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Given Los Angeles' benign weather and hillside setting beside the ocean, it was only reasonable that in the search for an appropriate architectural style, Mediterranean themes would dominate.
Indeed, in the fervor to attract new settlers in the waves of real estate booms that swept over Los Angeles at the turn of the century, the city was grossly advertised as "the American Mediterranean" and "our Italy," among other things.
Easier to Build
Developers and architects also found Mediterranean-style houses with their simple, squared stucco walls and red-tile roofs relatively easy to build and easy to detail, certainly more so than the richly ornate, wooden Victorian houses that had been favored by the city's earlier settlers.
Not just content with building individual homes in a variety of Mediterranean themes, developers seeking a broader image for their product extended the style to entire subdivisions and neighborhoods. One of the first in the region was Palos Verdes Estates, where the style was monitored by an architectural review board established by the developer, and which still presides today, 70 years later.