I was waiting for the light to turn green on Wilson at Central, maybe Pacific, when I noticed this sign attached to the pole, Glendale Vineyard.In April 2011, Katherine Yamada, history writer for the Glendale News Press, introduced us to George Le Mesnager, vintner and distiller extraordinaire. His land holdings started with 1,300 acres and would later become Sparr Heights.
In September 2011, Ms. Yamada follows up with George and his family's life in wine in what would eventually become Deukmejian Wilderness Park.
November 2013, Ms. Yamada mentions the existence of vineyards again when writing about Kenneth Village, stating that "Vineyards, citrus orchards and commercial gardens covered most of the land."
 |
| detail |
The sign I saw was south of all these areas. I was curious to what it referred.
I emailed Brittany Levine, knowledger of all things Glendale AND all things wine. Brittany blogs Wine for the Win. She emailed this map to me which was an eye opener. Adams Hill, Sparr Heights...but who know Glendale had so many neighborhoods? Certainly not this troglodyte. Half of The Hotel Glendale, home of THE Cave, sits in City Center, and half sits in Citrus Grove. So how did all this come about?
Next email: the City of Glendale. Since the link Ms. Levine provided had a Glendale city address, maybe they'd have more information in places I wasn't finding any. The answer received back from poor-emailer-who-has-to-deal-all day-with-fools-like-me Tamar Hadjimanoukian entirely exceeded my expectations. There was time spent on this email, and all that follows is from that.
From a 36-page document seeking historical status for a house on Doran between Cantral and Pacific, in the Vineyards neighborhood, page 12 reads,
(Small aside: to peruse what was being built during this era, here is a fascinating link to the pre-fab houses sold by the likes of Sears and Montgomery Wards. In 1923 Sears offered a model called The Glendale. If you look at the lower right hand corner, it states "This house has been built at East Chicago, Ind., Monroe, Mich...." and other cities in NY, NJ, Pennsylvania, but no mention of one built in Glendale. Also, there are many Glendales. Curious after which one this model was named.)
The second link Tamar provided was a 20-page document entitled "Come Home to Glendale." After providing some useful resources and reasons why Glendale is such a swell town, we get a historical synopsis of each of Glendale's neighborhoods. This is from that document.
(FYI, not only did Tamar send me these links, but all the stuff I screen captured Tamar typed out. Crazy, right? AND a city worker, what's wrong with this person?)