Inside this wee witchy East L.A. storybook cottage, Hansel and Gretel got inked, not eaten
Plus it's Paul R. Williams' city, we just live in it.
Gentle reader,
Greetings from your friendly historic Los Angeles sightseeing tour company, now offering digital programming until we can again organize groups to gather and explore the city we love.
On last Saturday’s webinar, The Stories of Los Angeles Storybook Architecture, we talked about a quirky and potentially endangered East Los Angeles landmark, the Hansel and Gretel cottage at 6144 Whittier Boulevard.
While it has a main drag Whittier Boulevard address, and we’ve passed it dozens of times while visiting the giant Tamale down the street, we had no idea the cottage existed until the County’s preservation officer mentioned visiting it. It is just that well hidden at the back of a fenced property—but quite easy to see from the alley in the back.
This wee crooked house with its spider web window bars would be cool enough just to look at, but it also has a fascinating and unexpected mid-1970s history as The Original Good Time Charlie’s Tattooland studio, where prison-style black and gray single needle skin art was first offered to the general public. That’s tattoo legend Jack Rudy lounging in the doorway in the vintage photo at left, next to the cottage as it looks today. To learn more about what happened here, check out the documentary Tattoo Nation: The True Story of the Ink Revolution or Tattooland artist Freddy Negrete’s autobiography, Smile Now, Cry Later Guns, Gangs, and Tattoos—My Life in Black and Gray.
Although eligible for listing on the National Register, and a recognized architectural landmark of unincorporated East Los Angeles, the cottage doesn’t currently have any formal protection from demolition or alteration. Its present use is as office space for an auto storage yard that the property owners have been looking to sell.
While the cottage could easily be moved, we’d like to see this East L.A. landmark preserved in place. Maybe you’re in the market for a vacant lot with a cool wee landmark in the back, or you know somebody who is. Let’s all keep a friendly eye on the Hansel and Gretel cottage, so it might stick around for many years to come.
This Saturday’s program is The Birth of Noir with James M. Cain & Raymond Chandler. The webinar is loosely based on one of our bus tours, so we didn’t anticipate getting surprised while crafting it. But then Kim popped down one of her intuitive research rabbit holes, and these can lead to some unexpected discoveries. When you tune in, we’ll let you in on the remarkable real-world significance of one of the most iconic locations from Double Indemnity, a little in-joke from Billy Wilder and his production team that had us in stitches when we recognized it, 77 years later. And we’ll sleuth out the fascinating intersections between Southern California landmarks and the writing of Cain, who mined a rich vein of crime and curiosity in his adopted home, and inspired some fantastic and influential films. From roadside attractions to sprawling cemeteries, Skid Row bars to the railyard produce yards, Cain’s world is still here—if you know where to look. To reserve your spot, click here.
On Saturday, March 13, it’s Saving South Los Angeles Landmarks: Googie, Gill & Governor Gage. This webinar takes off from our South Los Angeles Road Trip tour to explore some of the remarkable historic buildings in lesser traveled parts of County, ranging from Spanish era adobe ranchos to neon-drenched kar kulture drive-in diners to innovative homegrown modernism that leaves the Europeans in the dust. And we’ll hear from Margaret Bach about her experience restoring a derelict Irving Gill masterpiece in the 1970s. For more info, click here.
And just added for Saturday, March 20 is A Celebration of Paul R. Williams, Architect: From Hollywood Regency to SeaView Palos Verdes. We’ve put together a terrific group of writers, photographers, historians and preservationists to explore the legacy of this groundbreaking Modernist, how his work still shapes the landscape, and the hands-on experience of restoring and updating a remodeled Williams tract home, while respecting its beautiful bones. Get the skinny here.
Stay tuned as we roll out a new webinar program each Saturday. And remember if you can’t watch live or need to leave mid-stream, you can watch the recording for one full week. There’s still time to see The Stories of Los Angeles Storybook Architecture through Saturday night.
These webinars are now available as On-Demand recordings: The Dark Side of the West Side • In The Shadow of the Hotel Cecil • L.A. Historic Preservation, 1900s-1980s • Touring Southern California’s Architecture of Death • Crawford’s Markets • John Bengtson’s Silent Film Locations • George Mann’s Vintage L.A. • Pershing Square 1866-2020 • Cafeterias of Old L.A. • Programmatic Architecture • Angels Flight • Grand Central Market • Ohio River Valley • Bunker Hill • Charles Bukowski • Raymond Chandler • Black Dahlia • Dutch Chocolate Shop • Bradbury Building • Tunnels • L.A. Times Bombing and 13 Uncanny Crimes & Mysteries.
And we’d love to see you tomorrow at noon for The Birth of Noir with James M. Cain & Raymond Chandler.
yours for Los Angeles,
Kim & Richard
Esotouric
Subscribe! In the latest subscriber's edition of this newsletter—$10/month, cheap!—A Hidden Victorian Elevator Cage With A Bloodthirsty Past—we peer into a hotel broom closet that is as beautiful as it is terrifying.
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AND WHAT'S THE NEXT TOUR? WHO KNOWS?!
We're dark until public health officials determine that groups can gather safely. But in addition to weekly webinar programs, we've got 138 episodes of the podcast You Can't Eat The Sunshine free to download for armchair explorers, and videos of the Downtown L.A. LAVA walking tours, plus Cranky Preservationist videos.
AND FINALLY, LINKS
If you tuned in to our Stories of Los Angeles Storybook Architecture webinar, you heard Nathan Marsak's scoop: a beautiful mansion from old Bunker Hill survives in plain sight in Angeleno Heights!
Our effervescent friend Simone Gad is memorialized by ONE Archives. A Boyle Heights gal with a deep love for the layered cultural history of Los Angeles, something that was a big part of her art.
In Brazil's Universo Online, Fernanda Ezabella reports on dark tourism at the Cecil Hotel, and our tours that use historic true crime stories to explore the cultural history of Downtown Los Angeles. (Google Translate link.)
Delightful Twitter thread about how the tallest soundstage on the Warner Brothers lot got its improbable loft.
Celebrate a virtual Bob Baker Day through the magic of his vintage marionettes, Craig Sauer's 3-D photography, the iconic landmark Union Station and other treasures of Los Angeles. Click this link and get lost in sweet silly strings and things.
Are you one of the five families who live in the rent-controlled 1939 apartments at 6115 Romaine or in the 1917 house behind? Permits have been filed to demolish your home for a huge TOC project. The whole block of renters will be next!
The first in a lyrical row of Spanish Colonial Revival multi-family apartments targeted for demolition for a towering elder care and Alzheimer's facility. Do the rent-stabilized tenants know their home is under fire?
If the wealthy residents of Franklin Canyon couldn’t protect themselves from the effects of stealthy LLCs, EIR avoidance, improper building permits and illegal grading as Mohamed Hadid destroyed ancient ridges and ecosystems, how are the poor residents of greater Los Angeles supposed to protect themselves from rampant development abuses enabled by corrupt City Council and the “city family”?
Landmark nomination submitted for the Crenshaw Women's Center (aka Women's Liberation Center), which offered abortion and divorce counseling and a suicide hotline for lesbians from 1970-72, and was where Carol Downer was busted by LAPD for practicing medicine without a license—for offering yogurt for a yeast infection!
Save the date of March 8, and avail yourself of a rare opportunity to support the Huntington Library by exploring its legendary tunnel system.
With the sad news that the back-end comments code is broken and Mark Evanier plans to shut down Old L.A. Restaurants soon, here's the Wayback Machine version of the website with all the terrific community comments intact as of 2015.
In 1923, Science And Invention magazine spoiled the effect of Harold Lloyd's greatest stunt with diagrams showing he wasn't actually risking death to shoot the Safety Last clock scene, on top of 908 South Broadway in Downtown L.A.
Farewell to the magical A&Z Nut Wagon of Boyle Heights, one of the oldest businesses in the city of Los Angeles, founded (legend has it) by a Russian peddler who grew the sunflower seeds much beloved in the motherland down on the riverbank.
There was a City Council PLUM Committee hearing on Tuesday involving many historic preservation issues, among them the threatened Pico Chili Bowl. A year into the pandemic, the city was incapable of getting the audio to work, and the meeting was adjourned without action. Transcript link.
Two months after a column amplifying developer (and Jose Huizar crony) Art Gastelum's spin that building flush to the trunk will somehow "save" El Pino, Laura Zornosa of the Times comes back to tell a more deeply reported story of how the community is fighting back for their landmark tree. Follow the unfolding story on our blog.
L.A. Beat tunes in to our webinar on Programmatic Architecture, finds that despite the pandemic, Esotouric is still bringing cultural vitality to Los Angeles.
Redcar and James Corner Field Operations recently presented their proposal for the landmarked Tokio Florist home, gardens and retail compound, with a mix of restoration and reinterpretation, to the Cultural Heritage Commission. It seems to be shaping up nicely, with community and CHC feedback. Slideshow here.
KCRA-TV Sacramento produced a lengthy feature about Hugh Hefner as he closed down the Sunset Strip Playboy Club and moved operations and his zoo into the Playboy Mansion, because Hef's companion Barbi Benton was formerly hometown beauty Miss Barbara Klein.
Bye Bye, sweet Wayne McAllister-designed Lanai (1948)? Low income tenants at the Town House on Wilshire could be moved to a new, modern building on the pool area footprint while the Georgian landmark gets earthquake retrofitting. Slide show presentation for the Cultural Heritage Commission is here.
A very tough read in the New York Times, which is dedicating resources to reporting on Los Angeles that scoops our local outlets. Magda Maldonado's crew is doing such important work in East L.A. — ‘A Nightmare Every Day’: Inside an Overwhelmed Funeral Home.
The Los Angeles Times is in a lot of trouble, and so is owner Patrick Soon-Shiong. It's not like this wreck of a town needs a great newspaper or anything. Before closing a deal: where’d you take the Globe Lobby eagle, Pat?!
Angst in the Bird Streets as CM Nithya Raman says she's not ready to talk land use with residents, but green lights stalled street vacation for megamansion. See this PDF for info on the 2016 5B Enterprises septic lawsuit. Will city also be sued?
We feel an affinity to 101 Productions, the labor of love enterprise of Jacqueline and Roy Killeen, who quit their day jobs to publish California restaurant guides and paper pop-up landmark models.
A splurge gift for the Bunker Hill fan in your life: Wilfrid Taylor Mills’ huge oil painting of The Castle, one of the last two mansions left standing when the city leveled the Victorian neighborhood. Here’s another Mills Castle view.