Hancock Park, Los Angeles, California
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Hancock Park is a wealthy neighborhood in west-central Los Angeles, California. It is bordered by Hollywood on the north, Larchmont on the east, Koreatown on the southeast, Country Club Park on the south, Carthay on the southwest, and the Miracle Mile and Park La Brea on the west. The district is bounded by Rossmore Avenue on the east, Melrose Avenue on the north, Highland Avenue on the west, and Wilshire Boulevard on the south. Beverly and Wilshire Boulevards, Rossmore, Melrose, and Highland Avenues, and 3rd Street are the district's major thoroughfares.
Hancock Park was developed in the 1920s, by the Hancock family, with profits earned from oil drilling in the former Rancho La Brea (much of which is now the Miracle Mile district). In sharp contrast to most Los Angeles neighborhoods, houses in Hancock Park are set well back from the street, all power and telephone lines are buried, and fences are banned (or at least strongly discouraged). The area also completely surrounds the Wilshire Country Club. These characteristics, along with the area's abundance of classic Los Angeles architecture, have made it one of the most desirable areas in all of Southern California ever since its development (even as surrounding areas sharply declined from the 1950s until their revival in the 1990s), and the average household income of its residents consistently ranks among the highest in the United States.
Although it lies several blocks east of La Brea Avenue, the generally accepted boundary between central and western Los Angeles, Hancock Park is often erroneously thought of as a West Side neighborhood. This misconception is largely due to the fact that Hancock Park and Larchmont are overwhelmingly white, wealthy areas akin to Westwood or Cheviot Hills, while the surrounding districts are largely Latino and Asian and considerably less affluent.