The West's best places to live: What makes a great place to call home? Good architecture, vibrant downtowns, handsome trees—and, most of all, a caring community - United States

Sunset, March, 2002

* Pasadena

* Walla Walla

* Stockton

* Denver

* Santa Fe

* Ogden

BEST NEIGHBORHOOD

Pasadena

CALIFORNIA

Real and honest: Bungalow Heaven

Perhaps the most inviting thin about the Pasadena, California neighborhood known as Bung low Heaven is its porches. Th neighborhood's houses come many styles--mostly Craftsman but also some Spanish and Tudor -- and most date back to the 1910s. But all seem to have porches supported by columns of cobblestone brick, or stucco.

The porches offer the perfect spot to savor a true neighborhood. Kids zip by on scooters, joggers give a wave as they run and beaming new parents push strollers through a community that seems both timeless an vitally of today.

"You come for the architecture and stay for the people," says Bob Kneisel, vice president of the Bungalow Heaven Neighborhood Association. "Bungalow Heaven is real, and it's honest."

Bungalow Heaven was born of battle. In 1985, residents banded together to fight for downzoning after a Craftsman bungalow was torn down to make way for an apartment building. That success led residents to work for city landmark district status--a designation earned in 1989.

The designation means that exterior improvements, not including painting and landscaping, are subject to city review. The neighborhood association provides residents with an array of resources to help them make historically appropriate changes to their homes--including a database of area homes and historical photographs to help ensure accurate renovations.

Beyond preservation, the Bungalow Heaven Neighborhood Association deals with issues common to communities throughout the West: controlling traffic, keeping crime down. Residents also show their commitment by volunteering for such events as the annual Bungalow Heaven Home Tour in April.

"In my old neighborhood," says Teresa Hartley, former association president, "I met three neighbors in nine years. Here I must know 25 really well. I told my husband, 'Just bury me here.'"

For additional information on the neighborhood of Bungalow Heaven, call (626) 585-2172 or go to www.bungalowheaven.org.

Matthew Jaffe

MORE WINNERS

Seabright, Santa Cruz, California. A 300-member community association instills neighborly feeling with its quarterly historical newsletter. Columbia City, Seattle. A terrific farmers' market and monthly Beat Walks--tours of restaurants--testify to the revitalization of this neighborhood.

BEST MAIN STREET

Walla Walla

WASHINGTON

Coming together downtown

Each Friday morning around 7, Jerry "Spud" Cundiff, a trim, white-haired gentleman who has spent his life in the family jewelry business, opens the sidewalk clock outside his store and cranks up its gearworks for another week of timekeeping--as someone has been doing here on Main Street in Walla Walla, Washington, since 1906.

The clock is an antique, but it isn't a relic reminding people that this used to be a bustling little metropolis, the place Theodore Roosevelt praised as making "the pleasantest impression upon my mind of any city I visited while in the Northwest." The clock has work to do, like the rest of downtown Walla Walla--which is thriving, thanks to a 10-year revitalization program.

Walla Walla, population 29,333, is set among the farms of southeastern Washington. In the 1970s, its downtown began a downward slide. Three of the four department stores fled, and a major landmark--the Marcus Whitman, a 12-story luxury hotel built in 1927--went condo.

But Walla Walla retained some critical assets. Whitman College, established in 1882, was parked on the east edge of downtown. A wine industry grew from a few vines in 1977 to 34 wineries today. And there was a nucleus of people who cared.

"People are becoming isolated," says Robert Parrish, owner of downtown's Backstage Bistro. "I wanted us to start associating with each other again, and downtown is the place to do it. You feel more alive here than in a mall."

Says Timothy Bishop, executive director of the Downtown Walla Walla Foundation, "Our most important decision was to not put all of our eggs into one big basket that was going to fix downtown. It was a succession of mostly small projects."

Today downtown holds renovated Victorian and beaux arts commercial buildings. It has retained the Bon Marche department store--partly housed in the 1917 Liberty Theater--and attracted serious wineries and tasting bars. Finally, last spring, a local entrepreneur named Kyle Mussman reopened the Marcus Whitman, after a $35 million renovation.

Real character is impossible to fake. It grows from within. Walla Walla, which Theodore Roosevelt might well praise today, proves it.

For information on Walla Walla, call (877) 998-4748 or go to www.wwchamber.com. -- Lawrence Cheek

MORE WINNERS

Flagstaff, Arizona. Theodore Roosevelt also stayed in this northern Arizona city--specifically at the Weatherford Hotel, now newly restored along with the rest of Flagstaff's attractive historic downtown. Port Townsend, Washington. Much loved by tourists and residents alike, this Olympic Peninsula city leaps into the 21st century with a renewed 19th-century downtown.