Midwick View Estates, Monterey Park, CA

Midwick View Estates carries the grandest unfinished plan in Monterey Park's history, and you can still see it spilling down the hillside off Atlantic Boulevard. In the 1920s developer Peter Snyder set out to build an east side answer to Bel-Air and Beverly Hills here, then the Depression stopped the project with only a handful of houses built. Heritage Falls Park, long known as the Cascades, sends water down a tiled hillside in stepped pools toward the street, with a fountain and Athena statue at the top and the development's coat of arms still in place. Homes in Midwick View Estates tell the rest of the story. Sequoia Park on Ridgecrest Street gives the upper streets a neighborhood playground and lawn, and the Cascades make for a short evening walk from almost anywhere in the neighborhood. The Atlantic Boulevard frontage is where the neighborhood eats. Duck House is known for its Peking duck, and across the street NBC Seafood still runs classic dim sum with push carts. Mr. Baguette makes sandwiches and Jim's Bakery fills pastry boxes in the same plaza at 400 South Atlantic, and Shinano handles Japanese farther south on the boulevard. Groceries are a few minutes north at 99 Ranch on Garvey Avenue or the Ralphs on North Atlantic, and the 10 and 710 freeways are close enough that downtown Los Angeles is an easy commute outside rush hour. The same freeways are the tradeoff, since the streets closest to them pick up a steady traffic hum. The unusual part of daily life here is that the 1920s waterfall and the dim sum run sit within a few blocks of each other on the same boulevard.