Touch of Serenity in Whittier’s Bucolic Hills
When they began hunting for their first home eight years ago, Melissa and Robert Sorensen couldn’t afford their favorite community, Whittier’s Friendly Hills.
So they bought a home they liked in Anaheim Hills and started a business--the Coffee Depot--in nearby Yorba Linda.
Through the years, though, they continued to yearn for the open, rural feeling in what locals know as Old Friendly Hills. They renewed their home search there in the mid-1990s.
After looking for two years, “we were able to buy a real fixer-upper in December of 1997,” Melissa Sorensen said, paying in the low $300,000s for a three-bedroom, two-bath, 1950s home on half an acre.
“We put about $50,000 into the house,” she said, “and we [by then the couple had a 1-year-old daughter, Marissa] couldn’t move in until April of ’98.”
For the Sorensens, who grew up in Whittier, it was like coming home. “We love the peace and quiet,” Melissa Sorensen said. “In Anaheim Hills we had the view, but a tiny backyard and association dues to deal with.”
Old Friendly Hills is a neighborhood of about 900 homes set on wooded, gently rolling hillsides in east Whittier. Homes began popping up there in the 1930s and ‘40s.
The community is roughly bounded by Mar Vista Street on the north, Janine Drive on the south, Santa Gertrudes Avenue and La Habra Heights on the east, and Catalina Avenue on the west.
Nearby are two newer neighborhoods that also have Friendly Hills in their names: Somewhat higher in the hills is North Friendly Hills, with a mix of tract and custom homes and lot sizes ranging from a quarter of an acre to half an acre. Home prices there range from $400,000 to $1 million. And farther up the hills is Friendly Hills Estates, a gated community of custom homes where prices range from $699,600 to more than $4 million.
The name Friendly Hills comes from the Quaker influence in Whittier, which was founded as a Quaker community. The Quaker group is also known as the Religious Society of Friends.
Started Off as Ramirez Ranch
The land that eventually became Friendly Hills was purchased in 1887 by Michigan businessmen Simon Murphy and John Sanborn.
They bought a 2,000-acre tract known as the Ramirez Ranch for about $100,000. The ranch was subdivided and maps were drawn up, but buyers were deterred by the lack of a steady water supply.
Eventually Murphy and Sanborn were able to get water from the San Gabriel River, and small ranches began to sell and citrus groves began dotting the hills.
Murphy had retained the eastern portion of the ranch and struck oil there. The Murphy Oil Co. was formed and a portion of the land was developed as Murphy Ranch, now known as Friendly Hills.
The area became one of Whittier’s most desirable, with lot sales beginning in the 1930s, according to Cindy Voien, president of the Friendly Hills Property Owners Assn., who grew up in the area and lives in the family home.
Development really took off in the late 1940s. Five-acre parcels were selling for $4,000 an acre, an exorbitant sum for the time. Custom homes began to spring up throughout the citrus groves.
Friendly Hills was a prestigious address then, and it remains so today, according to Lori Breitman, an agent with Prudential California Realty in Whittier.
“This is a very appealing area to people who are looking for a custom home, with privacy and more land,” she said.
Homes in this Friendly Hills area generally sell in the $400,000 to $600,000 range, Breitman said.
At the low end of the market is a 2,000-square-foot, three-bedroom, 1 3/4-bathroom home built in 1951. With a pool and a view, it is listed at $345,000.
At the high end is a 1949 home with five bedrooms and 3 1/2 baths in 4,544 square feet listed at $1.3 million. The home is on a 2 1/2-acre estate with a pool and a view.
Privacy, Trees, Schools Attract Home Buyers
Aldo and Helen De Soto moved to Friendly Hills in 1963, paying $36,000 for a three-bedroom, two-bathroom home.
“Our home is very secluded, on a private road with three other homes,” Helen De Soto said. “We have 33 trees--orange, avocado, pear and fig--on nine-tenths of an acre.”
De Soto estimated that their home would be worth about $400,000 in today’s market. But they have no plans to move. They love the area and its convenience to Aldo De Soto’s business in East Los Angeles, where he manufactures corrugated containers.
It was highly regarded La Serna High School that attracted Mae Louise and Blake Sanborn from another Whittier neighborhood to Friendly Hills in 1965. They wanted their two daughters, Jennifer and Shelley, to attend La Serna, where they had friends.
The Sanborns had lived in Whittier since 1949. Blake Sanborn, who has an insurance agency in town, was on the City Council for 12 years and was mayor in the 1970s.
The couple paid $65,000 for a newly built, 3,200-square-foot, four-bedroom, 2 1/2-bathroom home on a half-acre lot on a private road.
“We just love this house,” Mae Louise Sanborn said. “It’s such a pretty area. The yard is all terraced, with lots of trees. Like a park.”
Marsha Gabrielian said it was Friendly Hills’ bucolic isolation that appealed to her when she began house hunting last year.
“It’s so secluded, so green,” Gabrielian said. “Finding this home was like a dream for me. I’m never moving for the rest of my life.”
She and her two children began 1999 by moving into their 1947 Colonial-style home on three-quarters of an acre. Gabrielian paid about $600,000 for the four-bedroom, three-bath house with an office and a pool.
Vice president and controller in her family’s company, Security Paper Tube, in nearby Industry, Gabrielian grew up in Montebello, lived in Hacienda Heights and Rowland Heights, and was familiar with Friendly Hills. “I just love this area,” she said.
Her daughter, Tamar, 10, and son, Levon, 13, attend private schools, but she is considering La Serna as a high school for Levon. “There are a lot of choices,” she said.
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Marian Bond is a La Habra Heights freelance writer.
