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Rare promotional brochure for a planned subdivision, Benmar Hills, in Burbank, which was to be built around "a great university," Benmar Hills University, the proposed name for the Southern Branch of the University of California, which would become UCLA.
Benmar Hills was the product of a land boom in Burbank, which began in the 1920s. A Hollywood real estate promoter, Ben W. Marks, bought a part of the Stough Ranch property in 1919. He planned to develop a subdivision that would equal the Wilshire Boulevard area. He donated the present site of McCambridge Park to the city for a municipal center and hoped that the southern branch of the University of California (UCLA) would be located in the Benmar Hills residential area.
The once-favored Burbank site was rejected when the Janss Investment Company donated the land in what is now Westwood to the University and UCLA was subsequently built in Westwood. Marks' promotion began to collapse and ended in financial disaster, defaulted bonds, and confused property title claims.
Other titles include: Sketch for a great university; Panorama of Benmar Hills, noble site for a university.
OCLC locates 1 copy (California State Library) and only 1 other reference to Benmark Hills (1926 promotional brochure).
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