Outpost Estates, Hollywood Hills

Outpost Estates sits in the Hollywood Hills, in the 90068 zip code. It is bordered by Mulholland Drive to the north, Franklin Avenue to the south, Runyon Canyon Park to the west, and Hollywood Heights and the Hollywood Bowl to the east. The neighborhood is organized around Outpost Drive, which climbs from Franklin into the canyon, with Senalda, Macapa, La Presa, El Cerrito, Carman Crest, Larmar, Malaga, Chelan, Maravilla and Oporto branching off it.

It is a small neighborhood — roughly 450 homes — which is exactly why neighborhood-level data matters here. A handful of sales in a month is the whole market, and a citywide average tells you almost nothing about it.

The land was a Tongva village long before any of this, and in 1853 Don Tomas Urquidez built a three-room adobe here — recorded as the first building in what would become Hollywood. General Harrison Gray Otis, who owned the Los Angeles Times, later acquired the estate and built a clubhouse on it that he called The Outpost. The name stuck to the hillside.

Charles E. Toberman — the developer behind much of built Hollywood — acquired the property in 1924 and laid out the tract that exists today. What makes Outpost Estates unusual is that he wrote the look of it into the deeds: homes had to be Spanish, Mediterranean or California modern in style, carry red tile roofs, include patios for outdoor living, and pass an architectural committee before they could be built. It was also among the first neighborhoods in the country to put all of its utilities underground, which is why the streets still have no overhead wires.

The Outpost sign came in the same era: red neon letters standing thirty feet high, the largest neon sign in the United States at the time. It was taken down during the Second World War, and hikers found what was left of it on the hillside in 2002.