Woodbury, Glendale, CA

Woodbury is the hilly, close-in part of northeast Glendale between the 2 and 134 freeways, south of Glendale Community College and a few minutes from downtown. It has a more everyday feel than the canyon neighborhoods farther up, with a hospital campus, a real grocery corridor and older houses packed onto the slopes. The housing is a sampler of 20th-century Southern California. Tile-roofed Spanish Colonial homes with arched entries sit next to Mediterranean Revivals, Tudors, Craftsman bungalows and postwar ranch houses, often on the same street. Lots are smaller than in Chevy Chase or Oakmont, and apartment buildings fill in along the main roads. Woodbury eats well along its main streets. Pardis Restaurant on North Glendale Avenue serves Persian cooking, and O Coffee a couple of doors up is the neighborhood espresso stop. Errands are easy here. Ralphs and Golden Farms Market share the center at 1010 North Glendale Avenue, and Ararat Market on East Glenoaks Boulevard adds a smaller neighborhood grocery. Buses run along North Glendale Avenue and Harvey Drive, and the park and ride on Harvey helps with carpools. Verdugo Park is a short drive north with ballfields and a skatepark, and Chevy Chase Canyon and its golf courses are a few minutes east. The tradeoff is noise and traffic. The freeway interchanges and the Adventist Health Glendale campus on Wilson Terrace keep the lower streets busy, and the upper slopes near the Verdugos carry wildfire risk. What Woodbury does best is put downtown Glendale, Pasadena and Burbank all within a short drive of a house with some age and character.