Welcome to Monrovia, CA
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6/16/2006
We had been looking at moving from Burbank, CA to a small town back East. But we were afraid to lose contact with family and friends. We stumbled on this small city, about 30 miles east of Burbank, that has managed to retain much of it's small-town charm even as suburbia swept it up and swept past it. Part of the success of Monrovia, ironically, has to do with its failure in the 1970s and 1980s. The town was in such serious decline that there wasn't a lot of investment here, so the town's stock of 1900s-1920s-era housing was never destroyed in the name of progress. By the late 1990s, when the town was beginning its renaissance, all those great homes were waiting to be rehabbed to their full glory: Victorians, California bungalows, Craftsmen homes, Spanish, etc. We live within a 5- to 10-minute walk of half a dozen moderate restaurants, four gourmet restaurants, a post office, a giant supermarket, clothing stores, five coffee shops (only two of which are Starbucks), and a 10-screen movie complex. But our neighborhood is safe and quiet. It's the best of both worlds, and except for the summers (too hot), we couldn't be happier.
Michael | Monrovia, CA