Dear Alhambra

District 1 › Area A

AAtlantic to Garfield

Atlantic-Garfield-Main

Between Main St and Alhambra Rd, west of Garfield. The Atlantic Blvd side. The smallest of the four areas by land and the most crowded by a wide margin. Three in four households rent, and more than half of the residents were born outside the country. Most of the housing here is apartments, and a third of it went up in the 1980s and 1990s.

Map of District 1 with Area A highlighted Atlantic Blvd Garfield Ave N Stoneman Ave Granada Ave Main St Grand Ave Alhambra Rd A B C D
Area A within District 1. Full map.
4,263*people (2020 Census)
1,928*homes (2020 Census)
~25,300people per square mile, on 0.17 sq mi
0letters so far from this area

*This Census tract runs past the district line south of Main Street. Of its 4,263 people and 1,928 homes, about 1,917 people and 982 homes are inside District 1, counted by Census block. Every percentage below is for the whole tract. Registered voters and ballots, further down, count only the blocks inside the district.

A short history

Drawn from two City of Alhambra documents prepared by Historic Resources Group: the Historic Context Statement (April 2022) and the Citywide Historic Resources Survey Report (November 2023). Bracketed page numbers are PDF pages. More on these sources.

This corner of the district was part of the Alhambra Addition, the second tract Benjamin Davis Wilson and his son-in-law James De Barth Shorb laid out. It was recorded in December 1875 on the land west of North Story Place and opened for sale once the original Alhambra Tract had sold out. [Context p.64] Water is what made the land attractive to buyers. A reservoir at Garfield Avenue and Alhambra Road fed an iron main down Garfield, and a second reservoir went in at Wilson Avenue, today's Atlantic Boulevard, and Alhambra Road. [Context p.72] In September 1887 the four-room Garfield School opened at the corner of Garfield and Alhambra Road with twenty-seven pupils, elementary and high school together. [Context p.74] When Alhambra incorporated on July 11, 1903, much of the new Board of Trustees' early business was grading and improving Main, Second, Stoneman, and Garfield. [Context p.88]

The City's survey records a Mediterranean Revival apartment house on the 400 block of North 2nd Street from 1926, [Survey p.45] and by 1970 more than half of Alhambra's residents lived in multi-family buildings. [Context p.221] By 1984 the City estimated that of the roughly 7,000 homes built citywide between 1910 and 1920, about 4,500 remained, the rest replaced by apartments and condominiums. [Context p.8] Today four in five homes here are in buildings of two or more units, and a third were built in the 1980s and 1990s.

Who lives here77% rent · 61% born outside the U.S. · median age 44 · 41% limited English

Each row compares this area with all of District 1 and with the whole city. Source and margins of error.

Rent their home
This area
77%
District 1
63%
Alhambra
59%
Born outside the U.S.
This area
61%
District 1
42%
Alhambra
45%
Moved in since 2020
This area
27%
District 1
29%
Alhambra
22%
In the same home since before 2000
This area
9%
District 1
14%
Alhambra
20%
Under 18
This area
13%
District 1
17%
Alhambra
17%
65 and over
This area
19%
District 1
18%
Alhambra
19%
Bachelor's degree or higher
adults 25 and over
This area
36%
District 1
47%
Alhambra
41%
44median age
2.3people per household
1,814households
$78,000median household income, ±$13,000

Languages at home

English only
This area
23%
District 1
35%
Alhambra
33%
Chinese
Mandarin, Cantonese, and other Chinese
This area
37%
District 1
30%
Alhambra
33%
Spanish
This area
25%
District 1
25%
Alhambra
23%
Speak English less than "very well"
any language, age 5 and over
This area
41%
District 1
28%
Alhambra
33%
The homes20% single-family · 17% built before 1950 · median rent $1,880 · median value $663,000
Built before 1950
This area
17%
District 1
26%
Alhambra
34%
Built 1950 to 1979
This area
32%
District 1
36%
Alhambra
38%
Built 1980 to 1999
This area
34%
District 1
26%
Alhambra
20%
Built 2000 or later
This area
17%
District 1
12%
Alhambra
7%
Single-family houses
This area
20%
District 1
39%
Alhambra
53%
Buildings of 2 to 9 units
This area
40%
District 1
29%
Alhambra
27%
Buildings of 10 or more units
This area
40%
District 1
31%
Alhambra
19%
Homes sitting vacant
This area
10%
District 1
9%
Alhambra
7%
$1,880median monthly rent, ±$110
$663,000median value, owner-occupied homes, ±$97,000
$1,940citywide median rent
$858,000citywide median home value
Getting to work70% drive alone · 1% bus or train · 20% work from home · 10% of households have no car
Drive alone
workers 16 and over
This area
70%
District 1
66%
Alhambra
69%
Carpool
This area
5%
District 1
9%
Alhambra
10%
Bus or train
This area
1%
District 1
2%
Alhambra
2%
Walk or bike
This area
2%
District 1
2%
Alhambra
3%
Work from home
This area
20%
District 1
18%
Alhambra
14%
Households with no car
This area
10%
District 1
8%
Alhambra
7%

On the City's docket

Copied from the City of Alhambra's Development Projects pages, which sort projects as Proposed, Under Appeal, Approved, Under Construction, and Completed. Only projects inside this area are shown, in the City's own terms, with no commentary. Checked September 23, 2026. If the City's page has changed since, the City's page wins.

105 North Second StreetApproved

A 6-unit, 3-story apartment building on an 8,150-square-foot lot zoned RH (Residential High Density). The existing single-family house would be demolished. Rooftop private open space and a partly open ground-floor garage.

Applications PD-2024-00003, DRB-2024-00107. Design Review Board, April 22, 2025. Planning Commission public hearing, October 20, 2025. The City's page for this project.

The last time this seat was on the ballot

959registered voters here, November 2022
374ballots cast from this area
39%turnout here. District 1: 44%
9%of the district's ballots came from here

Registered voters and ballots cast are counted from the voter file, by Census block, for the blocks inside District 1. Ballots include every voter who returned one, whether or not they marked the council race, which is why the four areas together add up to more than the 3,636 council votes.

The County ran District 1 on three precincts in 2022, and none of them lines up with these four areas, so the candidate results are shown by precinct, exactly as certified, with an estimate of how much of each precinct falls in each area.

PrecinctWhere its voters liveCouncil votes, as certifiedTotal
0150004AArea B 85%, Area C 9%, Area A 6%Katherine Lee 602 · Ari Gutiérrez Arámbula 310 · Stephen Sham 2941,206
0150016DArea C 75%, Area A 19%, elsewhere in District 1 6%Katherine Lee 536 · Ari Gutiérrez Arámbula 422 · Stephen Sham 4181,376

Precinct shares are by ballots cast per block. Method and source.

Places

Nothing verified for this area yet. If a park, a school, a corner, or a storefront is what anchors your part of the district, tell me and I will add it, with its address checked.

Where the numbers come from

People, homes, and density are 2020 Census counts for tract 4803.04. Every percentage and median is from the ACS 2024 five-year estimates (2020 to 2024), pulled September 23, 2026. Tract-level estimates carry real margins of error, so read a few points of difference as "about the same." The full list of sources, with table numbers.

The four areas

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