Glendale, California, United States

🇺🇸 Glendale is a city in the San Fernando Valley and Verdugo Mountains regions of Los Angeles County, California. It is the fourth-largest city in Los Angeles County and the 24th-largest city in California. It is located about 10 miles (16 km) north of downtown Los Angeles.

Glendale lies in the Verdugo Mountains, and is a suburb in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The city is bordered to the north-west by the Sun Valley and Tujunga neighborhoods of Los Angeles; to the north-east by La Cañada Flintridge and the unincorporated area of La Crescenta; to the west by Burbank and Griffith Park; to the east by Eagle Rock and Pasadena; to the south by the Atwater Village neighborhood of Los Angeles; and to the south-east by Glassell Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. The Golden State, Ventura, Glendale, and Foothill freeways run through the city.

History: Spanish rule In 1798, José María Verdugo, a corporal in the Spanish army from Baja California, received the Rancho San Rafael from Governor Diego de Borica, formalizing his possession and use of land on which he had been grazing livestock and farming since 1784. Rancho San Rafael was a Spanish concession, of which 25 were made in California. Unlike the later Mexican land grants, the concessions were similar to grazing permits, with the title remaining with the Spanish crown.

Mexican rule New Spain achieved its independence from the Spanish Empire in 1821, and from 1824, Rancho San Rafael existed within the new Mexican Republic.

1847 to present Mexican rule ended during the Mexican–American War: Americans took control from the Californios after a series of battles, culminating with the signing of the Treaty of Cahuenga on January 13, 1847. With the cession of California to the United States following the Mexican–American War, the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo provided that the land grants would be honored. As required by the Land Act of 1851, a claim was filed with the Public Land Commission in 1852, confirmed by the Commission in 1855, and the grant was patented to Julio and Catalina Verdugo in 1882.

In 1860, José María Verdugo's grandson Teodoro Verdugo built the Catalina Verdugo Adobe, which is the oldest building in Glendale. The property is the location of the Oak of Peace, where early Californio leaders including Pio Pico met in 1847 and decided to surrender to Lieutenant Colonel John C. Frémont.

Verdugo's descendants sold the ranch in various parcels, some of which are included in present-day Atwater Village, Eagle Rock, and Highland Park neighborhoods of Los Angeles.

In 1883, soon after Atwater Village was settled, the Atwater Tract Office brought train service to the area. In 1884, residents gathered to form a townsite and chose the name "Glendale". It was bounded by First Street (now Lexington Drive) on the north, Fifth Street (now Harvard Street) on the south, Central Avenue on the west, and the Childs Tract on the east. Residents to the south-west formed Tropico in 1887.

An important civic booster of the era was Leslie Coombs Brand (1859–1925), who built an estate in 1904 called El Miradero, featuring an eye-catching mansion, the architecture of which combined characteristics of Spanish, Moorish, and Indian styles, copied from the East Indian Pavilion at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition held in Chicago, which he visited.

Brand partnered with Henry E. Huntington to bring the Pacific Electric Railway, or the "Red Cars", to the area. The Glendale–Burbank Line, which was operational from 1904 to 1955, ran from Downtown Los Angeles to Burbank via Glendale. The dual-track streetcars entered the Glendale city limit by crossing San Fernando Road, and the line continued northerly in the pavement of Brand Boulevard, crossing Los Feliz Boulevard, Chevy Chase Boulevard, Colorado Boulevard, Broadway and Lexington Drive. The main line continued north to Verdugo Wash where the line became a single track. At Arden Junction at Glenoaks Boulevard, the line branched. The old main line continued north in the pavement of Brand Boulevard to a terminus in North Glendale at Mountain Avenue. The Burbank Line diverged westerly as a single-track line on private way in the centre of Glenoaks Boulevard, then continued westerly past Central, Pacific, Highland, Western, and Alameda Avenues to a terminus in Burbank at Cypress Avenue.

Brand loved to fly, and built a private airstrip in 1919 and hosted "fly-in" parties, providing a direct link to the soon-to-be-built nearby Grand Central Airport. The grounds of El Miradero are now city-owned Brand Park and the mansion is the Brand Library, according to the terms of his will.

The Forest Lawn Cemetery opened in 1906 and was renamed Forest Lawn Memorial-Park in 1917. Pioneering endocrinologist and entrepreneur Henry R. Harrower opened his clinic in Glendale in 1920, which for many years was the largest business in the city.

In 1922, the Atwater Tract Office was demolished, and construction began on the Glendale Transportation Center.

The city flag was adopted by Glendale on September 18, 1924, and was designed by Hugh A. Maron, who also won $100 dollars for designing it. The flag was then changed to the current one (seen above) in 2001.

The American Green Cross, an early conservation and tree preservation society, was formed in 1926 (it disbanded three years later and the current organization of that name is unrelated).

Grand Central Airport was the departure point for the first commercial west-to-east transcontinental flight flown by Charles Lindbergh.

Sundown town status Until as late as the 1960s, Glendale was a sundown town. Nonwhites were required to leave city limits by a certain time each day or risk arrest and possible violence. In the 1930s, Glendale and Burbank prevented the Civilian Conservation Corps from stationing African American workers in a local park, citing sundown town ordinances that both cities had adopted. In 1964, Glendale was selected by George Lincoln Rockwell to be the West Coast headquarters of the American Nazi Party. After a legal battle with the city of Glendale, the party moved their headquarters to El Monte in 1966.

The emergence of increasingly visible ethnic groups — including Armenians, Cubans and Filipinos and Koreans — changed the official discourse in Glendale. In 1972, C.E. Perkins, then city manager, encouraged the Rotary Club of Glendale to prepare itself as the city could no longer remain isolated in an increasingly diverse America.

Historic architecture Glendale began its historic preservation program in 1977 with the designation of 28 properties as city landmarks. In 1997, the program evolved with the establishment of the Glendale Register of Historic Resources. The register now has over 100 properties. In addition, 11 properties in Glendale are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The city's most honored historic properties include the Catalina Verdugo Adobe, Brand Library & Art Center, Glendale Southern Pacific Railroad Depot, Grand Central Air Terminal, and Alex Theatre.

Geography Glendale is located in the south-eastern San Fernando Valley. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 30.6 sq mi (79.212 km²); 30.5 square miles (79 km²) of it is land and 0.13 square miles (0.34 km²) of it (0.43%) is covered by water. Glendale is the fourth largest city within Los Angeles County. It is bordered to the north by the foothill communities of La Cañada Flintridge, La Crescenta, and Tujunga; to the south by the Atwater Village and Glassell Park communities incorporated by the city of Los Angeles; to the east by Pasadena and Eagle Rock (also incorporated within Los Angeles); and to the west by Griffith Park and the city of Burbank. Glendale is located 10 miles (16 km) north of downtown Los Angeles.

Geology Several known earthquake faults criss-cross the Glendale area and adjacent mountains, as in much of Southern California. Among the more recognised faults are the Sierra Madre and Hollywood faults, situated in the city's northern and south-western portions, respectively. Additionally, the Verdugo and Raymond faults intersect through the city's central and south-eastern areas. The San Gabriel fault, meanwhile, is located north-east of the city. Roughly 75 miles (121 km) north-east of Glendale is a major portion of the San Andreas Fault known as the "Big Bend", where quake-recurrence tracking shows major activity roughly every 140–160 years. The closest portion of the San Andreas is actually 29 miles (47 km) from Glendale. The last major quake along the southern San Andreas was recorded in 1857.

In the 1971 San Fernando earthquake, which took place along the western edge of the Sierra Madre Fault, surface ruptures were nearly 12 miles (19 km) long, including one portion a few miles north-west of Glendale. Most of the damage was in the northern San Fernando Valley, though 31 structures in Glendale suffered major damage and had to be demolished, plus numerous chimneys collapsed. The 1994 Northridge earthquake had an epicenter about 18 miles (29 km) from Glendale. The city suffered severe damage to a public parking structure and sections of the Glendale Galleria parking structures and exterior columns incurred damages.

Armenian population Glendale (Կլէնտէյլ) has one of the largest communities of Armenian descent in the United States.

Armenian families have lived in the city since the 1920s, but the surge in immigration escalated in the 1970s. Armenian Americans are well integrated into the city, with many businesses, several Armenian schools, and ethnic/cultural organizations serving this ethnic group. Most of the Armenians in Glendale arrived in the past two decades. The city of Glendale is home to one of the largest Armenian communities outside of Armenia.

Beginning in the late 1980s, with assistance from family and friends already there, Armenians from the former Soviet Union began arriving. In the Glendale Unified School District, by 1988, along with students from the Middle East, they had become the largest ethnic group in the public schools, now having a larger number than Latinos.

A new headquarters of the Armenian National Committee of America-Western Region opened in 1994. By 1996, longtime Anglo residents, largely fueled by anti-Armenian sentiment, decried the increased density in South Glendale. By 1999, about 25% of the population spoke Armenian and there were many Armenian businesses.

According to the United States 2000 Census, Glendale is home to 65,343 Armenian Americans (making up 34.1% of the total population), increasing from 1990 when there were 31,402 Armenian Americans in the city. As of 2005, one-third of Los Angeles' estimated 153,000 Armenians (or 51,000, around a quarter of Glendale's 205,000 residents) lived in Glendale. At that time, Armenians held a majority on the Glendale city council, and it had done so since that year. By 2005 the Armenian population was 40% of the total population.

In 2014, a Glendale Police Department spokesperson, stated, "In five to eight years, the [Armenian] community went from a few thousand to about 40,000". Levon Marashlian, an instructor of Armenian history at Glendale College, stated that in the early 1990s Glendale's Armenian community became the largest in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, surpassing the Armenian community of Hollywood. Alice Petrossian, the GUSD director of intercultural education, stated that Burbank lies within the middle of other Armenian communities, so it attracted Armenians. There are also a great number of Armenian immigrants from Iran who, due to the religious restrictions and lifestyle limitations of the Islamic government, immigrated to the US, many to Glendale since it was where their relatives resided.

As of March 2018, four of the five members of Glendale's city council are of Armenian descent: Mayor Vartan Gharapetian and councilmembers Zareh Sinanyan (mayor from 2014 to 2015), Ara Najarian (mayor from 2007 to 2008, 2010 to 2011, and 2015 to 2016), and Vrej Agajanian. Former Armenian American mayors of Glendale include Larry Zarian, Bob Yousefian, and Rafi Manoukian.

Singer Serj Tankian and bassist Shavo Odadjian, members of the Armenian American rock band System of a Down, were based in Glendale at the time of formation.

The Cathedral of Saint Gregory the Illuminator, which is the seat of North American diocese of the Armenian Catholic Church, is located in Glendale. The Bishop of the Diocese, Rt. Rev. Mikaël Antoine Mouradian, is also resident in Glendale.

Other ethnic groups The Mexican American community was established in Glendale by the 1960s. The late 1980s and the early 1990s also saw increases in Mexican American population as Glendale offers higher quality education along a safer suburban environment away from the city.

Several Korean cities have sought to create business and cultural relationships with Glendale. Central Park has the only West Coast monument to Korean comfort women of World War II.

As of 2012, Filipino Americans were the third largest minority group in Glendale, making up seven percent of the city's total population, overtaking Korean Americans. In 2022, the Filipino American Friendship Monument was unveiled in Central Park.

After the Iranian Revolution, many Persians migrated to the cities seeking a suburban city with lower crime and quality education.

Crime and public safety In 1977 and 1978, 10 murdered women were found in and around Glendale in what became known as the case of the Hillside Strangler. The murders were the work of Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono, the latter of whom resided at 703 East Colorado Street, where most of the murders took place.

In 2014, Glendale was named the ninth-safest city in America in a report published by 24/7 Wall Street based on violent crime rates in cities with more than 100,000 people. Also in 2014, real estate company Movoto used FBI data crime data from 2013 to conduct a study of 100 U.S. cities with populations between 126,047 and 210,309 residents and concluded that Glendale was the safest mid-sized city in America.

Economy As of 2021, the top employers in the city are (with number of employees): 1 Glendale Unified School District; 2 Adventist Health Glendale; 3 City of Glendale; 4 Glenair Inc.; 5 DreamWorks Animation; 6 Glendale Community College; 7 Dignity Health – Glendale Memorial Medical Center; 8 USC Verdugo Hills Hospital; 9 Service Titan; 10 Age of Learning.

Industry and development Grand Central Airport was a municipal airport developed from 1923 which became the largest employer in Glendale for many years, and contributed to the development of aviation in the United States in many important ways. The main terminal building still stands and includes both Art Deco and Spanish-style architectural elements. The facility was the first official terminal for the Los Angeles area, as well as the departure point for the first commercial west-to-east transcontinental flight flown by Charles Lindbergh. During World War II, the Grand Central Air Terminal building was camouflaged to protect it from enemy targeting. It was closed down in 1959, and made way for the Grand Central Business Centre, an industrial park.

Forest Lawn Memorial Park started in Tropico (later annexed to Glendale) in 1906 and is famous for its art collection and the burial of many celebrities, as well as for the 1933 opening of the first funeral home on cemetery grounds anywhere in the United States. The Bob's Big Boy chain of hamburger restaurants started in Glendale on East Colorado in August 1936, and the Baskin-Robbins "31 Flavors" chain of ice cream parlors started in Adams Square in 1945. The Glendale Public Library on Harvard Street houses its "Special Collections" department which contains original documents and records on much of the history of Glendale. It also contains one of the largest collections of books on cats in the world, over 20,000 volumes. It was donated to the library in the 1950s by the Jewel City Cat Fanciers Club.

The city experienced significant development in the 1970s, with the completion of the Glendale Freeway (Highway 2) and the Ventura Freeway (Highway 134). This included redevelopment of Brand Boulevard, renovation of the 1925 Alex Theatre, and construction of the Glendale Galleria shopping mall which opened in 1976, and was further expanded in 1982.

Several large companies have offices in Glendale including the U.S. headquarters of International House of Pancakes. The Los Angeles regional office of California's State Compensation Insurance Fund is in Glendale. Americas United Bank was founded in Glendale in 2006 and is still headquartered there. In August 2013, Avery Dennison Corp., a label maker for major brands, announced plans to move its headquarters from Pasadena to Glendale. Avery employs about 26,000 people. The U.S. headquarters of the Swiss foods multinational Nestlé plans to move out by 2018.

Glendale, along with Burbank, has served as a major production centre for the U.S. entertainment industry and the U.S. animation industry in particular for several decades, because the Walt Disney Company outgrew its Burbank studio lot in the early 1960s, and started expanding into the closest business park available, which happened to be Glendale's Grand Central Business Centre about two miles east. First came the headquarters for Imagineering, followed in the 1980s by other divisions and offices. Today, Disney's Grand Central Creative Campus (known as GC3 for short) is home to Consumer Products, Disney Interactive, the Muppets Studio, and Marvel Animation Studios. From 1985 to 1995, Walt Disney Animation Studios (then known as Walt Disney Feature Animation) was headquartered in the Grand Central Business Centre, meaning that most of the films of the Disney Renaissance era were actually developed in Glendale. DisneyToon Studios, a division of WDAS, is still located in the Grand Central Business Centre near GC3, along with the Animation Research Library, Disney Animation's archive. Disney-owned KABC-TV is located on Circle 7 Drive to the south of GC3.

In 1994, Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and David Geffen formed DreamWorks SKG, a diversified entertainment company. DreamWorks Animation remains located in the city's Grand Central Business Centre on land formerly occupied by a helicopter landing base next to the old airfield (and next to KABC-TV). Thus, many American animators who worked on feature films in the 1990s and 2000s have spent large portions of their careers in Glendale working for Disney or DreamWorks.

In 2005, construction began near the Galleria of developer Rick Caruso's "Americana at Brand", a 15.5-acre (63,000 m²) outdoor shopping and residential community. Caruso had previously designed and built the Grove at Farmers Market. The new Glendale development was opened to the public on May 2, 2008, and features 75 shops and restaurants, 238 apartments, 100 condominiums, and a Pacific Theatres 18-plex Cinema which seats 3,000 people.

Economy: Retail The downtown Glendale Galleria is anchored by Macy's, Target, J. C. Penney, and Bloomingdales, and the Americana at Brand, an outdoor mall which includes stores such as Tiffany & Co., H&M, Armani Exchange, True Religion, and Urban Outfitters. The Americana at Brand is home to a Nordstrom, which was previously located inside the Glendale Galleria. Another shopping area is the Glendale Fashion Center, which is anchored by Ross, TJ Maxx, Nordstrom Rack, Staples, and Petco.

Performing arts The Alex Theatre opened in 1925 as the Alexander Theatre. Currently, the theatre is a performing arts centre featuring live performances and film screenings.

Museums and galleries In 2016, the Museum of Neon Art moved to Glendale. MONA exhibits historical neon signs and works by contemporary artists using neon. The City of Glendale committed to funding the museum's new site and construction, as part of a plan to develop its downtown.

Parks and recreation The city has nearly 50 public parks, from Deukmejian Wilderness Park in the north to Cerritos Park in the south.

Bus services LADOT, Metro Local, Metro Rapid, and Glendale Beeline all have buses that run in the city. Glendale Transportation Center provides connections to Greyhound buses.

The North Hollywood to Pasadena Transit Corridor is a proposed 18-mile (29 km) bus rapid transit line. It is planned to operate between Pasadena City College and the North Hollywood station, where it will connect with the Metro B Line and the Metro G Line. The line is planned to connect downtown Burbank to Glendale via Glenoaks Boulevard before heading south on Central Avenue and then continuing east on Broadway. The line is expected to open in 2024. The project is part of Metro's Twenty-eight by '28 initiative.

A 2021 Metro staff report for the Metro Board's Planning and Programming Committee has recommended corridors where the transportation agency could pursue new bus rapid transit lines, including one between downtown Glendale and East Los Angeles College, a 13.64-mile (21.95 km) corridor passing through Los Feliz, Silver Lake, and Echo Park.

Train services Metrolink's Antelope Valley Line and Ventura County Line stop at the Glendale Transportation Center.

Since 2016, Metro and Eco-Rapid Transit have been studying the feasibility of adding more frequent service and infill stations along the corridor. Also studied has been the creation of a light rail line along the Burbank-Glendale-Union Station corridor, potentially allowing trains to leave the existing right-of-way to travel through the commercial core of Glendale.

Streetcar Using a grant from the Southern California Association of Governments, the City of Glendale is now in the midst of a feasibility study for a streetcar project. The city is considering two alignments for the proposed system, both of which would feature 16 stops running approximately 2.88 miles (4.63 km) between Stocker Street in the north and the Glendale Transportation Center in the south, where it would connect with Metrolink and Amtrak trains.

Transport: Air The closest airport that serves Glendale is the Hollywood Burbank Airport. The airport is owned by the Burbank–Glendale–Pasadena Airport Authority, a joint powers agreement between the cities of Burbank, Glendale, and Pasadena.

Freeways and highways Glendale is served by four freeways: the Glendale Freeway (State Route 2), the Ventura Freeway (State Route 134), the Foothill Freeway (Interstate 210) and the Golden State Freeway (Interstate 5)

Major surface streets in the city include: Brand Boulevard, Broadway, Canada Boulevard, Central Avenue, Chevy Chase Drive, Colorado Boulevard, Foothill Boulevard, Glendale Avenue, Glenoaks Boulevard, Grandview Avenue, La Crescenta Avenue, Honolulu Avenue, Pennsylvania Avenue, Riverside Drive, Victory Boulevard, Pacific Avenue, Sonora Avenue, Western Avenue, San Fernando Road, Verdugo Road/Boulevard, Mountain Street, and Ocean View Boulevard.