United States · California · Los Angeles
Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Sherman Oaks is a Los Angeles district on the south San Fernando Valley, laid out in 1927 along Ventura Boulevard. It climbs to the Santa Monica Mountains.
Hotel links are affiliate links: booking through them may earn us a commission, at no extra cost to you. It never affects how places are ranked. How this works
Where to stay in Sherman Oaks
Where the beds are, and what that means for the visit.
Sherman Oaks trades on position rather than on hotel stock. The interchange where Interstate 405 meets U.S. Route 101 sits inside the district, which puts Hollywood, the Burbank studios and downtown Los Angeles within an ordinary drive, while Sepulveda Pass carries the same freeway over the Santa Monica Mountains to the Westside.
Ventura Boulevard holds the rooms, the restaurants and most of the commerce; the grid behind it is quiet, and the hillside addresses south of the Boulevard are among the dearest in Los Angeles County. No rail line reaches Sherman Oaks yet. Metro's Sepulveda Transit Corridor would put a Ventura Boulevard station in the district on an underground heavy-rail line, with the first segment projected to open in 2033.
Choose it if you want a car-based San Fernando Valley base with the Santa Monica Mountains at the end of the street, not a walkable nightlife quarter.
About Sherman Oaks
What are the main landmarks in Sherman Oaks?
The Sherman Oaks Galleria opened in 1980 at the corner of Ventura Boulevard and Sepulveda Boulevard, and the teenage mall culture it fed went straight onto film in Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Valley Girl. Westfield Fashion Square has traded on Riverside Drive since 1962, anchored by two department stores. Los Angeles has designated five Historic-Cultural Monuments inside Sherman Oaks.
The La Reina Theatre at 14626 Ventura Boulevard was built for Fox West Coast Theaters to a design by S. Charles Lee, and the designation has outlived most of the building, because the auditorium was demolished for a retail block and the tower came down after the 1994 Northridge earthquake. La Reina still fronts Ventura Boulevard. Its facade and marquee were kept, along with the terrazzo entrance and box office.
Chase Knolls Garden Apartments holds another of the five listings on Riverside Drive, and the Ward House sits high on Mulholland Drive.
What is the history of Sherman Oaks?
Moses Hazeltine Sherman, a partner in the Los Angeles Suburban Homes Company, gave his name to the tract subdivided here and sold off acre by acre from 1927. His other venture was the Los Angeles Pacific Railroad. The oaks were already standing.
What followed was a long argument about where the boundary should fall. In 1991 homeowners in Chandler Estates petitioned the city council to be moved out of Van Nuys and into Sherman Oaks, producing an old property deed to argue the ground had been Sherman Oaks until ZIP codes were drawn in 1962. Magnolia Woods won the same transfer weeks later, and a further block of Van Nuys was handed over in 2009.
The 1994 Northridge earthquake did the rest of the rewriting, shaking the Sherman Oaks Galleria shut for repairs and leaving one of its anchor stores dark for four years.
Where is Sherman Oaks?
The Los Angeles River runs along the northern edge of Sherman Oaks and forms part of the boundary with Van Nuys, though on this stretch it is a concrete flood-control channel rather than an open stream. Studio City lies east, Encino west. South of Ventura Boulevard the ground tilts upward and the district takes in a wide swath of the Santa Monica Mountains, which is how the Los Angeles Times came to count 9.15 square miles inside the boundary and one of the lowest densities of any neighbourhood in the city. Mulholland Drive holds the crest.
Sepulveda Boulevard and Interstate 405 leave the San Fernando Valley at the southern end of Sherman Oaks, entering Sepulveda Pass just below Ventura Boulevard.
Good for
More areas in Los Angeles
Updated October 2026