University Hills, Irvine, California
Encyclopedia
Irvine, California
Irvine is a suburban incorporated city in Orange County, California, United States. It is a planned city, mainly developed by the Irvine Company since the 1960s. Formally incorporated on December 28, 1971, the city has a population of 212,375 as of the 2010 census. However, the California...
, consisting of 940 for-sale homes and 240 rental units. Located on the campus of the University of California, Irvine
University of California, Irvine
The University of California, Irvine , founded in 1965, is one of the ten campuses of the University of California, located in Irvine, California, USA...
, University Hills was developed by the Irvine Campus Housing Authority and built by local home builders as a place for faculty and staff of the university to find affordable, local housing. The land in University Hills is owned by the University of California and leased to homeowners; terms in the lease limit home ownership to university employees and restrict resale price appreciation so that home will remain more affordable into the future.
Geography
University Hills, as its name suggests, consists of a hillHill
A hill is a landform that extends above the surrounding terrain. Hills often have a distinct summit, although in areas with scarp/dip topography a hill may refer to a particular section of flat terrain without a massive summit A hill is a landform that extends above the surrounding terrain. Hills...
. University Hills rises from East Peltason Drive which forms its northern boundary at approximately 140 feet (42.7 m) above sea level. There is a gradual rise for about half a mile until the hill levels off at about 300 feet (91.4 m). As a result, from Vista Point on Urey Court, all of Irvine and most of Orange County is visible. University Hills is located on one of the northernmost and westernmost hills of the San Joaquin Hills
San Joaquin Hills
The San Joaquin Hills are a set of low hills in coastal Orange County, California. They extend in a northwest-southeast direction, starting in the northwest in Newport Beach at the southern edge of the Los Angeles Basin, and extending southeast to San Juan Capistrano.-Geography and habitats:Named...
.
History
Although UCIUniversity of California, Irvine
The University of California, Irvine , founded in 1965, is one of the ten campuses of the University of California, located in Irvine, California, USA...
had looked into creating faculty housing since 1969, no on-campus faculty-housing was built until the completion of the Las Lomas Apartments in 1982. Las Lomas, located on what would become the northwest end of University Hills, offered apartments to faculty members for rent. Soon after the completion of Las Lomas, the Irvine Campus Housing Authority (ICHA) was created and began construction on University Hills proper. Construction on University Hills has proceeded in a number of small phases, consisting of a few streets each. The most recent neighborhood, the 920 Series Homes, was completed in June 2009; additional neighborhoods are being considered by the university.
As University Hills grew in size, different types of houses became available. The very first houses, completed in 1986, included a mixture of townhomes and detached houses; in addition, 13 lots were made available for custom-built homes.
Current Housing
Apartments, condominiumCondominium
A condominium, or condo, is the form of housing tenure and other real property where a specified part of a piece of real estate is individually owned while use of and access to common facilities in the piece such as hallways, heating system, elevators, exterior areas is executed under legal rights...
s, townhomes, and detached houses are now available in sizes ranging from 800 to 3200 square feet (297.3 m²). As the community has grown, many amenities were added. These include Los Trancos Playground and Pool, located near the Las Lomas Apartments; Vista Bonita Park; the Garden Park; Reines Vista (named after Nobel physicist Frederick Reines
Frederick Reines
Frederick Reines was an American physicist. He was awarded the 1995 Nobel Prize in Physics for his co-detection of the neutrino with Clyde Cowan in the neutrino experiment, and may be the only scientist in history "so intimately associated with the discovery of an elementary particle and the...
); Urey Pool, Playground and Tennis Court; Gabrielino Pool; Gabrielino Community Park; and the Indy 500 Dog Park. Most recently, the completion of the University Hills Community Center in May of 2010 provides for the first time places for the community to gather, hold meeting, stage events in the 5 reservable rooms (Lounge, Media Room, Activity Rooms, & Community Room). The Tierney University House, built in 2001, is located in the southwest corner of University Hills. The community is adjacent to a nature preserve which is traversed by many trails.
Street Naming Scheme
The main cross streets of University Hills are Los Trancos Drive, Gabrielino Drive, Vista Bonita Drive, and California Avenue. All other streets in University Hills are named after famous scientists, writers, artists, or musicians. In fact, for Phases 1 through 6, these names follow an alphabetical pattern, summarized as follows:- Located off Los Trancos Drive, going southward or uphill: AlcottLouisa May AlcottLouisa May Alcott was an American novelist. She is best known for the novel Little Women and its sequels Little Men and Jo's Boys. Little Women was set in the Alcott family home, Orchard House in Concord, Massachusetts, and published in 1868...
, BlakeWilliam BlakeWilliam Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age...
, Curie (named after both PierrePierre CuriePierre Curie was a French physicist, a pioneer in crystallography, magnetism, piezoelectricity and radioactivity, and Nobel laureate. He was the son of Dr. Eugène Curie and Sophie-Claire Depouilly Curie ...
and Marie CurieMarie CurieMarie Skłodowska-Curie was a physicist and chemist famous for her pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first person honored with two Nobel Prizes—in physics and chemistry...
), DickensCharles DickensCharles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
, Gibbs, HarveyWilliam HarveyWilliam Harvey was an English physician who was the first person to describe completely and in detail the systemic circulation and properties of blood being pumped to the body by the heart...
, and LockeJohn LockeJohn Locke FRS , widely known as the Father of Liberalism, was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social...
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- Located off Vista Bonita Drive, going eastward (north side only): MendelGregor MendelGregor Johann Mendel was an Austrian scientist and Augustinian friar who gained posthumous fame as the founder of the new science of genetics. Mendel demonstrated that the inheritance of certain traits in pea plants follows particular patterns, now referred to as the laws of Mendelian inheritance...
, Newton, OwenRichard OwenSir Richard Owen, FRS KCB was an English biologist, comparative anatomist and palaeontologist.Owen is probably best remembered today for coining the word Dinosauria and for his outspoken opposition to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection...
, and PerkinsJacob PerkinsJacob Perkins was an Anglo-American inventor, mechanical engineer and physicist. Born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, Perkins was apprenticed to a goldsmith...
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- Located off Gabrielino Drive, going northward (north side only): RussellBertrand RussellBertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...
, SchubertFranz SchubertFranz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer.Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies , liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music...
, and ThompsonBenjamin ThompsonSir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford , FRS was an American-born British physicist and inventor whose challenges to established physical theory were part of the 19th century revolution in thermodynamics. He also served as a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Loyalist forces in America during the American...
.
- Located off Vista Bonita Drive, going eastward (south side only): UreyHarold UreyHarold Clayton Urey was an American physical chemist whose pioneering work on isotopes earned him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1934...
, VirgilVirgilPublius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...
, and WhitmanWalt WhitmanWalter "Walt" Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse...
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- Located off California Avenue: WhistlerCharles WhistlerThe Reverend Charles Watts Whistler MRCS, LSA, was a writer of historic fiction that plays between 600 and 1100 AD, usually based on early English/Saxon chronicles, Norse or Danish Sagas and archeological discoveries....
, YoungThomas Young (scientist)Thomas Young was an English polymath. He is famous for having partly deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphics before Jean-François Champollion eventually expanded on his work...
, and ZolaÉmile ZolaÉmile François Zola was a French writer, the most important exemplar of the literary school of naturalism and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism...
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In addition, these streets are not named in alphabetical order: Bartok
Béla Bartók
Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer...
, Eliot
George Eliot
Mary Anne Evans , better known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, journalist and translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era...
, Handel
George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel was a German-British Baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos. Handel was born in 1685, in a family indifferent to music...
, McClintock
Barbara McClintock
Barbara McClintock , the 1983 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine, was an American scientist and one of the world's most distinguished cytogeneticists. McClintock received her PhD in botany from Cornell University in 1927, where she was a leader in the development of maize cytogenetics...
, Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
, Murasaki
Murasaki
Murasaki refers to both the heroine of the Genji Monogatari , and the book's author, Murasaki Shikibu. Curiously, in both cases the name is a pseudonym, and the real names are unknown....
, Fuertes
Louis Agassiz Fuertes
Louis Agassiz Fuertes was an American ornithologist, illustrator and artist.-Biography:Fuertes was the son of Estevan and Mary Stone Perry Fuertes....
, O'Keeffe
Georgia O'Keeffe
Georgia Totto O'Keeffe was an American artist.Born near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, O'Keeffe first came to the attention of the New York art community in 1916, several decades before women had gained access to art training in America’s colleges and universities, and before any of its women artists...
, Frost
Robert Frost
Robert Lee Frost was an American poet. He is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech. His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, using them to examine complex social and...
, Twain
Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist...
, and Brontë
Brontë
The Brontës were a nineteenth-century literary family associated with Haworth in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England. The sisters, Charlotte , Emily , and Anne , are well-known as poets and novelists...
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The street names are suggested by community members to a committee, which chooses the best names.