AMERICARE ASSISTED LIVING of WALTERIA
Senior Assisted Living / Senior Board & Care
Americare invites you to our beautiful home located in the lovely Walteria neighborhood of Torrance. The home was completely remodeled in 2006 and features a comfortable design with large private bedrooms, 3 ½ bathrooms and comfortable common living areas. The home is located at the foothill of Palos Verdes and is within minutes from Rolling Hills, Palos Verdes and South Redondo Beach.
About Walteria
Walteria is a located in South Torrance and lies north of Rolling Hills Estates and Palos Verdes Estates, south of PCH, east of Hollywood Riviera and west of Lomita. It is within easy access to Del Amo mall, Little Company of Mary Hospital and the Palos Verdes peninsula.
History of Torrance
The Torrance area’s original inhabitants were the Tongva Indians, who lived in reed-covered houses made of willow poles. These original people made canoes from logs, built reed boats and fished along the coast in summer, moving inland to hunt in winter.
Portuguese explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo was the first European to visit the area, arriving in 1542. After that, the Spanish traded with the Tongva people from time to time and sometimes anchored their ships along the shore.
In 1784, Juan Jose Dominguez, a member of the 1769 Portola Expedition received a 75,000-acre Spanish land grant called Rancho San Pedro, the first Spanish land grant in Alta California. The Dominguez family held this land until 1912, when Jared Sidney Torrance bought 2,791 acres of land from the Dominguez Estate Company.
Torrance envisioned a planned, industrial town of 500 people, fully built with paved streets, sewer and water lines underground and landscaped before anyone came to live in it, and jobs would be waiting for them when they arrived. The first businesses to establish themselves here were the Union Tool Company (a branch of the Union Oil Company), Llewellyn Iron Works, and Pacific Electric.
Torrance was originally part of the 1784 Rancho San Pedro Spanish land grant, issued to Juan Jose Dominguez, signed by King Carlos III of the Spanish Empire.
In the early 1900s, real estate developer Jared Sidney Torrance and other investors saw the value of creating a mixed industrial-residential community south of Los Angeles. They purchased part of an old Spanish land grant and hired landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. to design a new planned community. The resulting town was founded in October 1912 and named after Torrance; the city of Torrance was formally incorporated in May 1921.
Local Attractions
Del Amo Fashion Center, at 2.5 million square feet (232,000 m²), is one of the largest malls in the United States . Estimates vary between the second largest (after the Mall of America ) and the fourth largest, depending on the measurements used. The current mall was created when Del Amo Center, built in 1958, merged with Del Amo Fashion Square, built in 1970. Once located on opposite sides of Carson Street, a gigantic expansion of the mall spanning Carson Street joined the two centers by 1982, making it the longest mall in the world at the time. Del Amo Fashion Center has been used as a location for several motion pictures , including Jackie Brown and Bad Santa . In 2005, the east end of the original mall north of Carson Street was demolished to make way for a new open-air shopping center, opened in mid-September, 2006. The new center features upscale clothiers Anthropologie and Urban Outfitters as well as the restaurant PF Chang’s . The housewares retail giant Crate & Barrel is scheduled to open in Spring 2007.
One of the country’s few urban wetlands can be found in Torrance. Madrona Marsh is a nature preserve on undeveloped land once set aside for oil production.
Torrance Beach lies between Redondo Beach and Malaga Cove. The region shared by Torrance and Redondo Beaches are often called “Rat Beach” (short for “Right After Torrance” Beach or “Redondo and Torrance Beach”).
As a major oil-producing region, Torrance was once dotted with thousands of oil wells and oil derricks . Though the oil wells are not as common as they once were, the ExxonMobil refinery in the north end of the city is responsible for much of Southern California’s gasoline supply. In fact, much of Southern California’s gasoline supply is refined within a few miles of Torrance. ARCO produces gasoline in Carson; Texaco has a refinery a bit further east in Wilmington; Unocal is in San Pedro while one of the oldest refineries in the state is the Chevron plant in El Segundo . Torrance was also an important hub and shop site of the Pacific Electric Railway.
Torrance has a busy general aviation airport, originally named simply “Torrance Airport” and since renamed Zamperini Field after local track star, World War II hero and Torrance High graduate Louis Zamperini. The airport handles approximately 175,000 annual take-offs and landings (473 per day), down from the 1974 record of 428,000 operations. Airport noise abatement is a major local issue.
Torrance is home to the U.S. headquarters of two of the three largest Japanese auto makers, Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A. and American Honda Motor Company. Robinson Helicopters are designed and built in Torrance as are Garrett Systems turbochargers, used on automobile engines worldwide. California’s aerospace industry began in Torrance and surrounding communities.
Two major hospitals are located within the city — Torrance Memorial Medical Center and Little Company of Mary Hospital . A third hospital, Los Angeles County Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, lies just outside the city limits (in the unincorporated Los Angeles County community of West Carson) but also has a Torrance address.
Sources: hellotorrance.com and wikipedia.com