Saturday's tour is a Westlake Park Time Travel Trip

Gentle reader,

When the young town of Los Angeles established in 1781, its streets ran at 45° angles to the compass, as directed by Spain’s planning standards for the colonies.

After the Anglos took over, they imposed a North/South grid on the expanding city, but mostly left the old roads intact. And why not? The old roads worked, and had been heavily developed with good and useful buildings, landscape and infrastructure.

To explore central Los Angeles is to navigate a layered cultural history, one that is constantly changing and building upon the efforts of the dreamers and schemers who sought and still seek to shape this confounding place to their will.

Tomorrow’s walking tour is the Westlake Park Time Travel Trip, one of our more occasional outings that takes us around the western edge of the old Spanish map. We’ve got room for you to join the excursion. Read on to learn more, or click here to sign up.

When Los Angeles was young, Westlake was a favorite pleasure park, with boating, a mini-zoo and exotic trees for lovers to spoon under, surrounded by grand mansions and elegant hotels. Then in 1934, Wilshire Boulevard punched through the lake, marking the ascendency of the automobile. Westlake would never be the same.

Come take an immersive trip back in time exploring the layers of history hiding in plain sight in and around Westlake (MacArthur) Park.

Starting from the tropical garden courtyard of the elegant William Penn Hotel—now called The Sinclair LA—we’ll set out to discover the rich and compelling cultural, architectural and true crime history of this fascinating L.A. neighborhood.

On this walk, you’ll learn about the legendary booksellers and influential art academies that thrived here, see where cult leader Jim Jones lost his cool, visit a little known monument to detective novelist Raymond Chandler, learn where a bomb was set for the publisher of the Los Angeles Times, thrill to the offbeat goings on at the Elks’ Lodge, plus enjoy early pleasure park lore, silent film locations, mysteriously mummified infants, and a stop to admire the only art nouveau castle home in Los Angeles, a rare domestic commission by master architect John Parkinson.

Then when the tour is over, you can set off on your own to patronize the retail shops inside the historic Westlake Theatre, nosh on pastrami at Langer’s or enjoy something sizzling fresh off a street vendor’s griddle. The heart of the city is calling, and we’d love to share it with you. 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.

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UPCOMING WALKING TOURS

• Westlake Park Time Travel Trip (6/28) • Film Noir / Real Noir (7/12) • The Real Black Dahlia (7/19) • Early Hollywood’s Silent Comedy Legends (7/26) • Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice (8/9) • Weird West Adams / Elmer McCurdy Museum (8/16) • Christine Sterling & Leo Politi: Angels of Los Angeles (8/23) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (8/30) • Raymond Chandler’s Noir Downtown Los Angeles (9/6) • Film Noir / Real Noir (9/20) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (9/27)