UPDATED - Monday Action Alert: Derelict National Register eligible 1911 Craftsman bungalow and AIDS landmark at 1833 N. Wilton Place threatened with city demolition
Gentle reader,
Sometimes during one of our Saturday walking tours, a guest will ask, “Is this your full-time job? What do you do all week?”
Update: Thank you to all the community members who made public comment seeking to save Hernandez House. Your comments are below. While staff says these were submitted to the case file, no mention of them was made during the hearing, and we do not know if the Commissioners read or considered the comments before making their determination.
At its meeting on 4/29/2025, after hearing from Staff Inspector Zeydi Stewart about the poor state of the property, and hearing from owners’ representative Jordan Beroukhim about the Catch-22 that made it impossible to obtain a demolition permit until a new project was ready to be submitted due to its location within the Vermont Western SNAP Station Neighborhood Area Plan, the Building and Safety Commission found that it constitutes a nuisance, substandard building or a hazardous building pursuant to Section 91.8904.2 of the Los Angeles Municipal Code and granted no additional time to comply with the Department’s Abate Order.
This action cannot be appealed, which means that the National Register eligible 1833 N. Wilton Place can now be demolished, just as the property owners want. But this historic house can still be restored and be of use—it could be moved to Altadena!
If you would like to see that happen, please tell CD13 councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez (email to Councilmember.Soto-Martinez@lacity.org or call 213-473-7013)!
Information from the hearing is below: the staff report, the findings letter sent to the owners, and audio of the complete hearing (this matter begins at 5:18).
Update 11/7/2025: See our newsletter about the tragedy of Wilton Place including the sad end of this beautiful house and the relics we pulled out of the dust.
Original post continues below: And we laugh, ruefully. Because looking after Los Angeles is so much more than a full-time job. Fretting citizens constantly call, email and pepper us with messages on our social media channels, seeking help with some crisis or alerting us to a demolition notification, a fire, a slumlord doing illegal work, trees being felled, and on and on.
We take each message seriously, give them our time and our help where we can, and then we start fretting, too.
After Saturday’s tour, we even went out to document demolition of a lovely Edwardian cottage duplex with a significant 1932 Olympics connection, after a kind citizen tipped us off.
And we try to read and parse everything that comes out of Los Angeles City Hall, which is how we were able to sound the alarm last June on the new threat to rent controlled tenants of the landmarked Scott Avenue bungalow court: proposed legal conversion of their apartment homes to tiny single family houses that could be sold out from under them, dissolving all of their tenant protections under the law.
Recently, this story has been widely picked up by local media—and it all started when we spotted the City Planning case file when it was created and shared online, a post which was quickly seen by tenants and their friends. Now the tenants are organizing to protect their homes, and by extension to protect other vulnerable renters whose landlords might take advantage of loopholes in the City’s poorly crafted new housing development policies to profit by their displacement.
City meetings fall under the Brown Act, and require a 72 hour notice for any action. That puts the agenda for Tuesday’s 9:30am Board of Building and Safety Commissioners hearing that was sent out at 9:48am Monday morning in violation. Under the law, we ought to have had a few days to gather the following information and share it with you, and we have complained to BBSC and the City Attorney, asking that this meeting be rescheduled. No votes taken on Tuesday will be legally binding due to the Brown Act violation.
But this is still a red alert, and we need you to contact councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez and the BBSC today! Scroll down for instructions and sample messages.
The George Whitelaw Residence (1833 North Wilton Place, 1911) is listed on Survey LA as a National Register eligible "Excellent example of Craftsman residential architecture in Hollywood."
From the late 1980s, it was Northern Lights Alternative’s Hernandez House, a safe place providing services for people living with HIV/AIDS, and where many memorial services were held for clients and their loved ones.
Largely forgotten today because so many of those who used its services have died, it is a holy place that does not deserve to be destroyed without notice, as is the plan of its owners and the City. You can read about Hernandez House in this 1990 feature story from the L.A. Weekly.
As recently as two years ago, the house appeared from the street to be in good condition, and the 2023 property listing language concurred: “A beautiful storybook craftsman built by a lumber Barron from Michigan for his daughter who wanted to study acting, located in the Franklin Village area. The wood interior is a hand selected Ponderosa Fur and is all natural in its present form. For an added bonus, there is a recording sound stage on the third floor with 100-amp electrical service and is also ventilated. The house has a separate 100-amp service. There is new copper plumbing in all accessible areas, new roof and exterior paint. The basement has forced air heat. In the backyard is a built-in brick BBQ. This property was formally (sic) owned by Elizabeth Taylor for her Northern Lights Foundation.” [fact check: we can find no evidence of Miss Taylor or Northern Lights having a presence here.]
Nevertheless, it was subtly listed for sale as a teardown, with no interior photos and drone footage highlighting the 0.19 AC / 8,107 SF lot size and the marketable location.
1833 N. Wilton Place sold on 3/8/2023 for $1.3 M to a consortium including Lindon Shiao of COHAUS LLC.
Nobody ever moved in. Instead, it was held vacant and quickly became blighted, with numerous recorded code violation complaints for unpermitted work and an abandoned or vacant building left open to the public.
On 10/3/2023, the city signed off on a scope of work to remodel the house into a 3-story duplex and attached 3-story ADU. On 11/16/2023, Lindon Shiao and the Zhus deeded the property to the Zhus. 14 months passed with no sign of work.
On 12/20/2024, a fire broke out on the second floor and was quickly knocked down by LAFD. On 2/10/2025, a demolition application was submitted, with another demo case calling out the sustained code violations of unpermitted electrical, plumbing and HVAC work effective 6/24/2024.
From the public record, it appears that the new owners got caught illegally converting this single family, National Register eligible house for multi-family use and then halted work, leaving the building open to trespassers and vandals, and allowed it to catch fire. Now, barely two years after buying the beautiful house, after causing it to be heavily damaged, they seek to tear it down, and the City is helping.
We say NO! Such unchecked demolition by neglect harms every Angeleno in the loss of good housing, good trees and good neighbors, expensive service calls by inspectors, police and fire fighters, lung damage from the inevitable fires and the potential destruction of a significant site from the early days of AIDS activism.
Nowhere in the public record is there an assessment of the present condition of the house, and if it retains sufficient integrity to be restored for residential use and possible listing on local, state or National Registers. Perhaps it could even be moved to Altadena, to replace one of about 9000 mostly historic buildings destroyed in the Eaton Fire.
Yet on Tuesday, 4/29 at 9:30am the BBSC will hold an unappealable vacant building abatement hearing and likely vote to cause it to be demolished at city expense, though such a vote would a Brown Act violation.
Want to help save an important Los Angeles house? Here are your preservation pal action items for Monday, April 28—and please, pass it on!
1) Tell CD13 councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez that this historic house should not be demolished after two years of neglectful ownership, but that you expect him to protect it. (Send your email to Councilmember.Soto-Martinez@lacity.org or call 213-473-7013)
2) Please send public comment urging the commissioners NOT doom this good house to unappealable demolition.
3) Optional: If you are able to attend this hearing and make public comment, it is held at 201 N Figueroa Street Room 900, and this is agenda item #1 (1833 North Wilton Place; Board File No. 250029).
Here are sample messages which you can adapt to reflect your personal feelings:
Dear Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez and Board of Building and Safety Commissioners:
I write to express my strong concerns about the potential abatement order followed by demolition of 1833 North Wilton Place (BBSC Board File No. 250029, hearing on 4/29/2025). This 1911 Craftsman home is listed on Survey LA as being eligible for National Register status, and was the site of the significant early AIDS advocacy organization Northern Lights Alliance - Hernandez House. In the two years since the present owners purchased it in good condition, there have been numerous code violations for unpermitted work and for leaving the vacant property unsecured, and a serious fire. But the house is still standing. Don’t reward the owners for their demolition by neglect by requiring demolition of 1833 North Wilton Place. It can still be useful as housing for Angelenos, and it tells an important Los Angeles story. I am counting on you to do the right thing and send a message that holding historic housing vacant and letting it fall into a state of decay will not be rewarded by the City, but instead that property owners will be held accountable to maintain such properties in decent, habitable condition. - signed [your name, zip code]
And maybe the next time one of our tour guests asks if showing them around the City we love is our full time job, we’ll laugh, ruefully, and send them the link to this newsletter… which we sure hope to be able to update with the happy news that demolition is on hold for 1833 North Wilton Place! And you can help!
Saturday’s Human Sacrifice tour explores the grim intersection of true crime and affordable housing, and how for nearly a century the City has created conditions that allow vulnerable people to fall through the cracks and into the hands of fiends. It’s pretty dark stuff, but we believe that it’s important to look at why Los Angeles is so screwed up, and to use the lessons of tragedies to advocate for a better world. Join us, do!
Yours for Los Angeles,
Kim & Richard
Esotouric
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Our work—leading tours and historic preservation and cultural landmark advocacy—is about building a bridge between Los Angeles' past and its future, and not allowing the corrupt, greedy, inept and misguided players who hold present power to destroy the city's soul and body. If you’d like to support our efforts to be the voice of places worth preserving, we have a tip jar, vintage Los Angeles webinars available to stream, in-person tours and a souvenir shop you can browse in. We’ve also got recommended reading bookshelves on Amazon and the Bookshop indie bookstore site. And did you know we offer private versions of our walking tours for groups big or small? Or just share this link with other people who care.
UPCOMING WALKING TOURS
• Human Sacrifice: The Black Dahlia, Elisa Lam, Heidi Planck & Skid Row Slasher Cases (5/3) • Charles Bukowski’s Westlake (5/10) • Highland Park Arroyo Time Travel Trip (5/17) • The Run: Gay Downtown History (5/24) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (5/31) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (6/7) • Raymond Chandler’s Noir Downtown Los Angeles (6/14) • Miracle Mile Marvels & Madness (6/22) • Westlake Park Time Travel Trip (6/28) • Film Noir / Real Noir (7/12) • The Real Black Dahlia (7/19)
The person who said you have lots of free time does not get how hard you both work. This story is amazing and it is a gift to Los Angeles. I am so proud of your efforts to hold on to the real
Los Angeles. Your proud mother
Sad to see this house go. I grew up in the 1845 N. Wilton Pl. house. We used to roll around on the front lawn of the 1833 house as kids.