Gentle reader,
Today’s post is our recent interview on LAist’s Morning Edition, talking about the remarkable discovery of a previously unknown single family home designed by master architect Arthur B. Benton.
What a happy story, right? Wrong.
Beaulyland (1912) at 284 South Coronado in the Westlake District is owned by an investment group that seeks to heavily remodel it into small apartments, even as their lender prepares to send the property into foreclosure and no demolition permit has yet been granted.
But because this is “a housing project,” under State law the city’s Office of Historic Resources will not even accept a landmark nomination for consideration. If you scroll down to “Updates” on our original newsletter about the discovery, you can read what Emma Howard from Council District 13 had to say about it.
So this message goes out to all our wealthy readers who love great Southern California architecture and are looking for a special project: can’t someone please make the current owner or the lender of Beaulyland an offer they can’t refuse, in order to preserve and protect and restore it?
Beaulyland could absolutely be converted into multi-family housing, as happened with many of the great Bunker Hill and Angeleno Heights mansions. But any such a conversion should be done sensitively, with an aim to retain the historic features, and not by demolishing the iconic poured concrete garage that bears the very name of this beautiful house.
Are you or someone you forward this newsletter going to be Beaulyland’s guardian angel?
Saturday’s tour takes us all over Angelino Heights, from streetcar stairways to back alley shortcuts to the iconic Carroll Avenue promenade, on a time travel trip packed with wild tales of house moves and hot prowlers, sleepwalkers and atom bombs, Chinatown locations and a real Esotouric ghost story. 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
• Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (9/27) • Charles Bukowski’s Westlake (10/4) • Know Your Downtown LA: Bradbury Building, Basements, Dutch Chocolate Shop (10/11) • The Run: Gay Downtown History (10/18) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (11/1) • Highland Park Arroyo Time Travel Trip (11/8) • Richard’s Birthday: Alvarado Terrace & South Bonnie Brae Tract (11/15) • The Real Black Dahlia (11/22) • Hollywood Noir (11/29) • Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice (12/6) • Westlake Park Time Travel Trip (12/13) • Miracle Mile Marvels & Madness (Sunday, 12/21) • Human Sacrifice: The Black Dahlia, Elisa Lam, Heidi Planck & Skid Row Slasher Cases (12/27)
CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS
An unpublished Raymond Chandler short story?! Well, not quite. But the fragment Nightmare, which sold last year for $800, is a fascinating window into the writer’s brief and happy time as a surrogate dad to our pal Sybil Davis.
We live narrated the 12/6/2024 auction results on Twitter and Facebook, including the many special items that failed to reach their reserve. One lot which did sell (for $800) was Nightmare, a single typed sheet likely written for an audience of one: Jean Fracasse. This comical fragment is about to be printed in the magazine The Strand as an “unpublished Raymond Chandler short story,” to considerable media attention and interest from Chandler scholars and with the permission of the Chandler Estate.
The more lost Chandleriana brought to light, the better, we figure. But the truly unpublished stories, the early fairy tales written for Cissy’s pleasure, are still in the possession of Sybil Davis, the writer’s friend. No one was willing to meet the opening bid. Maybe one day we’ll get to read ‘em—and to stage his fairy folk operetta!
Jamison has listed the Westlake Theatre for sale at $4.5 Million, after getting it for a steal from the CRA in 2018. It’s now a swap meet and one of the livelier retail spaces on Alvarado. Tenants are month-to-month, though.
Urban explorer Davy sneaks past the guards to explore the Bradbury Building—including the terrifying flat rooftop overlooking Grand Central Market and the Million Dollar Theater. Tsk tsk! But it is beautiful upstairs and we wish more folks could see it. The basement, too, is fascinating.
just returned from Rome, where he had an audience with the Pope and told him about the problems facing our beloved Los Angeles. Back in Westlake, he had Narcan on hand to save a man who was overdosing on the sidewalk. Thanks, padre.Downtown Los Angeles is a true time machine, and as much as we seen, we never say we’ve seen it all. Just discovered: a stunning pair of Pre-Columbian figures ushering guests beneath Broadway at the Million Dollar Theatre. Was it a nightclub or a temple? If you know, please tell!
After wrongly approving a project that would destroy one of 13 most endangered Latinx landmarks in the US, LA City Planning plans to “celebrate” underrepresented Latinx landmarks through signage. How about they do something to save the Silver Platter instead?
You can ask them to do that here.
We did: “Interpretive signage is great, but the Silver Platter bar is a rare and precious safe space in the Westlake District that ought to be protected and not demolished after City Planning staff wrongly approved the project application that falsely stated the building was not old and did not contain any historic resources. Now that the Silver Platter is listed as one of 13 most endangered Latinx landmarks in the US, the whole country is watching. Your department can still do the right thing and fix this. Please.”
