Neighborliness Lives on Wilshire Square’s Streets
How well do you know your neighbors? I don’t mean the people who live left of your driveway, or right of your flower bed. How acquainted are you with the family three doors away? Or whoever lives just beyond your backyard?
A few places have block parties or neighborhood watch meetings. But I’m guessing most of us wouldn’t have a clue about the names of residents at the end of our block, or how the couple across the street even makes a living.
You’ll find things different at Wilshire Square near downtown Santa Ana. They hold parties. They give house tours. They hold board meetings. They have a newsletter of all things, in both English and Spanish. And this isn’t a condominium association, where you pay dues and a board governs what you do. The Wilshire people just have a great feel for neighborhood living.
Today, they’re hosting a city-sponsored event called Fall Festival of Arts (10 a.m. to 8 p.m.) Besides the music, food and art displays, 10 of the homes will be open to the public, each with a theme, such as history or ceramics or art works.
Wilshire Square is a square mile mix of some 600 homes: Tudors, Spanish colonials, Mediterraneans, eclectic revivals and something called “minimal traditionals.” Its borders are McFadden Avenue on the north, Edinger Avenue on the south, Main Street on the east and Flower Avenue on the west. The streets are wide and lined with sycamores, cedars, deodars and jacarandas. Homes there are selling for under $200,000. One home sale ad I saw was headlined “In Historic Wilshire Square.” (Wilshire Avenue runs through the core of it.)
Santa Ana historian Diann Marsh says its first lots were sold a few days before Christmas in 1922, and more than 3,000 trees were planted. Before the first year was out, a quarter of the lots had sold. The Depression put an end to sales, but business picked up in the 1930s, when many of the houses were built.
Alison Young, whose family moved to Wilshire Square just a few years ago, calls her Mediterranean “my dream home.” But it wasn’t just the house that sold them, she said, it was the neighborhood: “Friends would say: ‘You’re moving to Santa Ana?’ But we love it. We’re a part of something good here.”
Traffic is still a problem, and the Wilshire Square board is asking the city for right-turn-only signs at some intersections. And there’s a concern about too many apartments in surrounding areas. But most neighbors have few complaints.
Despite being surrounded by neighborhoods troubled by gangs, for example, Wilshire has a remarkably low crime rate, with only a rare break-in. Police say they have to make very few trips to Wilshire Square. Young attributes that to the strong relationship between the Wilshire Square leadership and the city’s police, plus neighbors watching out for each other.
Resident Paula Rankin points out the difference between Wilshire Square and other places: “Most people only know their next-door neighbors. But I can walk three blocks over and wave ‘hi’ to people I’ve baked cookies with, or served on committees with. It’s one reason why we love it so much.”
Pat Walkowiak can hardly imagine living anywhere but Wilshire Square. She lives in the house her grandfather built in 1930. It was the house where her mother was raised, and where she herself was raised. Now her daughter, who is expecting, lives with her. That will make five generations in Wilshire.
Walkowiak grew up at a time when the original owners from the ‘20s and ‘30s remained in Wilshire Square for the rest of their days. But even after they died and their heirs started selling or renting those homes, the character of the neighborhood has remained, she said.
“We now have a lot more Hispanics than when I was growing up, but that hasn’t changed anything,” she said. “It’s still a friendly place with a small town feel, where you know each other by your first name.”
Rankin mentioned something I thought was terrific: a progressive Christmas dinner. Everybody goes to one home for hors d’oeuvres, then moves down the street to another home for the main course, to a third home for dessert, then on down the line for more celebrating. Different people volunteer their homes for the following year’s party.
Now that’s what you call getting to know your neighbors.
CHOC One Up for Her: Molli Mullen, 17, is a Children’s Hospital of Orange County patient being treated for Hodgkin’s disease. She hasn’t been idle between treatments. Today she’s hosting a noon rally at her father’s store--Hobie Sports at 2831 E. Coast Highway, Corona del Mar--to promote the Oct. 13 CHOC/Disneyland Community Walk. Mullen is organizing walk teams for the fund-raising event. She’ll have drawings for prizes, and her dad, Mike Mullen, will barbecue some hot dogs.
Getting Greener: Here are the three winners of that Tree Society of Orange County contest mentioned in a column last week: Westminster ($470) to plant trees on Bolsa Chica Avenue near the San Diego Freeway; Fountain Valley ($1,000) to add trees to the landscaping at the new Boys & Girls Club in Mile Square Regional Park; and Mission Viejo ($1,000) to shade parts of the Oso Creek Trail system, which connects the city’s recreation centers and parks.
Food Follow-Up: The figures are in from that corporate grocery drive this summer to help out the Food Distribution Center’s nonprofit food bank. At an awards luncheon this week, it was announced that more than 70 tons of groceries were collected from the 80 corporations which participated. Tom Markel, chairman of the campaign, estimated that’s enough to feed 25,000 families for one day.
Wrap-Up: I learned a lot about my neighbors through my cat. He was a beautiful gray cat named Spirit, and he loved watching the passing scene from the front yard.
Spirit died last year, at age 16. For months afterward, people out walking their dogs, or jogging, would stop by if they saw us outside, worried because they hadn’t seen Spirit. Neighbors we’d never met would stop us later just to say they missed him.
We’re not in Wilshire Square. But I figure if you live among people who care about what’s happened to your cat, you’ve got yourself a pretty good neighborhood.
Jerry Hicks’ column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Readers may reach Hicks by call-ing the Times Orange County Edition at (714) 966-7823 or by fax to (714) 966-7711, or e-mail tojerry.hicks@latimes.com
