Changes in the neighborhood around my old McKinley Home for Boys.

Neighborhoods can change. Boy! this one did. I saw this one change a lot. From wheat fields
to Freeways in my lifetime. This neighborhood is in the San Fernando Valley. The McKinley Home for Boys was in the south east part of the Valley. Across Ventura Blvd from the foothills. Near the corner of Woodman Avenue and Ventura Blvd.

Here is a relic from the San Fernando Valley Museum. The McKinley Home made it to the street sign.

I first saw the neighborhood around 1932. I was 7 and was put in the home by my Dad. He had more important things to do than bother with his ninth child. He was newly widowed and wanted to see the world.

Here is a view of the Home in a picture taken about when I entered it.

It was a nice place surrounded by wheat fields. I remember watching a thresher working across the street. I was in a dorm in the second building from the left. First floor on this end of the building. The building by itself on the left is the hospital. I recovered from pneumonia there. Boy! do I hate cod liver oil.

My bedroom.

Picture of the dorms.

This picture is of the neighborhood taken in the late fifties. The Home was moved to San Dimas in 1961. The city had completely surrounded the Home.

No wheat fields. Looks different after about 30 years, huh? Ventura Blvd had been made into the Ventura Freeway, The Home was torn down and the Sherman Oaks Galleria mall built in its place. Here is a view of the mall (which was built on the Home site) from the Freeway.

I reckon that the neighborhood has changed a lot since I first saw it in 1932. The white structure  in the left of the picture below is the mall. The name of the mall has been changed from Sherman Oaks Galleria to Westfield Fashion Square.

The San Fernando Valley Museum is located in the mall.