six other cities, Glendale, the district's largest city, is much less Democratic than its five sister cities as it is the only city in the district to have more registered Republicans (50.4) than Democrats(48.9). Bill Clinton, who pulled a campaign stop in the picturesque Glendale Galleria, lost the city in the 1992 election.
In the state legislature Glendale is located in the 21st Senate District, represented by Democrat Jack Scott, and in the 38th and 43rd Assembly Districts, represented by Republican Cameron Smyth and Democrat Paul Krekorian respectively. Federally, Glendale is located in California's 29th congressional district, which has a Cook PVI of D +12 and is represented by Democrat Adam Schiff.
Community organizations
The City of Glendale includes a variety of nonprofit organizations that enhance the quality of life in Glendale. Strong links between local residents, business owners, and government have created a network of organizations that provide support in the areas of education, employment, homeless services, after-school activities, and social services. Local organizations include:
Sister cities
Currently, Glendale has the following sister cities.
Notable residents
A number of notable people are natives of or have lived in Glendale, including:
See also
External links
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