A Preservation Success Story: Vermonica Lives!

Gentle reader...

It is a joy to be able to usher in the new year by announcing a preservation success story, one very close to our hearts.

Around Thanksgiving 2017, we learned through a Facebook post that Vermonica, Sheila Klein's 1993 public art installation that transformed vintage Los Angeles street lamps into an urban candelabra, had vanished from its East Hollywood mini-mall parking lot.

The site-specific piece (at Vermont and Santa Monica) was a lasting symbol of Angelenos coming together to rebuild and reconnect after the 1992 riots. The mini-mall then contained the Hollytron electronics store, which the armed Korean owners defended from the roof. The lovely row of historic street lights was only meant to last a year, but it stayed for 24, a low-key landmark that made the city a little cooler.

We loved Vermonica, and admired Sheila Klein's collaborative DIY artistic process, which brought volunteers from the Bureau of Street Lighting together with private property owners and the city's Department of Cultural Affairs to install a piece that blurred the lines of infrastructure and art, private and public ownership.

Vermonica's disappearance wasn't a mystery for long. The vintage street lights were soon spotted, reinstalled in a different orientation, a couple blocks away in front of the Bureau of Street Lighting. We reached out to Sheila Klein, who no longer lives in Los Angeles, and gave her a platform on our blog to announce that she had not been properly informed about the removal of her artwork, and that this collection of street lights was not Vermonica.

Then we got to work, helping Sheila advocate with the city, much changed since the artist-friendly era when she was active here, to figure out what had happened and how to get Vermonica back where it belonged. At first the meetings were productive, but they soon stalled out, leaving Sheila understandably frustrated. When she had a lawyer follow up, the city claimed that Vermonica was not actually a work of art at all, and that Sheila had no rights to it.

Los Angeles can and should do so much better, for its citizens and for the public art that improves our landscape.

Vermonica might easily have been lost forever. But then last June, government transparency advocate Adrian Riskin obtained some emails that showed how the Bureau of Street Lighting had deliberately removed Vermonica to create their own derivative artwork "Virmonica."

Armed with this smoking gun information, Sheila gave the city another chance to do the right thing. And they have!

Vermonica will be restored, under the direction of Sheila Klein, close to its original location, with a projected return date of Cinco de Mayo, 2020. That's Vermonica's 1993 birthday, too. We hope to see you there for a swinging street party in the glow of our beloved urban candelabra.

As our list of historic preservation advocacy projects grows, we've experience plenty of heartbreaks. When something beautiful and meaningful can be saved, it makes all those heartbreaks easier to take.

Viva Vermonica! Chris Burden's Urban Light at LACMA may get more social media love, but Angelenos and savvy visitors will soon be able to visit the original vintage Los Angeles street light sculpture and cultural landmark once again.
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AND WHAT'S THE NEXT TOUR? We're off this weekend, returning on January 18 with The Lowdown on Downtown. The tour is sold out with a waiting list. We still have room for you to join us on the South L.A. Road Trip (1/25) and The Visionary World of Millard Sheets (1/26). And just added to the calendar is our flagship true crime tour The Real Black Dahlia (4/11). Join us, do!

UPCOMING TOURS & SPECIAL EVENTS

THE LOWDOWN ON DOWNTOWN - SAT. 1/18... 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 by public agencies and private developers. Features a visit to the Roebling Wire Works office and a stop at the Dutch Chocolate Shop, two Batchelder tile landmarks not usually open to the public. (Sold out with waiting list, more info here.)
SOUTH L.A. ROAD TRIP: HOT RODS, ADOBES, GOOGIE & AEROSPACE - SAT. 1/25... Back from hiatus with some new locations, this California Culture series tour rolls through Maywood, Bell Gardens and Downey, and the past two centuries, exploring some of L.A.'s most seldom-seen and compelling structures. Turning the West Side-centric notion of an L.A. architecture tour on its head, we visit areas not traditionally considered significant, raising issues of preservation, adaptive reuse, hot rod kar kulture and the evolution of the city. (Buy tickets here.)

SPECIAL EVENT: THE VISIONARY WORLD OF MILLARD SHEETS: LANDMARKS & LORE OF CLAREMONT AND POMONA - SUN. 1/26... More than any other artist, Millard Sheets shaped the look and feel of Mid-Century Modern art and architecture in California. Join Adam Arenson (author of Banking on Beauty: Millard Sheets and Midcentury Commercial Architecture in California) for a thrilling full day out (including a buffet lunch) exploring a wide variety of Sheets Studio commissions, and other Mid-Century Modernist gems, in and around the community the artist called home. (Buy tickets here.)

THE BIRTH OF NOIR: JAMES M. CAIN'S SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA NIGHTMARE - SAT. 2/1... 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.)

BOYLE HEIGHTS & MONTEREY PARK: THE HIDDEN HISTORIES OF L.A.'S MELTING POTS - SAT. 2/15... Come on a century's social history tour through the transformation of neighborhoods, punctuated with immersive stops to sample the varied cultures that make our changing city so beguiling. Voter registration, citizenship classes, Chicano Moratorium, walkouts, blow-outs, anti-Semitism, adult education, racial covenants, boycotts, The City Beautiful, Exclusion Acts and Immigration Acts, property values, xenophobia, and delicious dumplings--all are themes which will be addressed on this lively excursion. This whirlwind social history tour will include: The Vladeck Center, Hollenbeck Park, Evergreen Cemetery, El Encanto, Divine's Furniture and Wing Hop Fung. (Buy tickets here.)

RAYMOND CHANDLER'S LOS ANGELES - SAT. 2/22... 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 visit to Larry Edmunds Bookshop, the last survivor of a once-great Hollywood literary district. (Buy tickets here.)

ROUTE 66 ROAD TRIP: ROADSIDE ARCHITECTURE, CITRUS, DRIVE-INS & CEMETERIES - SAT. 2/29... Back by popular demand, join us on a time travel trip due east along California's Mother Road to explore the building of its dream, from citrus ranches to oddball roadside attractions, sinister sisters, an ancient hidden graveyard recently surrounded by a suburb, and the many mysteries of the northern San Gabriel Valley. (Buy tickets here.)

FORENSIC SCIENCE SEMINAR - SUN. 3/8... 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. The Blonde Rattlesnake, The Black Dahlia & The Future of Forensic Science is a mix of historic storytelling and cutting edge lab innovations, with true crime author Julia Bricklin and Dr. David Raymond, with a cameo from our own Real Black Dahlia tour host, Kim Cooper. (Sold out with waiting list, more info here.)
Additional upcoming tours: Wilshire Boulevard Death Trip (3/14), Mansonland (3/21), Blood & Dumplings (4/4) and The Real Black Dahlia (4/11).
MORE THAN SATURDAY AFTERNOON TOURS We offer private versions of most of our tours (up to 54 people), and Downtown L.A. walking tours for smaller groups. Does your L.A.-area library, club or historical society host guest speakers? Ask them to book us.

Special Event: The Visionary World of Millard Sheets (1/26)
$105.00

South L.A. Road Trip (1/25)
$64.00

The Birth of Noir (2/1)
$64.00

Boyle Heights & Monterey Park (2/15)
$64.00

AND FINALLY, LINKS

New on the Esotouric blog: Architect Richard Neutra's Recipe for Tongue-Goulash

Recommended Reading: Los Angeles Neon by Nathan Marsak. Find more L.A. book recommendations.

In LACMA News: LACMA's death trip is depressing. But demolition isn’t inevitable. Vera Lutter's large scale camera obscura photographs of the 1965 William Pereira campus could also mark the start of its restoration and adaptive reuse as a 21st century museum, respecting history and expanding it. Save LACMA!

It's good the Cultural Heritage Commission will oversee the Rialto Theatre restoration; the property owners lost all of the interior plaster at the Alexandria Hotel when they took that project on without professional supervision.

Demolition by neglect is no way to treat The Queen Mary, and firing her longtime inspector isn't going to make the problems vanish—or make him shut up. Here's hoping this isn't the beginning of the end for the grand old ship.

A love letter to Tony Sheets' narrative sculpture "The History of World Commerce." See it while you can, and before they do something dumb or demolish it.

Congratulations to AIDS Healthcare Foundation for their Isabella Coleman Rose Parade Award, for this lovely reminder that old buildings should be preserved as homes for our neighbors, not demolished by real estate speculators. Like this gem.

In a piece on beloved logo signage, The L.A. Times is correct to point out that Felix Chevrolet is now LED, not neon... but dead wrong that the sign is a Historic Cultural Monument. Antonio Villaraigosa made sure of that! (subsequently this error was corrected)

New on R.I.P. Los Angeles, the feel bad blog this city deserves: where will the lushes cash their checks when Liquor Bank is demolished? Plus, a couple of wee wooden bungalows, so old the city has no record of construction, doomed to fall for the usual file cabinet for humans. Chisel "35% Open Space Reduction" on L.A.’s gravestone, 'cause that stuff kills.

The ghost of Manzanar, Giichi Matsumura, is coming home... to Woodlawn Cemetery, section 18, to join his bride Ito. Never again.

A thrilling new film series at the Billy Wilder Theater, curated by Ross Lipman and Paul Malcolm: American Neorealism, Part One: 1948-1984.

Adrian Riskin, who helped save Vermonica through public records requests, is suing the City of Los Angeles for access to the LAPD photo archives that have been selectively monetized by Fototeka Gallery and James Ellroy. Freeing this treasure trove would transform L.A. history!

Whet your appetite for the next day's sightseeing tour of Millard Sheets' landmarks with this conversation and book signing at Hennessey + Ingalls Bookstore with our co-host Adam Arenson. (Books will not be available on tour day, so this is a nice synergy.)

We're curious to see how the Times will cover closure of St. Vincent—L.A.’s oldest hospital (1856!) and a huge piece of land in gentrifying Westlake—put into bankruptcy by the paper’s owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong. Worried about the patients and staff scrambling to cope.

Kim shares a weird tale of mother love turned deadly: The Dream Killer in Hollywood. It's just one in a series of Monstrous Extravagances, curated by Kier-La Janisse.

yrs for Los Angeles,
Kim and Richard
Esotouric