Old Torrance

Old Torrance is where the city started, and most of its houses date from the town's first four decades. In 1912 founder Jared Sidney Torrance had Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. lay out a planned industrial town on ranch land east of Redondo Beach, with Irving Gill as resident architect. The 109-block tract they drew, with separate residential, commercial, and industrial districts, still reads clearly on a map.

We map it the way the city's Torrance Tract overlay does: Dominguez Street on the north, Western Avenue on the east, Plaza del Amo and Carson Street on the south, and Crenshaw Boulevard on the west. Its spine is El Prado Avenue, the landscaped parkway Olmsted aligned on Mount San Antonio, which runs into the downtown grid of Sartori, Cabrillo, and Marcelina avenues. The factory blocks north of Dominguez were part of the same plan but aren't residential.

Two of Gill's works are still downtown. His 1912 Pacific Electric depot still stands on Cabrillo Avenue, though the Depot restaurant that has filled it since 1991 has posted a farewell for September 30, 2026. His 1913 concrete rail bridge over Torrance Boulevard has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1989. Torrance High School, opened in 1917 and also on the Register, holds the southwest corner at Carson Street.

The housing comes in two layers. County assessor records show about 790 detached houses, 93 percent built between 1910 and 1949, and about 950 condos and townhomes, most built in the 1990s and 2000s near downtown. Another 325 lots hold duplexes and about 230 hold three or more units. Prices sit below the city's hillside and coastal neighborhoods.

Old Torrance is not a designated historic district, but two sets of rules apply. The city adopted a Historic Preservation Plan in 2017 and has named ten houses local landmarks since October 2022. Separately, the Torrance Tract overlay sends teardowns, facade changes, and large additions on surveyed older houses to the Planning Commission.

The residential district is a grid of pre-war houses. Gramercy and Andreo were the first residential avenues. By assessor records, the typical detached house was built around 1927 and has about 1,230 square feet on a lot of about 5,100; the middle half of lots run 4,500 to 5,800 square feet. The mix is Craftsman bungalows, Spanish Colonial Revival and Mission Revival cottages, a few Tudors, and plainer houses from the late 1930s and 1940s, on blocks with mature street trees.

Condition varies more than style. After a century of remodels, original detail, permitted additions, and the state of the foundation, roof, and systems drive value more than square footage. The city has designated ten houses as local landmarks, the first on Arlington Avenue in October 2022 and the latest on Andreo Avenue in June 2026, with others on Acacia, Gramercy, Post, El Prado, and Sonoma. Designation needs the owner's written consent.

The other half of the housing is newer. About 950 condos and townhomes sit near downtown and along the main roads, and about four in five were built between 1990 and 2009. They're the usual way in, and in September 2026 they made up most of the listings here.

The overlay catches buyers off guard, so read it first. The Torrance Tract overlay, Article 49 of the zoning code, covers residential lots in the townsite that hold a house the 2011 to 2013 survey rated contributing or altered-contributing. On those lots, demolishing any part of the old house, changing its street facade, adding a driveway curb cut, or building past a floor-area ratio of 0.5, garage included, needs Planning Commission review. Reroofing with period materials, historically accurate windows, fences, and a detached accessory building don't. Ask the Planning Division how the survey rated a house before you write an offer.

Landmark and district rules are a second layer. Under the 2017 ordinance, exterior work on a designated landmark or inside a designated district goes through historic review, and a Mills Act property-tax contract is available only after designation. No district has been designated yet. The city has a draft update of the plan out for public review that would extend it to downtown's commercial buildings.

Age is the next problem. Homes from the 1910s to the 1940s can have original foundations, old wiring and plumbing, and additions of uneven quality. I'd inspect the structure, roof, sewer lateral and systems, and find out which past work was permitted. I'd hold back a real repair budget on any house that hasn't been redone.

The refinery is closer than most buyers expect. The Torrance Refinery, run by PBF Energy since it bought the plant from ExxonMobil in 2016, fills the blocks between 190th Street and Del Amo Boulevard. Its south fence is less than half a mile north of Dominguez Street and under a mile from El Prado. The February 18, 2015 explosion there threw debris that narrowly missed a tank holding tens of thousands of pounds of modified hydrofluoric acid. In 2019 the South Coast AQMD shelved a proposed rule that could have phased the acid out and took safety commitments from the refinery instead. Flaring still happens, and the AQMD posts flare notices online.

Zamperini Field, the city airport, is about 2.5 miles southwest; check the city's NoiseLab flight tracks for your block anyway. FEMA maps the whole neighborhood as Zone X, minimal flood hazard, and the 2025 state fire-hazard map leaves it out of the hazard zones.

From most blocks you can walk to downtown, El Prado Park, Torrance High and Wilson Park. Anything past that means a car, and the main roads out are Torrance Boulevard, Carson Street, Western Avenue and Crenshaw Boulevard.

For the region, the 405 is north via Crenshaw or Western, and the 110 is east via Carson Street or Torrance Boulevard. Del Amo Fashion Center, about 2.5 million square feet of stores, is about two miles west at Hawthorne and Carson. The Mary K. Giordano Regional Transit Center at 465 Crenshaw Boulevard, just past the neighborhood's northwest corner, opened on June 9, 2023, with 250 parking spaces, and Torrance Transit's 4X runs express from there to Union Station. Metro plans to end its K Line extension at that center; the final environmental report came out in September 2025, and Metro expects service by 2036.