Gentle reader,
There’s just something about tunnels.
Maybe it’s because they’re the human forged version of a cave, the spaces where our ancient ancestors hid out from predators, painted the walls and dug the echoes and dripping sounds. Possibly it’s because they’re hard to access and feel illicit. But every time we’ve offered a walk that includes a tunnel tour—next date 3/28’s Know Your Downtown L.A.—we find folks are eager to experience them for themselves.
Since the earliest days of Esotouric, we’ve been asked about the service tunnels beneath Downtown Los Angeles. Do they really span eleven contiguous miles? Maybe they did once, but not anymore. Did the Mayor’s office actually run the booze and prostitution rackets down there during Prohibition? Yup! Are there stalagmites and stalactites? There are indeed! Did you ever do a webinar about L.A. tunnels? We did!
We’ve explored many service tunnels and stormwater sewers, on our own and in good company. But we didn’t know until our preservation pal Mike Callahan clued us in that the City of Los Angeles maintains a very detailed online infrastructure map that can help track the hidden passages beneath our sidewalks and streets.
The portal is called Navigate LA, and by accessing it, clicking Table of Contents, then selecting the Base Maps > Substructure Map layer, anyone can zoom in on an historic address and check to see if there are passages mapped underneath it.
Now it’s probable some tunnels have never been documented by the city’s engineers, or that maps are incomplete. But by visiting Navigate LA, you too can explore hidden portals and share them with the rest of us. And we hope you will!
We’ve created a new stickied post on our preservation focused subreddit /r/losangelespreserved as a clearinghouse for tunnel discoveries. If you’re inclined to do some (virtual) spelunking, we hope you’ll visit Reddit to share what you find. If you don’t have Reddit you can also comment on this newsletter post.
And should you catch the tunnel bug and seek to actually explore these hidden spaces on your own, we encourage you to respect private property and be extremely careful if you do gain access. At minimum, wear a respirator mask, gloves and hard soled shoes, bring clean water, power bars and a light source, don’t go alone and tell somebody where you’re going and when you will be back.
And should you find a tunnel nobody has explored in 100 years, come back into the light and tell us all about it! Lunch at Arto’s Broadway Deli at St. Vincent Court (the best!) is on us. Just change your shoes first!
Saturday’s tour is Weird West Adams, a ramble around fascinating early streetcar suburbs to discover beautiful pockets of homes and intriguing commercial corridors, wrapping up with a visit to the landmarked mansion home of the Elmer McCurdy circus sideshow history museum. 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
• Weird West Adams & Elmer McCurdy Museum Visit (2/28) • Film Noir / Real Noir (3/7) • Franklin Village Old Hollywood (3/14) • Bunker Hill, Dead and Alive (3/21) • Know Your Downtown L.A.: Bradbury Building, Basements of Yore & the Dutch Chocolate Shop (3/28) • Christine Sterling & Leo Politi: Angels of Los Angeles (4/4) • John Fante’s Downtown L.A. (4/11) • Early Hollywood’s Silent Comedy Legends (4/18) • Downtown Los Angeles is for Book Lovers (4/25) • Highland Park Arroyo (5/2) • Charles Bukowski’s Westlake (5/7) • The Run: Gay Downtown History (5/23) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (5/30) • The Real Black Dahlia (6/6) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (6/13) • Miracle Mile Marvels & Madness (Sunday, 6/21) • Westlake Park (6/27)
CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS
At City Hall on Tuesday 2/24, we witnessed a shocking PLUM Committee rejection of the Angelenos for Historic Preservation appeal of the proposed Barry Building demolition for no new project.
The precedent this would set for owners of landmarks to deliberately blight them is chilling. Our Kim Cooper’s public comment about this was featured on the Monks & Merrill show on KFI embedded above.
There was no debate, the decision makers couldn’t care less, with unanimous rejection of the appeal by the three of five PLUM members present: Nithya Raman, Bob Blumenfield and Adrin Nazarian, all deferring to the wishes of Traci Park.
This is a grave matter of citywide concern, and there’s no justification for the illegal pre-PLUM vote trading on view here. This matter will probably be litigated, but first it has to go to full City Council—tell YOUR representative to VOTE NO!
Utter heartbreak. Patty Casado, who fought to regain ownership of her parents’ legendary Lucy’s El Adobe Café across from Paramount, has died after a brief illness. All she wanted was to welcome Angelenos back to her table, and she came so close. The community is invited to her services.
It’s wild that Times Mirror Square, which we landmarked only for Jose Huizar to rewrite the nomination for benefit of his demolition minded donors Onni Group, is to be the new home of the Federal Public Defender. Huizar used them when he pled out!
New on Empty Los Angeles: 40 Years of Hollywood Burning. So many useful, vacant landmark properties. So many suspicious, convenient fires. Nobody is ever arrested for setting them—or for paying to have them set. It’s kind of weird, isn’t it?
Sad to see the Marwick Apartments (C.C. Rittenhouse, 1912) roof garden units scorched. A resident told us nobody heard a fire alarm, which is troubling. This is at 11th and Lake in the Pico-Union HPOZ.
The owners of Marilyn Monroe’s house have just killed their California appeal through inaction. The Federal case is alive. Will this demolition battle go to the Supreme Court, potentially setting a precedent undermining landmark protections nationwide?
