Lakewood Park, Lakewood, CA

Lakewood Park carries the name of the 1950 development that made Lakewood famous, when crowds lined up to tour model homes and builders finished thousands of houses in a few short years. The neighborhood sits in the middle of the city, between Lakewood Center and Bellflower Boulevard, and Mayfair Park, the city's original park, is inside its borders. Homes in Lakewood Park are the midcentury ranch houses from that first wave, mostly two and three bedrooms on flat, regular lots. Driving the grid, you can read seven decades of individual choices on houses that started out nearly the same. Its 18 acres hold lighted ballfields, tennis courts, a fitness trail and a seasonal pool, and the Pan American Fiesta takes over the grounds each May. San Martin Park, on Ocana Avenue, is known for its playground built around a Cinderella-style pumpkin carriage. The Burns Community Center on Clark Avenue hosts classes and meetings. Frisco's Carhops on Bellflower Boulevard serves burgers in a diner built around a 1950s carhop theme. For groceries, Vons anchors the center at Woodruff Avenue and South Street, and the Saturday farmers market on Clark Avenue is a short drive away. Getting around works best by car, though a bike covers a lot on these flat streets. Lakewood Boulevard and Bellflower Boulevard carry north-south traffic, the 605 and 91 are a few minutes away, and Lakewood Center is close enough for a quick trip for almost anything. The honest downside is that the main commercial strips lean heavily on chains and drive-thrus, so the standouts take some knowing. The park is a different story, and a summer evening at Mayfair Park, with games on the lighted fields and the pool open, shows how much of daily life here still runs through the city's oldest park.