Windsor Square is located just east of the Hancock Park Los Angeles “Proper” area, Windsor Square neighborhood boundaries run from Wilshire to Beverly Boulevard, South to North and from Arden Boulevard to Van Ness Avenue, East to West adjacent to the one-block strip of the beloved Larchmont Village. Sometime between 1900 and 1910 a prominent financier named George A.J. Howard envisioned a beautiful tranquil park as a setting for family homes such as one sees in the English countryside in what was then an undeveloped and rural area. In 1911, Mr. Robert A. Rowan was able to initiate a unique residential development and called it Windsor Square. The English flavor was enhanced by street names: Irving, Windsor and Plymouth. Lorraine Boulevard took its name from the developer’s daughter Lorraine Rowan. The Windsor Square homes development was constituted as a private square. Both the homes and the streets would be privately owned. Windsor Square was the first area in the city to have the power lines below grade, an extraordinary innovation for 1911. To make sure that the Windsor Square homes were significantly upscale as befitted the exceptionally beautiful setting, deed restrictions were set at a minimum cost of $12,550 per home, an enormous amount at the time. Windsor Square homes currently consists of just over 1,000 mostly Craftsman and California Bungalow style that have the same historic value as in Hancock Park Los Angeles, although most homes are a slightly smaller scale built on smaller lot sizes. Many outstanding architects designed homes for the area including Paul Williams and A.C. Martin. With its authentic architecture, broad lawns, mature tree lined streets and central location five miles west of downtown, the demand to live in Windsor Square is sure to increase as Downtown Los Angeles continues to redevelop.
