2017 - The Year in Los Angeles Historic Preservation

Gentle reader...

Happy New Year! Every year around this time we compile a survey of the past twelve months in historic preservation. We don't close the lid on the list until the year actually ends, because you never know when a 1967 vintage spinning Van De Kamp's windmill sign will fall through the roof of the Arcadia Denny's! (December 29, if you're wondering.)

The 2017 survey is packed with significant gains and distressing losses, and a long list of places that are still teetering on the brink, somewhere between hope and despair. You'll also find shout outs to the citizen advocates who took it upon themselves to learn and tell the stories of endangered landmarks, and in many cases to save them from demolition.

As the new year dawns, we're grateful to everyone who took part in our Tenth Anniversary happenings, whether you got on the bus, came to a free talk or walking tour, tuned in to the podcast or read this newsletter. It's such an honor to be able to do the work we do, celebrating the city we love with such fine folks. Please don't be strangers in 2018!

We're back on the bus on Saturday with our traditional first tour of the year, The Real Black Dahlia. There is something very moving about exploring the places where Beth Short was in life and death in early January, when the light is the same as last touched her face. We're nearly sold out, but there's still room for you to join us, do!

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RECENTLY TOURED

Farewell to the Studio City Dupar's, which closed forever on New Years Eve.

LAVA'S FORENSIC SCIENCE SEMINAR - SUN. 3/4

Four times a year, we gather in the teaching crime labs of Cal State L.A. to explore the history and future of American forensic science. On March 4, 2018, join us for Wrongful Convictions: Investigatory Case Studies from the California Innocence Project. Your $36.50 ticket benefits graduate level Criminalistics research.

COMING SOON

THE REAL BLACK DAHLIA - SAT. 1/6... Our traditional first tour of the year, which falls on or near the anniversary of Beth Short's kidnapping. 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 usually sells out, so don't wait to reserve. (Buy tickets here.)

RAYMOND CHANDLER'S LOS ANGELES - SAT. 1/13... 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 BIRTH OF NOIR: JAMES M. CAIN'S SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA NIGHTMARE - SAT. 1/20... This tour digs deep into the literature, film and real life vices that inform that most murderous genre, film noir, rolling through Hollywood, Glendale and old Skid Row, lost lion farms, murderous sopranos, fascist film censors, offbeat cemeteries -- all in a quest to reveal the delicious, and deeply influential, nightmares that are author Cain's gift to the world. (Buy tickets here.)

THE LOWDOWN ON DOWNTOWN - SAT. 1/27... This is not a tour about beautiful buildings--although beautiful buildings will be all around you. This is not a tour about brilliant architects--although we will gaze upon their works and marvel. The Lowdown on Downtown is a tour about urban redevelopment, public policy, protest, power and the police. It is a revealing history of how the New Downtown became an "overnight sensation" after decades of quiet work behind the scenes by public agencies and private developers. Come discover the real Los Angeles, the city even natives don't know. Features a visit to the Dutch Chocolate Shop, a tiled wonderland not open to the public. (Sorry, sold out with waiting list. Tour repeats 4/14.)

THE LAVA SUNDAY SALON & BROADWAY ON MY MIND WALKING TOUR - SUN. 1/28... Our free cultural lecture and walking tour series returns to the basement level of Grand Central Market. Join architectural historian Nathan Marsak on a time travel trip through the aesthetics of Bunker Hill's Victorian architecture, viewed through the filter of the atomic age. Free, reservation required. (To RSVP, click here.)

TWO DAYS IN SOUTH LA: THE 1974 SLA SHOOTOUT - SAT. 2/10... When we gave this tour last year, it quickly sold out, so it's back by popular demand. Join author Brad Schreiber (Revolution's End) to discover how the radical Symbionese Liberation Army's political kidnapping of heiress Patty Hearst came to a fiery end. New on this tour: get investigators' insights from retired LASD bomb and arson detective Michael Digby, who shares his deep knowledge of the SLA, much of it unpublished. Sorry, no discounts accepted on this Special Event tour. (Learn more and buy your tickets here.)

Additional upcoming tours: Weird West Adams (2/17), Boyle Heights & Monterey Park (2/24), Echo Park Book of the Dead (3/3), Eastside Babylon (3/10), Special Event: Desert Visionaries 2 - Llano del Rio, St. Andrew's Monastery, Angeles Crest Creamery & Aldous Huxley's Pearblossom Ranch (3/17), Pasadena Confidential (3/24), Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice (3/31), The Real Black Dahlia (4/7), The Lowdown on Downtown (4/14).

OUR HISTORIC L.A. PODCAST

In Episode #123: The Triforium + Topographic Map: Preserving Joseph Young’s Mid-Century Marvels in the Heart of Downtown Los Angeles, a special episode on an iconic L.A. artist. Plus Vermonica dismantled, Grand Central Market sold, some hope for a Pereira & more. Click here to tune in. New: find stories on the map!

AND FINALLY, LINKS

Kudos to the Historic American Building Survey (HABS) photographers, who braved total darkness in the structurally unsound, earthquake damaged Whittier Theatre to document it before demolition.

An impassioned plea from Zev Yaroslavsky to preserve William Pereira’s endangered CBS Television City, an architectural and cultural treasure that supports high paying professional jobs. (Imagine a city government that put the needs of Angelenos ahead of developers…)

Los Angeles Magazine says "Enjoy the Most Eccentric Tour of the City - From literary hot spots to scenes of the crimes, this one is not for the average tourist!"

Some neat Downtown L.A. dining lore: when a restaurant was described as "the coolest" in 1906, they were talking temperature!

Yikes! 30% of Business Improvement District security guards fired after watchdog blogger compelled City of L.A. to demand the background checks required by law.

New data driven site reveals the national human costs of redevelopment (and yes, that's an iconic L.A. photo, of a Chavez Ravine eviction, on the splash page)

Something good came from the conflagration.

A troubling demolition on Bunker Hill, as CRA-funded public space is jackhammered by the private owner. The Cranky Preservationist objects!

Another reason we don’t publish our year-end historic preservation survey until the year actually has ended… it’s three days before Christmas, and a developer wants to demolish one of our greatest streamline modern residences!

Mysteries of the Mission era revealed.

Encouraging news about Vermonica. Artist Sheila Klein met with City of LA in hopes of bringing her beloved vintage streetlight installation back. (We also attended, and will keep you posted.)

Preserving what's left of Irving Tabor's bungalows is a win for Venice history.

Remembering William Dailey, Los Angeles bookman.

yrs,
Kim and Richard
Esotouric