Miracle Mile, Los Angeles, CA

Miracle Mile in Los Angeles is where the city first built a shopping street for drivers, and today that same stretch of Wilshire Boulevard is Museum Row, lined with LACMA, the Petersen Automotive Museum, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, plus the La Brea Tar Pits. Developer A.W. Behind the boulevard, the side streets hold single-family homes and duplexes built roughly between the mid-1920s and early 1940s. Spanish Colonial Revival is the most common look, and two historic preservation districts protect well over a thousand of these properties. Garden apartments and newer mid-rise buildings fill in closer to Wilshire and La Brea. The outdoor anchor is the park around the La Brea Tar Pits, the green that shares the Hancock name, where the asphalt seeps sit a few steps from open lawn. LACMA's campus connects to it, so a loop through both makes an easy daily walk. Wilshire Green Park on Sierra Bonita is a smaller neighborhood green. Eating out leans casual. Tom Bergin's on Fairfax has been an Irish pub landmark for generations, All Season Brewing Company on La Brea is a big brewery for daytime pints, and India's Tandoori on Wilshire runs a fast takeout business. Kouzeh Bakery bakes Iranian pastries, and the Miracle Mile Farmers Market comes to Wilshire each week. The biggest change in daily life is the D Line subway. Stations at Wilshire and La Brea and Wilshire and Fairfax connect the neighborhood to Koreatown and downtown without the freeway. Ralphs and Smart and Final on Wilshire cover groceries, and the Grove is a short hop north in the Fairfax area. Museum Row brings crowds and tour buses, and parking on the residential blocks near LACMA can be tight during big exhibitions. The upside is that in Miracle Mile a museum visit can be a short walk after dinner rather than a planned outing.