City life, with lawns

Beginnings

Country Club Park rose on the former grounds of the Los Angeles Country Club.

Grand houses started going up around the turn of the last century after developer Isaac Milbank subdivided the property into spacious lots to attract the wealthy to the enclave. His own commanding mansion, circa 1913, with its Mediterranean and Beaux Arts facade, remains a neighborhood landmark.

Best known for huge homes on broad streets lined with palm trees or cedar trees, Country Club Park also has bungalows, cottages, condominiums and apartments within its boundaries: Western Avenue on the east, Crenshaw Boulevard on the west, Olympic Boulevard on the north and Pico Boulevard on the south. It is gated at five streets.

Drawing card

The area offers more house for less money.

Standing near her childhood home, Sotheby’s International real estate agent JoAnne Wright McKenzie gazed up at a two-story Colonial perched atop an expansive, rolling lawn. “You take a house like this and put it on the Westside or the Palisades,” she said, “and it would be worth $3 million, $4 million or $5 million, and you’re not even going to get as much land.”

In Country Club Park, a similar home with four bedrooms and four bathrooms in 3,588 square feet that was built in 1924 is listed for $1.495 million.

Edmon Rodman, president of the Country Club Park Neighborhood Assn., and his wife, Brenda, paid $345,000 nine years ago for a two-story Colonial Revival-style house with four bedrooms and three bathrooms in 2,600 square feet built in 1916.

Insider’s viewpoint

Resident Eric Vizents likes living in Country Club Park because of its central location.

His wife, Monica Erickson, inherited the Milbank mansion, which has 11 bedrooms and eight bathrooms in more than 11,000 square feet. A favorite of filmmakers, the house can be seen in movies such as “Running With Scissors,” “Ali” and “Daddy Day Care.”

Resident Regina Jones likes the diversity. “We’re probably one of the most integrated communities within the city,” Jones said.

She and her husband, Ken, needed more room for their five children 40 years ago when they paid $42,000 for a two-story Tudor, built in 1922. The home has five bedrooms and three bathrooms in 3,200 square feet.

The house had belonged to Country Club Park’s first black homeowner, H. Claude Hudson, a dentist who also earned a law degree to help with his civil rights work. A national NAACP board member, he also headed up the Los Angeles branch.

He moved to the neighborhood in 1945 after fighting a racially restrictive covenant. His victory opened the affluent neighborhood to African Americans, among them Dr. Warner Wright, father of real estate agent McKenzie.

Today, black homeowners live next door to whites, Latinos and Asians, primarily Koreans.

On the market

There are 11 homes on the market, including a one-story, country English house from 1919 with three bedrooms and two bathrooms in 1,914 square feet. The asking price is $749,000.

There is also a three-story 1908 French Normandy house with seven bedrooms and 6 1/2 bathrooms in 14,220 square feet that is listed at $4.6 million.

Report card

Local public schools, which are part of the Los Angeles Unified School District, include Pio Pico Elementary, grades kindergarten through 8, which scored 659 out of a possible 1,000 on the 2006 Academic Performance Index Base Report, and Los Angeles Senior High School, which scored 522.

Historical values

Residential resales:

Year...Median Price

1990...$292,500

1995...$177,000

2000...$325,000

2004...$721,500

2005...$792,500

2006...$994,000

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gayle.pollard-terry@latimes.com

Sources: DataQuick Information Systems; Holly Eubanks, newsletter editor, Country Club Park Neighborhood Assn.; www.cde.ca.gov.