Here's To The Young Preservationists!

Gentle reader...

We meet in our travels many fascinating people who have dedicated their lives to telling the stories of Los Angeles and preserving its built environment. There is a rare pride that comes with showing people around a place that would likely not survive if not for your efforts. Even years later, in the storytelling, the fight seems like it just happened.

Lately, we've gotten to know a couple of young folks who have the preservation bug, and we'd like to introduce to them, and to their ongoing battles that can use your support.

Price Morgan grew up in a Paul R. Williams-designed home in the mid-century modern SeaView tract in Rancho Palos Verdes, and worked with his father Mark on a campaign to preserve the neighborhood through creation of an historic preservation ordinance. The ordinance didn't happen, but Price has become a great advocate for SeaView's architectural integrity—even as many houses in the tract have been remodeled or demolished. Last Saturday, Price led us on a guided tour of his neighborhood. Next, he hopes to write a SeaView book.

Doug Quill is a filmmaker who has an office filled with vintage motion picture gear in a vintage building on the old United Artist's Studio, now called The Lot. When he recently learned that Frank Sinatra's personal motion picture bungalow was threatened by demolition to make room for a DWP infrastructure project, he wondered why it couldn't be saved, and circulated a petition seeking support. It seemed the least he could do, since his grandfather had played in Sinatra's band! After Doug asked for help from the DWP Commissioners, the bungalow got a stay of execution while possible solutions are explored. Sign the petition if you'd like to stay informed about its fate.

You can learn more about Price and Doug in the two newest episodes of You Can't Eat The Sunshine, our podcast celebrating Los Angeles history and the people who are passionate about it.

We're on the bus on Saturday with The Real Black Dahlia, and we still have a few seats available on this time travel trip to postwar Downtown LA. Come follow in the footsteps of Beth Short, victim in the still unsolved 1947 murder that reveals a lost world. Join us, do!

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RECENTLY TOURED

Taggers have defaced the exquisite black and gold art deco Selig Clothing Store (1931, Los Angeles Cultural History Monument #289).

LAVA'S FORENSIC SCIENCE SEMINAR - SUN. 4/23

Four times a year, we gather in the teaching crime labs of Cal State Los Angeles under the direction of Professor Donald Johnson to explore the history and future of American forensic science. On April 23, 2017, join us for From The Crime Lab To The Coroner's Office, an afternoon of historic murders and modern day investigation techniques. Your $36.50 ticket benefits graduate level Criminalistics research. This event is now sold out. Click here for more info, or to get on the waiting list.

RECOMMENDED READING

A helpful reference tool for Price Morgan as he gathers information about the history and architecture of the SeaView tract is this faithful facsimile of architect Paul R. Williams' 1945 guide to cutting-edge small house design for postwar American families. Fifteen years later, he designed the whole SeaView neighborhood.

COMING SOON

THE REAL BLACK DAHLIA - SAT. 4/15... Join us on this iconic, unsolved Los Angeles murder mystery tour, from the throbbing boulevards of a postwar Downtown to the quiet suburban avenue where horror came calling. After multiple revisions, this is less a true crime tour than a social history of 1940s Hollywood female culture, mass media and madness, and we welcome you to join us for the ride. This tour always sells out, so don't wait to reserve. (Buy tickets here.)

CHARLES BUKOWSKI'S L.A. - SAT. 4/22... Come explore Charles Bukowski's lost Los Angeles and the fascinating contradictions that make this great local writer such a hoot to explore. Haunts of a Dirty Old Man is a raucous day out celebrating liquor, ladies, pimps and poets. The tour includes a visit to Buk's DeLongpre bungalow, where you'll see the Cultural-Historic Monument sign that we helped to get approved, and a mid-tour provisions stop at Pink Elephant Liquor. New: souvenir Bukowski's L.A. booklet available. (Buy tickets here.)

FORENSIC SCIENCE SEMINAR AT CAL STATE LOS ANGELES - SUN. 4/23... Sold out! Professor Donald Johnson hosts "From The Crime Lab To The Coroner's Office," featuring author Brad Schreiber's historic crime research and an introduction to crime scene investigations. Your $36.50 ticket benefits graduate level Criminalistics research. (For more info, or to get on the waiting list, click here.)

RAYMOND CHANDLER'S LOS ANGELES - SAT. 4/29... Follow in the young writer's footsteps near his downtown oil company offices to sites from The Lady in the Lake and The Little Sister, meet several real inspirations for the Philip Marlowe character and get the skinny on Chandler's secret comic operetta that we discovered in the Library of Congress nearly a century after it was written. Plus a stop at Scoops for noirish gelato creations and a visit to Larry Edmunds Bookshop. (Buy tickets here.)

THE LAVA SUNDAY SALON & BROADWAY ON MY MIND WALKING TOUR - SUN. 4/30... Our free cultural lecture series recently relaunched on the basement level of Grand Central Market with a walk to follow. This month, our focus is the history and current restoration of the Fort Moore Pioneer Memorial, above Chinatown. Free, reservation required.

BLOOD & DUMPLINGS - SAT. 5/6... Forget Hollywood, babe, 'cause the quintessential L.A. town is definitely El Monte, its history packed with noirish murders, brilliant thespians, loony Nazis, James Ellroy's naked lunch and the lion farm that MGM's celebrated kitty called home. See all this and so much more, including the Man from Mars Bandit's Waterloo, when you climb aboard the daffiest crime tour in our arsenal, and the only one that includes a dumpling picnic at a landmark playground populated with fantastical giant sea creatures. Special on this tour: the secret diary of Vilma, El Monte's sassy Clifton's Cafeteria camera girl. Not frequently offered, you won't want to miss this ride. (Buy tickets here.)

Additional upcoming tours: Hollywood! (5/13), Weird West Adams (5/20), Special Event: Crawling Down Cahuenga: Tom Waits’ L.A. (6/3), Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice (6/10), Special Event: Desert Visionaries: Llano del Rio, Antelope Valley Indian Museum & Aldous Huxley’s Pearblossom Ranch (6/17), Eastside Babylon (6/24), Pasadena Confidential (7/8), The Real Black Dahlia (7/15), Charles Bukowski's L.A. (7/22) and Raymond Chandler's L.A. (7/29).

OUR HISTORIC L.A. PODCAST

Back from hiatus! In Episode #118: Adventures in the Hollywood Preservation Trenches: Lytton Savings & Frank Sinatra’s Bungalow, we get to know two dedicated history lovers, Steve Luftman and Douglas Quill, and learn how they're working to save places that matter. Click here to tune in. New: find stories on the map!

AND FINALLY, LINKS

Otto Penzler’s library of mystery is a thing of beauty.

The wonderful Bob Winter doesn’t suffer architectural fools, still passionately loves Los Angeles at 92.

After the Great War, Theodore Payne provided red Flanders Poppy seeds for Los Angeles remembrance gardens. 75¢/oz.

Sad that Wattles Mansion is again being remuddled by contemporary designers. A city-owned landmark deserves better care.

Our Kim Cooper’s sleuthing of Raymond Chandler’s lost libretto is featured, most colorfully, at Thrilling Detective.

A new generation of Chandler fiends gets to second guess Philip Marlowe casting choices. So, Neesen?

We applaud the civic effort to preserve a cool ’60s burger stand, but it’s odd right after city council voted unanimously to demolish Parker Center, a true mid-century masterpiece, for their own civic center project.

Dig Welton Becket’s endangered Parker Center through the ages, in images from the LAPL photo archives. After 62 years, she still looks natty as hell.

And here's video from our LAVA Sunday Salon Parker Center preservation talk.

CSUN map collection in peril, and geography students feel terrorized by the administrator whose bad idea this is.

Controversial hotel development plan for Julia Morgan’s derelict Pasadena YWCA is dropped. Here's a keyhole view inside.

It’s refreshing to see Peter Zumthor expend some effort on his LACMA proposal, but William Pereira's original campus still merits restoration. And spanning Wilshire is just wrong.

Ellis Act abuse harms renters and leads to the demolition of historic buildings. It’s long past time for L.A. to enforce the law.

A lost relic from our Charles Bukowski tour is memorialized at :35 into this cartoon. RIP Sassony Arcade, its cool plastic sign illegally destroyed by property flippers. Bukowski would have written a great poem about that.

360 degrees of Palos Verdes mid-century modern heaven viewed on our Aaron G. Green’s Anderson House tour with architect and historian Alan Hess.

yrs,
Kim and Richard
Esotouric