Gentle reader,
As you know if you’ve been watching the news, the beloved Boney Island treehouse in Sherman Oaks was demolished on Saturday, March 8—four days before its owner, Rick Polizzi, faced a criminal trial for failing, despite more than $50,000 in legal fees and years of effort, to obtain LADBS permits to make the play structure legal.
The Los Angeles City Attorney’s office had made it known that if the City won the case, as appeared likely after a tough preliminary hearing, it would seek court costs from Polizzi. And so, with regret, he made the tough decision to demolish Boney Island himself, on the promise that if he did, the City would drop the case.
Because it was a tour day, we weren’t able to be there when the hard working crew from Jose’s Junk Removal ascended to begin dismantling the treehouse from the crow’s nest at the top—nor to hear them curse the high quality of the construction which turned what was expected to be a quick tear down into an all day job.
Like Simon Rodia’s Watts Towers, without the happy ending, the unpermitted Boney Island was a lot tougher than anyone expected, and didn’t go down without a fight.
By the time we arrived, at 4pm, there were only stairs to nowhere left beside the trio of handsome liquidambar trees that had supported the treehouse for nearly 25 years.
As a last news copter circled to get the shot of the bare trees, a CBS reporter sought Rick’s final thoughts. Typically, they were not for himself or all the trouble and cost, but for other Angelenos, displaced by the Palisades fire and now at the mercy of the same recalcitrant LADBS permitting office that had refused to work with him.
And then, as you can see in the vignette above, the trees had the last weird word.
Tomorrow, at 10am, the Cultural Heritage Commission has on its agenda discussion of designating Boney Island a protected City landmark.
As we reported previously, at the Thursday, March 6 meeting, and as you can hear in the audio link below (starting at 10:41), Commissioner Diane Kanner and others expressed serious concerns about the pending demolition, but were told by city staff that there was no way they could discuss the matter until it was placed on the agenda at the next regularly scheduled meeting, in two weeks time.
That isn’t actually true.
Under the CHC’s Rules and Operating Procedures, at Section 5.1, there is a provision to hold a Special Meeting on just 24 hours notice.
Had Office of Historic Resources staff properly instructed the Commissioners, or had they been more familiar with their own rules, a CHC initiated landmark consideration for Boney Island could have been agendized on Friday, March 7, along with a request that the City Attorney’s office pause its prosecution while the matter was under consideration.
But that didn’t happen, and now Boney Island is just garbage in the landfill. And so closes a particularly shameful and nonsensical chapter in Los Angeles governance run amok.
Should you feel strongly about what happened to this quirky treehouse and wish to address the Commissioners, you can attend the Cultural Heritage Commission in person in Room 1010 at City Hall, or call in via phone or Zoom and make a short public comment on the New Business item at the start of the meeting. All participation info is here.
And if you stick around for the meat of the hearing, you’ll hear presentations on two wonderful multifamily properties under landmark consideration, Marco Place Court on a Venice walk street, and the Sam Sharpe Triplex in Los Feliz by master architect Max Maltzman, and you can speak for them in public comment, too.
As for us, maybe we’ll stop in. It depends what happens across the Civic Center at the courthouse, where after many months of delays, finally Councilmember Curren Price must plea in his public corruption case.
Will he make a deal to keep the extent of his dirty dealings and the names of his co-conspirators under wraps, or fight the charges and open the door to revelations likely to blow the lid off City Hall? Stay tuned!
And speaking of real life L.A. noir, Saturday’s tour explores the world of 1920s oil executive turned detective novelist Raymond Chandler, and the bold, brash and batty characters he knew in business, and immortalized in fiction and on screen. New on this edition of the tour: a powerful, forgotten message from nearly 100 years ago warning Angelenos about the cost of letting corruption fester in local government. 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
• Raymond Chandler’s Noir Downtown Los Angeles (Sat. 3/22) • Franklin Village Old Hollywood (Sun. 3/30) • John Fante’s Downtown L.A. (Sat. 4/5) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (Sat. 4/12) • Elmer McCurdy’s Main Street Revival (4/15) • Leo Politi Loves Los Angeles (Sat. 4/19) • Downtown Los Angeles is for Book Lovers (Sat. 4/26) • 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) • Broadway (7/26)
CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS
Preservation pal marwinski compiles vintage TV clips (1960-1983) featuring the demolition threatened Hollywood Center Motel, back when it looked good enough for Jim Rockford and was open for nightly bookings. SF Gate picks up the story, too.
The SS Yale of the LASC offered luxury berths for California commuters, and tasty fare. On 11/18/1934, this included tapioca's pricey competition, sago pudding.
A powerful update from Rev. Dylan Littlefield about his advocacy for troubled Hotel Cecil resident Jacob, who was granted diversion with treatment for addiction and mental illness instead of life in prison. The judge saw people cared and ruled accordingly.
Good news for anyone who has tried to photograph the Breed Street Shul in Boyle Heights: the awful chain link fence and razor wire is going away!
The City of Los Angeles is rejecting highly specific public records requests about LAFD response to the Palisades fire on the grounds that the ATF is investigating. How does that void public transparency law?
A wonderful opportunity to be a part of L.A.'s evolving historic preservation legacy: there are openings on the Heritage Square board. With so much undeveloped land behind the main museum, it's a great time to move more buildings! Interested? Contact info@heritagesquare.org
What a pretty pair they make, the "Babe" Horrell Residence (1926) and the Hollywood Regency manse (1949) in the 1100 block of S. Rodeo Dr. The Tudor sold for $2.4 M and now the neighbors plan to build a new house there.
RIP 1216 S. Menlo. Demolition permit issued, with no salvage, no effort to preserve this useful and historic structure designed by John C. Austin and Woodbury C. Pennell in 1911. Shame on Los Angeles! It’s not a housing crisis, but a housing use crisis, with so many empty buildings held vacant and allowed to burn.
Zombie Skid Row dive bar news: Acme's gentrified King Eddy Saloon website, offline since 2017, just reappeared. The special bar is not operating, and awaits its next steward. The surrounding SRO hotels, emptied by the Shomofs, are full again. Spread the word!
We stopped by the Alto Nido to check in before our March 30 Franklin Village Old Hollywood tour and got the skinny on apartments for rent. If you seek old Hollywood glamour and a nice community, they’ve got a 1 bedroom and a big studio available.
What's a tour about lost Bunker Hill without a modern day preservationist passing out fliers about fine multi-family housing threatened by the City Hall bulldozer? Thanks, Frank Richter, for fighting to save the William Mellenthin Birdhouse Apartments!
Has Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong suppressed coverage of the lawsuit over unpaid rent and trashed facilities at the Olympic Printing Plant, or are the few reporters left just clueless about the courts? Either way—what a mess!
New scheme to displace protected RSO tenants: rezone as small lot houses, sell individually at significantly higher per unit value, owners move in and it's tough luck for residents who cannot possibly find comparable housing in Hollywood. City Council can and should stop this.
The Irish know black cats mean good luck, and so Dublin shipped an enormous one to San Diego for the 1935 California Pacific International Exposition, a bootstraps effort to bring prosperity and joy during the gloom of the Depression. We want a World's Fair with wacky gifts!
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