Westchester, Los Angeles, CA

Westchester began as Fritz Burns' affordable housing tract on old hog-farm land near where Manchester meets Sepulveda in the late 1930s, and this slice of Los Angeles still reads as a postwar suburb on the bluff above the coast. Homes in Westchester are mostly single-family houses built during the 1940s and 1950s, when the aerospace industry around the airport was growing fast. Many have been added onto over the decades, and apartment buildings run along the main boulevards. Westchester Park on Lincoln Boulevard has pools, courts and athletic fields, and the Westchester Golf Course on Manchester was trimmed from 18 holes to 15 when the airport expanded. Dockweiler State Beach stretches along Vista del Mar below the bluffs, and the Ballona freshwater marsh borders the north side. Pann's on La Tijera has served all-day breakfast and fried chicken under its Googie roofline since 1958. Truxton's American Bistro on Truxton Avenue does comfort food like a short rib grilled cheese, and Tomat on 87th Street cooks vegetable-forward California food using produce from its own garden. The Boy & The Bear roasts coffee on La Tijera. Sepulveda Boulevard carries the main errands, with Trader Joe's, Ralphs and Target, and the Westchester Farmers Market meets on Lincoln. Driving handles most trips, though the 87th Street and Sepulveda blocks are walkable for a meal. The airport is the tradeoff. Jet noise is constant in the southern blocks, and beginning in the 1960s the city bought and removed thousands of homes nearest the runways. Pann's on La Tijera and the Theme Building at LAX are both Googie landmarks, and both date from the same postwar decades that built most of Westchester's houses.