Gentle reader,
We’re a little nutty about Southern California Arts & Crafts clay tiles, and it’s been our great honor to be able to help amplify the beauty and history of these local treasures, especially the work of backyard Arroyo craftsman turned factory operator Ernest A. Batchelder.
If you’ve never had the opportunity to join us on a tour visiting his first great commission, the Dutch Chocolate Shop in Downtown Los Angeles, you can explore the space in 3-D here, and learn more in a webinar (available for rent, or on our streaming long form video channel).
But if you really want to get up close and personal with Batchelder’s tile, consider becoming involved with an inspiring grassroots preservation project that’s emerged, phoenix like, from the ashes of Altadena’s Eaton fire zone.
Last month’s firestorm burned extremely hot, reducing most household items to dust or melted scrap, leaving almost nothing for residents to salvage. But the beautiful tile fireplaces and their chimneys of local brick were already forged in kilns burning hotter than 2000℉, and came through the fires scoured of a century’s soot and grime, looking as if they’d just arrived in the original contractor’s wagon.
These beautiful and useful relics are, in many cases, all that is left from a lifetime’s accumulation, and a powerful symbol of home and hearth. They’re also in immediate danger of demolition, as the EPA, Army Corps of Engineers and government contractors rush to assess and clear each scorched parcel.
This is where Save the Tiles comes in. Every day, from first light to dusk, dedicated volunteers are in the debris field and working off-site, identifying parcels that have tiles, locating property owners (a challenge for those whose houses have been destroyed) to seek permission to salvage, painstakingly dismantling fireplaces, repairing damaged tiles, storing tile so their owners can reclaim them when the time is right, and fundraising to bring in more skilled masons ahead of the bulldozers.
We’re helping, and you can, too! Reach out to hello@savethetiles.org if you’d like to assist in the field or behind the scenes, contribute to their fundraising efforts, or just share the link widely, and you’ll be a part of preserving a century old legacy of craftsmanship for generations to come.
One word of warning, though: tile has a way of getting under your skin and fueling an overwhelming obsession. That’s why so many nice people have dropped everything to help save their neighbors’ tiles, and what’s brought us up to the burn zone for many hours last week.
Stay tuned for more salvage reports from Altadena, and should you join the campaign, please share in the comments below.
Saturday’s tour is our flagship true crime outing, The Real Black Dahlia. Come explore not who killed Beth Short, but who she was, and how this unfortunate victim of postwar violence reveals so much about Los Angeles and a lost culture of transient youth, her hopes and her tragedy set against the backdrop of Downtown L.A. landmarks. Join us, do!
Yours for Los Angeles,
Kim & Richard
Esotouric
Are you on social media? We’re on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, Substack Notes, TikTok and Reddit sharing preservation news as it happens. New: we’re on Nextdoor now, too.
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
• The Real Black Dahlia (Sat. 3/1) • Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice Downtown L.A. (Sat. 3/8) • Bunker Hill, Dead and Alive (Sat. 3/15) • 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
One of L.A.'s coolest storefronts is for lease: the 1920s drugstore turned Paramount Pest Control offices at 2023 Riverside in Frogtown. Not included, since he lives at Museum of Neon Art now, the dangerously adorable Doc Kilzum.
What's up with the L.A. Stock Exchange petition that’s showing up as a sponsored link on social media? Petitioner Smart Capital Investments I LLC is the landlord, who has been in litigation with tenant Hawkeye for years.
There are real preservation concerns about loud music damaging the landmark interior, like this exquisite ceiling that partially collapsed last January. We have asked if they will grant the Los Angeles Conservancy an interior preservation easement to go with their oversight of the facade—no reply as yet.
Government contractor Tetra Tech, of Hunter's Point Superfund infamy, is sentencing viable trees to the axe. In an advocacy video, Nick the Arborist assesses a scorched stand of Melaleuca marked with the blue dot of doom, scrapes papery bark to find healthy trunk underneath. Altadena Green is also sharing information and suggesting residents print out this notice instructing crews leave their trees alone.
A must-see historic Los Angeles photo exhibit opens Monday 2/24 at Central Library in the lower History and Genealogy section: John Parkinson: Architect of the Metropolis, curated by Parkinson's biographer Stephen Gee.
First time on the market: newly landmarked (by City Council initiation) American Foursquare Cunningham Residence (David Gaul, 1914) on Crenshaw. Owned by pioneering L.A. undertakers who miraculously never remodeled. Read the HCM nomination here.
How do you make Bunker Hill historian Nathan Marsak gibber uncontrollably? With an 1886 photograph of a house up on the hill he's never seen before—with master architect Octavius Morgan in the shot! Nathan's next Bunker Hill, Dead and Alive walking tour is March 15, a real time travel trip.
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